Every accounting firm wishes to succeed in the industry, and this is the reason they leave no stone unturned when it comes to enhancing the growth and scalability of their firm. However, with fierce competition in the accounting market, moving up the ladder of success not only requires firm owners to devise unique strategies but also keep compliance with the changing market conditions, especially when it comes to incorporating the use of the latest technology.

So, let’s get started and figure out the top trends that help a business succeed in the true sense.

5 Essentials-Driving-Business-Transformation

1. Leadership

Vision and Alignment: Every business comprises of multiple leaders at different levels. It is imperative for all the leaders to have a single vision and align the practices of different operations to achieve that goal in an efficient and timely manner. Without a shared vision, meeting company goals and satisfying clients is a difficult task to accomplish.

Specialization: Since more and more customers are demanding personalized solutions against their accounting problems, it is estimated that nearly 80% of the revenue in the accounting industry will come from specialized services in the form of multiple advisory services to fewer clients in the future.

Innovation: There is no denying that innovation is best brought into play by leaders. However, one should not underestimate the potential of other employees in the firm as well. People who have a passion for their craft are the ones who can actually lead their accounting firm towards innovation.

2. Talent

Organizational Structure: In the past, organizations were structured in a particular way only. This included partners and leaders at the top level, managers at the mid-level, and employees at the bottom level. It is crucial for businesses to have a structure that allows adequate training to employees as per their need, leading to equal opportunities at all levels like decision-making against the adoption of new technology, assessing outsourcing opportunities, and more.

Unconscious Bias: It is a common scenario amongst organizations where people can be seen as being biased against others with respect to their experience, age, race, gender, and more. Firms need to streamline their compensation, promotion, and recruiting processes to enable leaders to eliminate this problem, leading to a diversified team that is more engaged and innovative.

Communication: There is no denying that technology has enhanced communication, especially when it comes to interacting with foreign clients. However, within an accounting firm and also with clients in the geographical reach, one should consider interacting face-to-face with respect to the problems, careers, performances, goals, and more.

Digital: In today’s age, it is vital for an accounting firm to go digital. This includes the digitalization of every process apart from accounting ones like onboarding, wellness programs, performance management, and more. This not only leads to a positive development but also provides feedback in real-time.

Learning and Training: Customer and market demands are always changing, and in order to meet them with perfection, relevant and upgraded skills are needed. This is only possible when firms provide regular training with respect to continuing professional education (CPE), soft skills, technical skill upgradation, and more.

3. Technology

Robotic Process Automation (RPA): When you have an enormous amount of data gathered from blockchain, IoT, APIs, you will see maximum use of RPA. With tools like Bot-as-a-Service, Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS), Microsoft Flow, etc., RPA becomes even effortless. Automating back-office tasks of accounting help firms to a great extent, and in the coming times, it is going to be a must for every firm.

Internet of Things (IoT): By 2020, 5G will be one of the most important elements of the digital age, making more devices come online. This means more data will flow online from cars, shipping containers, thermostats, etc., making the accounting processes truly streamlined.

Blockchain: As per the Emory University and Aprio study, in 2019, there was an increase of 62% in blockchain investment. This technology is likely going to be the mainstream one by 2025. Look for informative and educative tools for employees to incorporate its usage in the accounting process and reap the associated benefits.

4. Process

The Collaboration of Process and Technology: As discussed earlier, keeping compliance with the new technology trends is imperative for business for streamlining the accounting processes in the present scenario. However, it is essential to optimize and improve the processes for efficient collaboration with the new technology to avoid any technical issues.

Strategic Continuous Improvement: For continuous improvement, firms need to have an adequate strategy in place. This includes having an outside perspective to view challenges and offer unique solutions, a group of industry professionals for discussing accounting challenges in a practical way, a trained person for taking care of the internal processes and proposing initiatives for improvements.

Consistency Focus: Without consistency, efficiency is not going to bring any benefits. In order to leverage existing and new technology, accounting firms have to be consistent with their processes. Leaders need to understand that they need to put personal preferences aside and choose the ones that best benefits the firm.

Operational Processes: Operational processes such as purchasing, employee and client onboarding, billing need improvement for efficient working of the overall accounting process. It is important to look for inconsistencies and loopholes in the same and work upon them to enable them to add to the whole working efficiency.

Process and Upskilling: When you improve the processes, you are actually expanding your team’s potential to perform higher-value tasks. If 50-80% of steps are reduced in a process, the focus of the team should be diverted to perform value-added activities, and for this, it is equally imperative to train and upskill them

5. Growth

The Intersection of Business Development and Marketing: In the current scenario, it is imperative to collaborate business development with marketing efforts so that they complement each other and win more clients. Right from the lead generation process to deal-closing, the entire process must be integrated and consistent.

Transitional Calls-to-Action: If you are able to solve the problem of a prospect or client, your transitional call-to-action is most likely to succeed. The simple reason being these call-to-actions are the last step to reach you, and if you have impressed your clients and prospects, they will surely reach you.

Clear Messaging: When you have to provide a message to your clients with respect to your firm, it should be focused, concise, and clear on the advantages your firm will provide to them. People will come to you only if you are able to not only understand them better but also make them understand yourself better.

Marketing Automation: Automation in marketing in the form of social media and email drip campaigns has helped businesses reach their target audience in a more efficient and timely manner. With an email drip campaign, your firm will be able to nurture the leads by providing regular and valuable information. On the other hand, social media automation helps in scheduling and generating posts based on blogs, articles, and other content.

Sales Training: The sales department is the last platform that can win or lose a client. So, it is crucial that appropriate training is provided to the salespeople to communicate efficiently with the clients, understand their accounting problems, and provide the best solutions to address the same. This leads to customer satisfaction and turning a prospect into a client eventually.

Conclusion

This brings us to the conclusion that there can’t be a single strategy in place for transforming a business into a success. Multiple factors lead to the success of an accounting firm. So, it is imperative to take into consideration each factor for streamlining the in-house processes, staying ahead of the competition, winning and retaining clients, leading to success eventually.

Do you wish to lead your firm towards success, but finding it hard to streamline your accounting process owing to overburdening of work? Join hands with Cogneesol and let us take care of your back-office processes to enable you to focus on business growth. Get in touch with us to get started with your free trial today!