Send Me Your Old Study Materials…

In the last issue, I submitted my column from the sweltering heat and pouring rain of Bangladesh, and this issue I thought I’d give you a mini report on my trip.

Located just north east of India, Bangladesh is a developing country of 130 million-plus people with just 200 CA firms, some 20-plus hours flying time away. (The trip there was about 30 hours due to layovers waiting for connections in London and then Dubai, but the return trip was Dhaka direct to London (11 hours) then London to Toronto.)

My trip was a two-week visit where I held three two-day workshops on marketing the services of accounting firms, one for The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh, one for The Association of Accounting Technicians of Bangladesh and another for The Ad Club (a group of marketing and advertising consulting firms and agencies who wish to target CA firms as clients when the marketing rules are relaxed).

I also held a consulting session with the Deloitte & Touche correspondent firm in Dhaka.

My trip was originally planned for late August, but it had to be postponed when there was a political bombing in the downtown area and in retaliation there would be nationwide labour strikes causing havoc.

When I finally arrived, I discovered that the terrorist activities were not evident and that the people were very friendly and welcoming, and to my relief, English is the business language in Bangladesh, as my Bengali is non-existent!

My trip also coincided with the worst rain the nation has seen in over 50 years, creating waist-high rivers in the streets in the oldest parts of town where drainage was less than efficient. I was lucky that the area I was staying in, and working in, was newer, with better drainage and was also higher above sea-level, so I never did see for real any of the images you might have seen on TV in recent weeks.

In case you’re wondering, this assignment came about through a non-profit economic development agency called Katalyst that subscribes to my free marketing newsletter, and when they had a budget approved to bring me over for two weeks to help to start to create a new marketing culture in the accounting profession, I have to admit I was curious and a little dubious. But it turned out to be a wonderful trip.

The main issues they have – and these might sound familiar – are:

· Educating clients as to the benefits a professional firm can provide to clients
· Dealing with Institute regulations restricting marketing activities of members
· Recruiting people into the profession
· Retaining quality people when they qualify
· Succession Planning

Hmm, small world, eh?

Needless to say, we had some very productive sessions, not just in the seminars, but also in my private sessions with the President and Vice President of the Institute, when we discussed many of the above issues.

The new President is looking to update the Institute’s rules on marketing for practising members and is looking at the UK, Canada and the USA as models, and I will be working with them over the coming months to help build a model that works for them.

But they have a bigger problem.

With such a small number of members (800 CAs and 3,000 students) they don’t have a lot of money and they desperately need study materials and model answers for their students, to help them be better prepared to write the final exam.

Evidence of their need is that of 3,000 students, only 17 new CAs were created after the last final exams.

So, the President is looking to create new study materials - and that’s where you can help.

If you still have any old study materials that you don’t want to keep, please, don’t throw them out. Instead, send them into me (MFA Group Inc, 113 River Glen Blvd, Oakville, Ontario, L6H 5Z5) and I will forward them onto the ICAB so that they can review them and build a set of model answers for their own curriculum, which is very similar to ours – and ultimately distribute them among their students.

I’ll be going back to Bangladesh in March or April of next year for a follow up project with the public accounting profession, and I hope you can help me to help them, by sending me your old study materials.