Your Firm and Your Needs

I hope your year is off to a great start. Last year’s columns on Client Experience have influenced my thinking about how important Client Experience is every day. Considering the impact of Client Experience, Team Member experience, and Partner Experience, including bottom-line profitability, has been a theme for me last year and many years in the past and into the future. This year, I intend to focus on your firm and your needs. We’ll spend time on colleagues, clients, automation, security, and more as we think about effective tools and techniques to serve your clients best.

You see, Burger King’s old slogan that originated in 1974, “Have It Your Way,” was replaced in 2014 with the feel-good self-expression “Be Your Way.” As I’ve considered the cultural shifts and focus on self that has been occurring, I realize that many people have always put their self-interest first. Sometimes this was manifested in good or bad behavior. Sometimes we see this as cooperation or generosity and sometimes a power grab or love of money. Accounting professionals frequently put client-interest first.

Our Mission Has Been to Serve Clients

Many of us have used our skills and expertise to keep clients in compliance with tax and audit regulations. Others have expanded by reducing clients’ workload handling transactional accounting through Client Accounting Service offerings. A few have taken on Advisory Services, where a client-centric approach has driven our client interactions. Advisory Services start with personal planning and follow with business planning. As I’ve written in a previous column, “purpose” is a powerful motivator, and planning can help find that purpose both personally and professionally. Purpose can make you or your clients proactive instead of reactive. Another common word for this is “mission.”

It is certainly not my right or responsibility to suggest how you use your time or life, but most public practice professionals I know are deeply committed to their clients, team, community, and families. Further, most accounting professionals are quite intelligent and have a pretty good idea of effective time use.

But the challenges of the COVID pandemic, changing technology, constrained resources in time, and people are making running your firm in your way more challenging. So, my intent throughout this year is to help you find both evolutionary and revolutionary ideas. You can then choose what you can implement to improve your practice, your team member experience, and to help you assist your clients so they can improve their businesses and lives, too. That seems like a tall order, but we’ll both be up to it.

That Seems Like a Tall Order!

It is. But we both can find ideas that are helpful to ourselves and others. Technology changes affect your clients, your firm, and the people around you. We’ll continue to watch and help you understand the latest software automation, communications such as 5G cellular, LEO (Low Earth Orbit satellites), and hardware innovations in cell phones and computers with new CPUs & GPUs. We will also include specific guidance in our weekly podcast, The Technology Lab, which provides background on various products. I want to make this the year of Your Firm, Your Needs, and Your Way. We’ll look for methods to make Your Way the most effective and easy way for your clients, team, and partners.

I’m excited to share some useful, new innovations that have arrived already this year. Explaining how to incorporate these practical things into your practice will help productivity, profitability, and professionalism. Further, we will avoid wasted effort, time, and resources.