This past November, ALL CPAs merged with LGA LLP (LitmanGerson Associates), commencing operation under the LGA brand and maintaining offices in Woburn and Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and Salem New Hampshire. With more than 125 employees, LGA is expected to be one of the BBJ’s Top 20 largest accounting firms in Massachusetts.
One of those valued LGA team members is Kathy Tighe, Senior Manager, Outsourced Management Accounting and the Insightful Accountant “2021 Top Client Accounting Services ProAdvisor."
Kathy joined the firm in 2005, after a 25-year career running her own bookkeeping practice. A firm believer going above and beyond the call of duty, she works closely with her clients to not only be a partner in their accounting, but also their success. Over the years, she has worked in a variety of diverse industries, including not for profits, life sciences, construction, real estate, professional services, technology and startups.
We sat down with Kathy to get her insights into the year ahead and why the best client story is the one where everyone wins.
Give us a snapshot of your business.
LGA LLP is a full-service CPA firm with offices in Woburn and Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and Salem New Hampshire. While we offer the more common services aligned with a CPA firm—like audit and income tax services—our firm offers two other service lines, Outsourced Management Accounting (OMA) services, and Business Advisory and Valuations.
I am the senior manager of the OMA Team. We focus on a variety of client industries, from start-up to mature, for profit and not for profits that engage us either to be part of their existing team or be a complete outsourced model.
How long have you been in business?
The majority of my career and experience has been focused on client services. After managing my own successful bookkeeping company for 20-plus years, in 2005, I joined LGA to expand its service offerings to include bookkeeping and accounting services and enhance my own knowledge and expertise.
LGA recognized that our tax return clients needed assistance with its accounting software and bookkeeping, and strategically decided to build OMA to provide a comprehensive service offering to businesses. Today, I am honored to work with LGA and proud to be a member of this dedicated service team through its rapid growth.
We find that there is a demand of business owners that not only want complete accounting for their tax compliance needs, but also look for advisory and reporting to use proactively for their decision making especially during these recent challenging times.
Our clients are important to us, and one of our core values at LGA is to “Treat Each Client, Like They are Our Only Client.” This is and always has been my mantra since I began my career in accounting.
How does your award fit into your firm’s overall mission statement?
LGA's vision is to “Build lifelong relationships by delivering proactive solutions that advance our client’s business and personal goals.” Our firm’s focus is to provide team members with unlimited career opportunities while serving clients who we want to become raving fans. Our values include integrity, service, care, collaboration and passion.
These values are the foundation to my approach to providing client services and has aided me in being named the “Top 100 ProAdvisor” for eight consecutive years, plus the recent honor in 2021 as the “Top Client Accounting Services ProAdvisor.” We partner with our clients to offer our expertise so they can focus on their business and results.
We don’t offer cookie-cutter solutions; we make our recommendations after reviewing our clients’ business processes. This is an area that I am extremely passionate about, and enjoy seeing the best practices and results come to life.
I enjoy our client relationships, and am invested in their success, so I enjoy working with them to review their current process, listen to their needs and offer my expertise for suggested enhancements. This includes introducing them to new technology and applications that are changing the landscape of business processes.
How have you been leveraging the Top ProAdvisor honor to promote your firm’s success?
It is not enough to just provide notices through social media, client newsletters and on a website; the key to leveraging any award or accolade is to consistently provide services at the level for which the award was given.
That being said, we have published and distributed articles to recognize the achievements for marketing purposes, and included it in client communications such as newsletters and in my bio on our website.
Most importantly, by providing our clients the level of expertise and service which meets and exceeds their expectations.
I strongly feel that as trusted business advisors, we have a professional obligation to educate our clients beyond the essentials (or compliance), so they are better empowered to make informed decisions about their business.
What types of strategies and initiatives are you gearing up for this year?
Education is very important to me ,whether it is our clients or our team. Thinking back to when my children were young, every night at dinner, they had to tell me one new thing they learned that day. As you can imagine, I received some very interesting responses.
I strongly feel that as trusted business advisors, we have a professional obligation to educate our clients beyond the essentials (or compliance), so they are better empowered to make informed decisions about their business. This also is a great benefit for us to learn more about their needs, as they often approach us for advisory and consulting services being more informed and able to explain to us exactly what they are looking for and/or we can advise accordingly.
I have developed essential processes and procedures for our clients to use as a reference. This is especially important today as businesses are continuing to work in hybrid environments. Too often, we will hear that a business chose a bookkeeping or accounting software program they tried to implement and are at a level of frustration where they just want to go back to manual paper processes.
We understand the program capabilities and how data is manipulated and stored. Couple this with our understanding of a client’s business, business practices and level of expertise, and it aids us in making best practice recommendations to meet and/or exceed their business needs and expectations.
The key is gaining insight into a client’s business, business practices and people, and then working together to help them achieve their business goals resulting in raving fans of our firm.
What are your expectations for 2022?
The pandemic appears to be changing, and we hope in a better direction. We look forward to growth, as businesses begin to rebuild and rebrand their products and services. Businesses will add and/or improve their delivery solutions, as well as more convenient customer service options. We expect we will need to stay flexible and continue to understand our clients’ ever-changing needs so that we can best meet and/or exceed our clients’ expectations.
What’s the best piece of advice you can offer your clients this year?
Client service is more important than ever, and I feel this continues to be one of the more important focal points for business growth. My favorite Maya Angelou quote says it all: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Our clients are important to us, and one of our core values at LGA is to “Treat Each Client, Like They are Our Only Client.” This is and always has been my mantra since I began my career in accounting.
Is there a cool story you can share about a client experience?
Last year, a new client called about a conversation they were having with their bookkeeper. They asked if I would review their data file and make a recommendation on the status. The client was concerned because he was told that the software was not the correct choice. That was the reason it did not track inventory correctly, nor match their sales reports or Profit and Loss Statement. They wanted to know if that was the correct conclusion?
When I reviewed the file, the answer was evident—the bookkeeper was not experienced in the software or the proper way to record inventory. We offered to educate and train the bookkeeper to make them successful or to augment with our client services.
However, after we gave the client our suggestions, they thought it was best to engage us to perform a complete clean up. The client reviewed our recommendations and offerings and decided the best decision for their business was to outsource to us for a complete clean-up. We successfully completed the job on time, within budget and flawless leaving our client thrilled.