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Cashflow
From Workflow
As you read this I will have just returned from another speaking engagement
with CCH. As we criss-crossed Canada on their Practice Innovation Tour,
my role was to talk about optimizing workflow in the firm.
So, for
those who couldn’t make it out to the seminars, I thought I’d
give you a little taste of what I spoke about, and hopefully you might
venture out in the fall when we do it all again.
So, what
do we mean by ‘workflow’?
Well,
it’s a concept misinterpreted by many, but the basic premise is
to have a system in your office that will highlight bottlenecks - and
for Partners reading this, that often means you – and I don’t
mean this unkindly, but we’re all familiar with the piles of files
that sit on Partner’s office floors, awaiting review and billing,
aren’t we now?
Yes, it
appears that the new fashion is not to use hardwood floors or carpet
to cover the floors in your office – although they appear to offer
a very good sub-floor – but most firms now prefer to use cash
instead!
Yes, those
piles of unattended files represent cash, pure and simple – although
these days it’s rarely pure and never simple.
Think about how much easier your workload would be if all those darned
files were not on your floor.
How much
more cash would you have in the bank? How many more super-satisfied
clients would you have? How many additional referrals would those happy
campers generate for you?
The sorry
tale is that many practitioners (and to those in the minority I salute
you) are still sitting on a pile of work, even in May, after tax season,
with many 31 December year ends fast approaching their filing deadlines,
and seemingly not enough time to do all the work required by 30th June.
That,
gentle reader, is where good workflow management kicks-in.
Now, many
of you might argue that your excel spreadsheet does a fine job of keeping
track of where each client is in the queue to completion, but think
about that for just one minute.
Isn’t
your spreadsheet only as good as the discipline applied to keeping up
to date? And be honest now, just between the two of us, isn’t
it likely that your trusty spreadsheet is a little out of date?
For those
who rely on whiteboards, or, heaven forbid, index cards (yes, some practitioners
still use them!) isn’t the problem even more urgent?
That’s
one of the huge advantages that accrues to firms who integrate their
systems, including their workflow management, as a file is worked on
by a technician, they receive information from the client by email –
it’s recorded in your system for all to see. As the file is completed,
the technician marks it as such and the next person in line to touch
the file (probably to review the work) gets notified that the file is
ready for them – and, yes, it’s recorded in your system
for all to see.
Monitoring
the flow of work through your office becomes much easier to do. Even
the work becomes somewhat easier, as these days we can scan slips, auto-flow
them so that the information scanned gets automatically dropped into
the correct boxes on the tax return, and the whole process is done in
a fraction of the time it used to take. But we’re not going to
charge the client purely based on the time it took are we? Oh, no we’re
not!
While
many clients will not see the value of the preparation time of their
tax returns, they will still pay a fee of similar levels to previous
years, so if it took us 20 minutes this year to process their tax return,
and 90 minutes last year, we’re not going to commensurately reduce
the fee are we?
I should
hope not. And if you’ve gone down the scanning route this year,
are automatically filling in the boxes on the return as you scan, and
are using a good workflow management tool, then you are well on your
way to the upper echelons in terms of dollars earned per hour from compliance
work. But that’s only half the story.
A good
practitioner knows something critically important, that their competitors
don’t; clients don’t want an accountant!
Well,
if clients don’t want an accountant, what do they want? Good question!
Based on a survey done among business owners, here’s what they
said they wanted from their accountant, in no particular order...
What Do
Clients Really Want?
•
Help to be successful
• Creative Ideas
• Someone to talk to
• Reliability
• Quick Service (Responsive)
• Value For Money (Not to be confused with a low fee)
• Knowledge Of Their Business & Their Industry
• A Genuine Concern For Their Well Being
Those
firms who ‘get’ this, understand that yes, the client comes
to them to get their financial statements prepared, but not because
they eagerly anticipate seeing their reports (okay, with a few exceptions)
but because they need their taxes completed, the financial statements
are a critical part of that process, and they (the clients) are incapable
of doing it themselves!
The year-end stuff is a distress purchase.
Yet, this
is our bread and butter if you’re in public accounting!
Wouldn’t
it be a good idea to, while doing the year end reports, to also offer
some of the services your bigger and better clients really want?
That’s
where a good workflow management system pay dividends, big time.
Just imagine
being able to log-in to your system and see on one page where each and
every project that you are managing is at any given time, and in real
time?
Wouldn’t
it be nice to be able to drill down and see what stage client ‘X’
is at in your firm, when the job is likely to be finished, and have
a list of value-added questions to ask them when they come into your
office?
A good
workflow system should be able to offer that, and more. If you combine
this idea with going ‘Less Paper’ as opposed to the utopian
‘Paper Less’ office, then those files that sit on your floor,
taking up real estate will soon be gone.
After
all, who really wants all those files to be telling every client who
comes in to see you ‘Look at all this - I’m too busy to
take on any new clients’?
As those
files move off the floor and on to your computer, clients might be more
likely to refer their friends to you, and your staff and managers can
better manage the process, as filing deadlines are flagged automatically
for you and you will create additional time for yourself and your team
– a scarce resource indeed.
Assuming
you go and buy the right software to do all this, the next thing you’ll
need to do is make sure that your marketing materials are saying all
the right things, so that clients are encouraged to make referrals,
and new clients can find you online, use your website and other media
as a valuable resource, and be encouraged to pick up the phone and make
an appointment to come and see you. And that’s what I’ll
address in the next issue.
© 2003-2011,
Steve McIntyre-Smith. All Rights Reserved. |
