CPA Practice Advisor - 27

FEATURE
evolving challenges. By addressing
these new needs and adapting their
services to help businesses thrive
under new demands, accounting firms
can truly demonstrate the value of
their services and position themselves
as the trusted advisors that will help
their clients succeed even in the face
of adversity.

ADAPTING TO THE DEMAND
FOR NEW SERVICES
Growing as an accounting firm
requires identifying and understanding the services your client base most
wants and needs. Among small businesses, the biggest pain points consistently relate to financial planning,
understanding cash flows, and having
to focus on accounting matters rather
than their core business. When asked
to identify their biggest accounting
challenges, 19% of survey respondents
said getting expert financial insights
and planning for growth and expansion; 18% identified issues with cash
flows and minimizing overhead costs;
and 17% cited struggling to stay in
compliance and lacking the necessary time to focus on financial and
accounting matters.
These central struggles have long
existed for small businesses, even in
times of " business as usual " prior to
the pandemic, and they're even more
complicated now. In the last nine
months, your clients have struggled
with new complexities in the areas
that were already causing them the
most trouble. Easing these pain points
now and acknowledging the new
demands your clients face today are
central to cementing yourself in the
role of a trusted advisor able to offer
the necessary expertise to guide them
through the next few years.
Understanding cash flows and
growing a business certainly haven't
gotten easier in 2020 - if anything,
your clients need your guidance
with these issues more than ever.
For some businesses, planning for
growth and expansion might now

mean simply figuring out how to stay
afloat. Managing cash flows today
involves applying for loans they never
thought they'd need. As the world has
shifted and changed, so has the role of
today's accountants. Offering services
beyond the scope of what you did
before - things like helping prepare
loan documents in the middle of tax
season or providing financial reporting to help your clients secure support
under new legislative programs - is
what will make clients seek out your
help in navigating today's complex
business landscape.
In order for your firm to grow, you
may need to rethink what advisory
services look like. Your clients' top
needs are still the same; they just
now incorporate new challenges.
Learning to adapt along with those
new challenges is the key to developing sustainable advisory relationships.
Small businesses' major pain
points won't likely go away anytime
soon. The needs will keep increasing
and shifting in different ways, and the
firms that can adapt to handle them
are the ones that will be poised for
success and growth in the future.

AUTOMATION IS MORE
IMPORTANT THAN EVER
Growth opportunities for today's
accounting firms revolve around how
those firms structure their services.
Automation is the cornerstone of
delivering top-notch client service
in the face of new and increasing
complexities.
Part of creating a trusted relationship with your clients includes identifying which of their processes should
be adjusted to ease their pain points,
and automation plays a major role in
that. One of the core complaints of
today's clients is that they don't have
enough time to focus on financial
matters. This is largely because many
financial processes, when performed
manually, are detailed, time-intensive,
and prone to error. If the goal is to help
your clients through tough times,

introducing more manual processes
carries risk. Incorporating automation
instead - such as AP automation or
other technologies that not only create
efficiencies and time savings, but help
solve other challenges such as fraud
risk - helps firms deliver new services
in an even more valuable way.
Jason Blumer, CPA and CEO and
founder of BlumerCPAs, notes, " We're
in a new era now. We've all learned
new things; we've seen what we
can do differently (because we were
forced to); and we're learning how to
remain agile during a time of seemingly never-ending changes with this
unknown pandemic. " That agility
firms have gained, largely through
automation, should now be passed on
to clients in order to help guide them
into the future.

VALUE PRICING FOR BETTER
CLIENT SERVICE
Increasing automation directly ties to
making the switch to value pricing.
While some firms might be hesitant
to change pricing on their clients now
when they're already dealing with so
much, value pricing is actually a great
way to show your clients that you're
putting their interests first. Value
pricing offers your clients increased
transparency, fewer billing surprises,
and a sense of certainty in a time
when most things seem uncertain.
The switch to value pricing goes
hand-in-hand with getting your clients to adopt automation. When your
clients fully understand the benefits
they're receiving from your advisory
services, including the advantages
of automation, they'll be in a better
position to appreciate the full value
they're receiving in exchange for
the package prices you're charging.
According to the survey, accounting
firms are 3.5 times more likely to
be successful in having their clients
adopt value pricing when they've
adequately communicated the benefits of automation to those clients.
Internal adoption of automation

DECEMBER 2020 ■

at your firm also makes it easier to
offer value pricing to your clients.
For the 27% of survey respondents
who considered their firms to be
highly automated, there were far
fewer internal challenges to adopting
value pricing than at less-automated
firms. Only 25% of highly automated
firms experienced internal resistance
to value pricing, whereas 40% of
less-automated firms experienced
challenges.
Automation is critical for firms
that want to offer strategic advisory
services under a value pricing model,
because it allows for the most predictable billing on the client's end. Clients
benefit from fewer surprises and more
time to focus on the new challenges
of today.

GROWTH DURING
UNCERTAINTY
The most successful accounting
firms have always been the ones
that have put their clients first and
have grown their offerings in a way
that feels authentic. When you adapt
your services to help your current and
new customers stay afloat as everchanging complexities and challenges
continue to arise, that's the definition
of being a trusted advisor.
Firms need to look at automation
to help their clients prepare for what
they need today and what will make
them successful in the future. Helping
your customers address their biggest
pain points and juggle new demands,
while eliminating billing surprises
and creating efficiencies, is the key
to achieving accounting firm growth
in challenging times. ■
Jeannie Ruesch works as the director of
marketing at Bill.com and has been in the
accounting industry for more than seven
years. She previously worked at Xero and
The Sleeter Group. She has more than 20
years' experience in brand creation and
strategy, design, social media development,
demand gen, and customer marketing. She's
a tech geek at heart, an author, an awardwinning graphic designer, and loves finding
ways to help customers solve problems.

www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com

http://www.Bill.com http://www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com

CPA Practice Advisor

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CPA Practice Advisor