At this year’s "Scaling New Heights" conference, I’ll be teaching a two-session course called, "The Process Driven Firm." Join me as we explore what this means and the steps you can take to become one.
Take a proactive approach to success by intentionally planning great service and profit by harnessing your knowledge capital and managing your workflow.
A process driven firm is purposeful about:
- Providing services
- Performing work
- Managing workflow
- Measuring results
Clearly define what services your firm offers and determine the software solutions the firm will use to deliver those services. This gives the firm the ability to clearly communicate what services they provide and the confidence to pass on engagements that won’t be a good fit. By setting expectations at the outset, the firm begins the client relationship on the right foot.
Your processes and procedures are your firm’s knowledge capital. Define exactly how your firm performs its work. This is tedious. Do not skip this step or you will lose efficiency, profitability and scalability. This is the responsibility of the firm, not its employees.
Your knowledge capital is your secret sauce. This is what you are selling. The firm will use this knowledge capital to create revenue. Document the tasks that are involved in delivering your services, and step-by-step checklists of the work to be performed for each task. Create detailed procedure guides with screen-shots associated to steps in the checklists.
Procedure guides are more effective in smaller portions so that staff can find exactly what they are looking for when performing a particular step without having to read an entire manual.
Then develop a system to organize and manage the work to insure work is completed on frequency and on time. Distribute work assignments, instructions and resources to your staff so that they can perform their work consistently, efficiently and effectively. You need a bird’s eye view to watch the firm at work.
And you need a tool to be able to re-assign work and schedule recurring services. If you’re selling fixed fee engagements, it is all the more important that you control your costs by optimizing and managing your labor.
When the day is done and work has been completed, don’t forget to measure the firm’s performance and evaluate the success of your engagements. This allows you to make adjustments needed to improve your processes, to discover inefficiencies, and to innovate.
Great client service starts from the inside out. Processes should drive every aspect of your firm, from sales to service delivery. A process driven firm:
Can clearly communicate to prospective clients what their service offerings are
- Has clients who are receiving the services they expected
- Can scale without imploding
- Has a transferrable value
- Empowers staff with the resources they need to perform their work
- Is confident that client work will be completed on time
- Can measure the firm’s profitability and performance
My firm, Redmond Accounting Inc., has evolved over the years from improvising to becoming a process driven firm. Along the way I was deeply inspired by conferences like "Scaling New Heights" and books like Darren Root and Michael Gerber’s "E-Myth Accountant."
I’m still learning and looking for new tools to improve my firm; it’s a constant work in progress. Creating a firm that is scalable and ready for growth is not an easy task. Nobody’s going to do it for you. Mapping out exactly what you do and how you do it is a proactive approach to success.
Laura Redmond
Laura Redmond is a financial controller and IT manager turned cloud accounting advocate and app designer. She is a QuickBooks Online power user, Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and member of the Intuit Trainer/Writer Network. She also is co-author of Intuit’s award-winning QuickBooks Online training and certification programs for accounting professionals, as well as a regular speaker at national accounting technology conferences.
In addition, Laura is founder of Redmond Accounting Inc., a boutique cloud accounting and consulting firm in Silicon Valley that was awarded Intuit's "2015 Top 20 Firm of the Future" and a Top 10 ProAdvisor for "Leading QuickBooks Online Practice." Redmond Accounting's workflow is centered on QuickBooks Online and its eco-system of apps.
Laura co-created the Aero Workflow app used by accounting firms to manage service delivery by staff performing recurring tasks for multiple clients. The Aero Library includes step-by-step instructions and procedures for many of today’s most popular apps in the QBO eco-system.