Offering Business Advisory Services Without a Contractual Commitment

Our team at ESS BIZTOOLS has created an opportunity for accountants, like you, to offer a broader range of commercial services to their SME clients in a cost effective way.

Providing professional Business Advisory Services can add a new stream of income that will flow into your practice and help grow your business.

But, for smaller firms, offering new services over and above compliance work is often seen as an uphill battle, especially with all the preparatory work involved.

That is where we come in.

In our new Business Advisory package, we at ESS BIZTOOLS have done that work for you.

Best of all, we have made it very affordable, by changing the way we have previously charged.

No more yearly subscriptions or annual contracts.

Instead, we will be supplying our extensive range of industry resources on a monthly subscription basis, so those long-term commitments to contracts are a thing of the past.

We are confident that accountants who use our service will quickly come to depend on it.

Each week, new material and updated information will be added to the online members’ package, you will always be up to date.

By being able to offer the services we’ve developed in the package to your retail clients, you will be helping them to grow and add value to their businesses.  With the expanded services you will be offering from your accountancy firm, you will be creating challenging and interesting work for your accountant team members.  This is sure to help you retain experienced staff and make your firm a more attractive proposition, when you are competing in the market to recruit additional accountants.

The Commonwealth Bank “Accounting Market Pulse Report in 2021” indicated that 95% of the firms interviewed from all over Australia had indicated that they were undertaking diversification of their services during 2021 and 2022.

Has your firm developed a strategy for the implementation of a range of diversified services?

One of the problems that many firms confront once they have made the decision to diversify their services is “where do we start”?

I started ESS BIZTOOLS 22 years ago following a successful career in commerce and public practice.  I was convinced then, and I am still convinced today, that the SME market is looking for someone to provide additional commercial services and reliable professional advice.  The most logical organisation to supply those sorts of commercial services is accountants, who have “up skilled” themselves with the knowledge to meet the business needs of today’s SMEs.

Most SMEs are not looking for more advice on the preparation of their annual financial accounts or their income tax returns.  What they are looking for is advice and assistance on how to run their operations more efficiently, so they can add ongoing value to their businesses.  Ultimately, that improved value will allow the owners to retire with dignity.

In my commercial career I was the Chief Financial Officer/Company Secretary of a listed public company.  I learnt that larger organisations tend to run their operations as a series of small businesses with an area manager.  That manager often has a small team to assist them in the management of those businesses.  Usually, the team is comprised of an accountant or experienced bookkeeper and some other clerical, marketing and promotional staff.

Public companies have a great awareness of the necessity of Key Performance Indicators (KPI).  They go to significant lengths to ensure that appropriate KPIs are introduced at all levels of the organisation.  Some KPIs are applied on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis.  The internal accountant working in one of those support teams normally has a prime responsibility for reviewing those KPIs.  Any abnormal results are then raised with the area manager and the manager responsible for that particular business unit so that issues are able to be dealt with quickly and efficiently.

These types of organisations produce Budgets and Cash Flow Forecasts based on management’s realistic estimates of how the business will operate during the forthcoming 12 months.  They don’t just take last year’s figures and add a percentage.  Instead, they go back to the very beginning and evaluate the key components of a business:

• Production forecasts
• Labour teams to produce that production
• Raw material requirements and cost for that production
• Electricity and other fuel and energy requirements and cost to produce that production
• Estimates of inventory holdings
• Sales estimates supplied by the sales department
• Level of marketing required to achieve the sales supplied by the marketing department
• Forecast debtors levels – including targeted “Debtors Days Outstanding”
• Wages costs including wages on cost
• Detailed Profit And Loss Forecasts prepared for each operating unit of the business on a month by month basis
• Detailed Cash Flow Forecasts
• Projected Balance Sheets on a month by month basis

The commercial accountant then sits down with the management team and lays out these forecasts so that everyone understands what their performance expectations are.  The team is also told what the Key Performance Indicators are going to be used to monitor the efficiency of their performance.

Detailed monthly Financial Accounts are prepared for each business unit.  These show a comparison to the Budget forecast.  A business review meeting each month analyses the performance to identify any structural changes that are necessary to achieve that business unit’s annual budget forecast

THESE ARE THE TYPES OF SERVICES THAT MANY SMES ARE NOW LOOKING FOR. CLEARLY, THESE SERVICES HAVE TO BE ADAPTED TO SUIT THE CLIENT’S INDUSTRY AND THE NEEDS OF THEIR OWN BUSINESS, BUT THIS IS WHERE MODERN SMEs ARE HEADING.

ARE YOU READY TO PROVIDE THIS RANGE OF INTERESTING AND CHALLENGING SERVICES TO A NUMBER OF YOUR SME CLIENTS?  I CERTAINLY HOPE SO!

ESS BIZTOOLS’ new SME offering includes innovative product packages that have been developed to assist accountants to get started on this journey of diversifying into Business Advisory Services.

The Preparation Package includes:

• Business Advisory Services Training – 13 modules to give your team an awareness of what Business Advisory Services is all about and to start to develop “Product Champions” in your firm.

• 343 papers prepared by ESS BIZTOOLS that you can badge and send to your clients. These papers contain comments on 55 subject headings. These papers will confirm to your clients that you are offering new commercial services which can help them to operate better businesses more efficiently.

• 12 client seminars/webinars which you can use to start telling your clients about the new services that you are able to offer.

This type of less formal environment is likely to get many of your clients thinking about the possibilities. I expect some of them will ask on the spot about the sort of additional services you can now provide to them.

This will give you the opportunity of telling some of your longer-term clients about how these services could add value to their businesses.

We should always remember that in 2022, accountancy is a highly competitive business.  Some of your clients may have even been thinking about transferring their work to someone else who may have been busy pitching business advisory services to them.

Sure, these clients may have been reluctant to leave your firm. But, because they had never heard from you about these types of business services, they may have assumed that you were not interested in or capable of providing them.

• Debtors Management – this is an enormous problem for the majority of small/medium sized enterprises in Australia. A couple of years ago Australia earned the dubious title of having the “Longest Debtors Days Outstanding in the World”. The Debtors Management Package will let you easily implement strategies that can help your clients reduce their debtors’ days outstanding and improve their cash flow.
• Survival in Difficult Times – there is no doubt that there are still difficult times around in Australia. Unfortunately, it looks like COVID is going to continue to cause problems throughout this year, and possibly, next year. But, there always seems to be problems raising their heads somewhere in Australia with floods, cyclones, droughts, bushfires and local issue business failures.  This package will help you to completely review every aspect of your client’s business operations.  We have also included short articles that you can supply to your client to explain issues that have been highlighted in your evaluation of their business.  This will help your clients to introduce the necessary changes.
• SME Needs Analysis – This is the most important component of the ESS BIZTOOLS package offering. The ‘SME needs Analysis’ module has been based on the original documentation, that was produced by Andrew Geddes - the joint Founder of the Financial Management Research Centre at the University of New England. Andrew is well-known as an Accountancy Industry Consultant and for 10 years was the Chair of Green Cross Ltd, a top 200 ASX company.  Andrew consulted to Green Cross for 35 years from its beginning as a “one vet/one nurse veterinary surgery” in Townsville.  With Andrew Geddes’ approval we have updated ‘SME Needs Analysis.’  This is the key document that you’ll utilise to guide you in conversations with your clients, so you can discover what’s concerning them most – what wakes them up at 3.00am?  The ‘SME Needs Analysis’ will assist you to develop a service package that addresses all the issues that are of concern to your clients.
• SME Debtors Systems Manual – after you have completed the review of your clients’ Debtors System you could then utilise the template of ESS BIZTOOLS’ ‘SME Debtors Systems Manual’ so that you can hand your client a branded SME Debtors Systems Manual that relates specifically to their business. The team member, who’s responsible for administering debtors in your clients’ business, will have a proper Systems Manual to guide them through their daily operations.
• Business Plus Newsletter – we have been producing our subscriber newsletter every month for the last 10 years. When you become a subscriber, you will be entitled to badge the newsletter with your firm name and contact details. You can then send “Business Plus” to your clients and prospects each month, as though it is your own production.  The newsletter contains a series of articles that are targeted to key industry groups in which your accountancy firm probably has clients. These include:
  • People starting a business
  • People buying a business
  • Companies wishing to “scale up”
  • Individuals and companies who have undertaken Research and Development and want to know how they can “Commercialise Their Prototype”
  • Entrepreneurs who want to grow and know they need to raise capital to fund that growth
  • People who are quite content with their business as long as they can trade profitably, add some value and ultimately retire with dignity

The Business Plus Newsletter is a marketing/communication tool for accountants and a business information resource for your clients.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Peter Towers discussed the challenge of offering Business Advisory Services in this week’s ESS BIZTOOOLS Business Advisory Services Podcast – click here to listen to the podcast.

Whilst you are on our website, if you wish, you could complete the subscription form.  This is available under “Subscribe – Sign Up Here”

Then, go to Grouped Product Packages and click on either:

Business Advisory Services Preparation Package – monthly subscription $129 including GST

Or

Business Advisory Services Starter Package – monthly subscription of $197 including GST

If you would like to see how your accountancy firm could introduce Business Advisory Services and generate additional revenue, then please go to our homepage and click on to “Free Strategy and Demonstration Session”.

Alternatively, if you would prefer to discuss the options, please give us a ring on 1800 232 088 so we can arrange a suitable time to have a no obligation 45 minute Zoom meeting to talk over the strategies and benefits for your firm.