Are you the "Miley Cyrus" of Accounting Practices?

Miley Cyrus has many talents, but without question she has a talent which allows her  to "stand out"  in the crowded music scene. The question is how does any Accounting practice differentiate its services from the  sea of Accounting Practices..

As the level of automation increases, within Cloud accounting services, and accounting software fees fall towards zero, how do all the practices using QBO(now only  $4.99 per month), or Xero($35 per month), or Cognition(Free) stand out from the Crowd?

The answer is simple, service and just like Miley Cyrus, something that is unique which clients are willing to pay for....

If client finds a number of accountants, all using the same QBO/Xero accounting software, then what is the difference?  Typically this will be in the first instance your fees...

The drivers..
The professional services market within Australia and beyond has changed significantly.
The tax and accounting industry is not only about delivering technical service, but doing so in a consistent and high quality manner. With the market becoming more competitive than ever, clients expect more from their accountants to not only guide their business through the mase of compliance requirements but to take full advantage of the opportunities that come their way. Never before have accountants been in a position to make a real and lasting difference for their clients.

The brave new world creates new business process complexities for many SMEs which many are not equipped to handle alone. When an SME starts selling online, taking credit cards, or streamlining their paperless workflows, they often don’t have the expertise needed to evaluate options and integrate the chunks to create an efficient business system, the explosion of  expensive "add-ons" makes many of these decisions critical to the overall solution.

For accountants who stick to financial statement and tax preparation services, the dramatic improvements in technology will continue to commoditise those services.. Payroll and sales tax service, which today have become not much more than pressing the submit button on the software product, there is simply no margin in these, without significant volumes, which most practices simply don't have.

But?
Only 15% of clients think that their accountants are tech-savvy enough to ask for advice. The rest say their accountants are not keeping current, falling behind, or simply don’t know.

So what do clients really want?
1. help me remain compliant
Most SME clients don’t understand or want to understand all of the complexities of compliance especially with regards to tax,  so they rely on accountants to get it right and they prefer not to have issues with a tax authority, let alone be investigated
2.Save me tax
Most SME's cannot control their income. so this best dollar any business can save, because tax spend doesn’t help one make more money. There are nearly always things one you can do to legally,  only pay the tax due.
3. No surprise bills
This is the number one reason why clients leave their accountant. Always provide your clients with a upfront quote for everything, and if you don’t know how much it will be, give an upper limit of where you will stop. Every SME likes to how much they’re going to have to pay before they make the decision to buy your services.
4. Want be treated well no matter how small I am
Be sure that the right people in your client’s organisation are talking to the right people in your firm.  Its all about relationships, every client likes to feel they’re important, which they are. So treat them as such.

The gaps between what clients want and what accountants are delivering is huge. But then, so are the opportunities for the accounting firms that can separate themselves from the pack.

How does a practice separate themselves from the pack?
The first point is that the typical Accounting Practice, is not a technology expert and never will be, this includes Cloud Accounting Software.
As almost every Practice makes use of Xero or MYOB to various levels, there is simply no point of differentiation with this approach. Additionally as Cloud Technologies become communities, the whole issue of "which" accounting software becomes mute, so being a specialist in any specific software is not going to make any difference.

In fact to many Sole Traders the whole concept that one needs to pay $35+ per month for accounting software is "out-of-this-world", and not in touch with any commercial reality..
In the old days a Sole Trader bought MYOB for $100 full stop... not the current $400 per year.
In reality the current Xero/MYOB does nothing fundamentally different to the old one-off $100 software.

So what is happening here, when did Accountants move to become Software Accounting Resellers?

In fact Freshbooks, have a mantra, that many do not need any accounting software at all, and with 3 times the number of users as Xero, there may be some truth in this.

Most accountants tell us that they would like to spend more of their time providing strategic advice to their clients. But of course, solving logistical and tactical challenges (like client errors and data transfers) gets in the way, and those challenges probably take up the majority of your staff’s time. That’s low-level “value” that any accountant could deliver, and that lack of differentiation is the single greatest threat to your practice’s growth and profitability.


So
Step one, is to remove the practice from any association with Accounting Software fees, this allows the client and practice to focus on the clients requirements, after all this what accountants have traditionally done. The old made new again...
Step two, the value proposition, most client’s value work that makes them or saves them money.  They rarely value compliance reporting.
Step three, run your practice in the same way as you recommend to your clients..
We see practices pushing online accounting software, but running their practices with "Old World practice management solutions, some have not changed in the last 15 years, and many have no workflow or automation capabilities.
How many practices make use of  Modern Cloud based Practice Management Solutions today?
How many practice who push Xero to their clients actually use Xero for their own accounting purposes?
Step four, Cognition, the next generation of Cloud Accounting allows each practice, or even bookkeeper, to develop,  customize and deliver  their very own Cloud Accounting "APP",  allowing a unique client offering to their specific market.. Gone are the days of a one solution fits all. There are some 2 million+ Mobile Apps available for android alone today.

The future is bright for the modern Cloud based Accounting Practice, get on-board today, just like your clients..

Your own unique practice Cloud Accounting App, allows your practice to have the "Miley Cyrus"  differentiator, so your practice does not compete with the "crowd" on price alone..

Ask about our Cognition ISV program,  to deliver your Practice "Miley Cyrus" Cloud Accounting solution today..


Stand out from the Accounting Practice Crowd..
Embrace the "Miley Cyrus" approach, but perhaps skip her "wrecking ball" hit...






Disclaimer The contents of this site should not be understood to be accounting, taxation or investment advice but rather as general product related educational information that may or may not meet your specific requirements.