Many accounting practice software vendors will offer solutions that promise practices the ability to offer such services to some of their clients. But what many accounting software vendors fail to provide is the ability to deliver business advice to hundreds of clients, in an efficient, sustainable manner.
If you're thinking about adding consulting and business advisory to your accounting practice’s service offering, we have created this article to make the decision easier for you.
Is business advisory an accountant?
Yes - because it is fast becoming a rarity for a practice to be purely accounting focused, especially with the advent of intuitive client management software for accounting practices.
Businesses are, more than ever, in need of business advisory services to help navigate shifting tax requirements, business plan changes, government grants, employee shifts, cashflow enhancement and risk minimisation.
What are examples of advisory services?
Consider the value you can add to your practice with the following services and advice:
- Budgeting, and cash flow forecasting
- Start-up planning
- Business development
- Software setup and support
- Virtual CFO
- Performance benchmarking
- Financing and capital
- Business acquisition
- Asset purchasing
- Debtor management
- General business coaching
What are the challenges of business advisory services?
So, what’s holding many practices back from delivering business advisory services?
Some of the key challenges include:
- Lack of time: over the last few years accountants help their clients navigate constantly changing tax regulations.
- Traditional mindset: many accountants struggle to think beyond tax and compliance services which has been the mainstay of their practices for decades.
- The challenge of siloed data: many practices are overwhelmed by the vast amount of client data they are collecting, which ends up scattered across disparate systems. They lack an efficient way to manage and translate this data into valuable insights.
Given these challenges, how can practices free up their time to deliver data-driven business advice to client, and how can they do it efficiently, to deliver advice at scale?
How accounting practices can deliver business advice to scale
There are two ways that accounting practices can deliver business advice to scale:
- Implementing the right practice accounting software: to derive meaningful insights from the large volumes of data they’re collecting, both from their clients’ businesses, the ATO, and the broader financial industry.
- Developing knowledge: of business performance drivers, as well as boosting their skills with data management and analytics software, means a business advisor can effectively communicate strategies to clients in an efficient, scalable manner.
How do business advisors leverage client data?
One of the most significant challenges a business advisory team may face today is how they can derive meaningful insights from the overwhelming amount of data they are collecting. Many accounting practices have all the information they need to start providing business advisory services, they just do not have it in one place.
Data often ends up being viewed in silos, separate from the data held in non-financial systems, like for example, the practice client management database. Lacking the tools to consolidate all client information in one place, these practices must perform significant manual work and data entry to manage and analyse data.
Read more about this topic in our blog: How data analytics levels up your accounting practice client data.
To become a data-driven accounting practice offering business advice at scale, practices need a way to manage and analyse both their financial and non-financial client data as easily as possible. Not only that, but they also need to deliver a great customer experience and treat each client in a personalised way.
Let’s look at two forms of cutting-edge accounting practice software that can help practices free up time to deliver valued-added business advice – and do so efficiently, at scale.
Business intelligence tools
Many practices are increasingly realising the value that cloud Business Intelligence (BI) tools can provide to help them efficiently manage, analyse, and translate client data into actionable insights.
Cloud-based accounting practice solutions, such as data management and analytics software, can give practices the means to efficiently access and analyse previously inaccessible client data.
Data management and analytics software offers features like customisable dashboards and powerful data visualisations, which allow accountants to quickly and easily monitor key businesses metrics and identify trends in their clients’ businesses.
With data management and analytics software, practices can achieve significant time savings. They can translate client data into meaningful insights and communicate them to clients in an easy-to-understand, timely manner.
Accounting practice management software with a built-in CRM
Another major challenge many practices face is managing client contact records, communications, and information. This data is often scattered across multiple disparate systems, making it challenging to identify trends, address client needs, and provide a superior client experience.
It's important to understand, however, that not all CRMs are suitable for practices out of the box. While many stand-alone client management software solutions offer integration with your practice management software, this integration can present challenges. Using two solutions built on different code bases and offering different user interfaces may present difficulties, as does having to deal with multiple accounting practice software vendors.
Implementing accounting practice management software with in-built CRM capabilities can help accountants avoid these challenges.
It allows them to manage both their practice and clients in one system, enabling more efficient, seamless workflows between the two.
A practice management software solution with in-built client management software capabilities can help your practice:
- Gain instant visibility of all client interactions in a single location.
- View all job requests and monitor their progress.
- Consolidate workflows and save time thanks to integration with office tools like Microsoft Outlook.
- Build client communities and deliver a superior customer experience with dedicated portals.
- Engage clients more efficiently, thereby facilitating the discovery of new service opportunities.
Combining the right accounting practice software
Coupling client management software and data management and analytics software in your practice can go a long way to making sense of client data in a timely manner.
However, the next question is: what would it take to effectively translate client data into meaningful insights?
Given the analytical skills accountants already possess, they’re in a good position to adopt the mindset needed to effectively analyse client data.
This includes the ability to:
- Extract, manipulate, and understand data.
- Explore the meaning of data and derive actionable insights from it.
- Distil data into a business problem or opportunity and ask the right questions based on their data analysis.
While accountants have the natural ability to analyse data, many lack the tools to efficiently translate client data into meaningful insights about their clients' small business.
Without the tools to slice and dice client data in a time-efficient manner, many practices struggle to provide data-driven advisory services at scale.
Data-analytics tools that are designed for accountants can help automate the discovery of data-driven insights about your clients’ businesses. By providing accountants with alerts for key business metrics and accounting KPIs, these tools help them highlight the critical drivers of business improvement for their clients.
How can we help your practice scale business advisory services?
Through our partnership with an experienced team of business advisory service providers, combined with our innovative client management software, accounting practice management software, and data management and analytics software, We can help busy accounting practices with their advisory services for business owner clients.
Our integrated service offering can allow your accounting practice to:
- Access all your client data in one place.
- Receive performance alerts about your clients' businesses.
- Highlight the key drivers of improvement for your clients' businesses.
- Automate the creation of job tasks based on performance alerts.
- Easily collaborate with your clients.
- Create automated report packs.
- Acquire data analytics, marketing, and communication skills to scale your advisory services.
If you're curious about the broader possibilities of practice management software for accountants, why not read our guide: Why you need accounting practice management software?