Is the advice or services from your accountant relevant to your business?
Most accountants will advertise they are expert in a particular area. For example, the specialise in tax. It is then explained how this aspect is important to your business, and you should come and see them. They start with what they are expert in, and see how your business might fit their service.
The other aspect of advice from the external experts is that if the advice provided does not fit the business’ needs, it isn’t their fault. They are there to provide advice, not to implement their suggestions.
As an Accountant that has worked within and for businesses for most of my career, I find this strange.
When working in a business as part of their internal accounting team the approach is different. The business will come to you when they have a problem that requires financial expertise. They don’t care what your particular expertise is. And they are not concerned with who will do the work or if you will coordinate the work of others. Their expectation is that you are there to help solve their problem.
When you provide advice internally, the expectation, and your job, is to provide the information that the business needs. And if the initial help provided does not fit the needs of the business, it is your role to continue to look for a solution that does fit. To enable you to do this you need to be closely connected with the business and invested in its success.
The key difference between most external providers and the internal accounting team is the relevance of the service provide.
In founding Right Source it is relevance that is central to our model. Whenever we work with a business we want to understand the business; we want to be part of the business. And from their offer the same level of service you would expect from an internal accounting team.
You can hand us any problem that requires financial expertise and be confident that a solution relevant to your business will be found. And if that means working with, or coordinating, other internal or external parties to solve the problem, that is what we will do.
But why is relevance important?
It is all about the value your business gains.
For example, say you wanted some work done on improving your reports. You end up having to choose between two suppliers who can do it for the budget you have allocated. Supplier One focuses on delivering the greatest number of reports they can for the budget you have to spend. Supplier Two focuses on delivering reports that provide insight and are easy to interpret.
Supplier One may sound great, as you’ll have a huge suite of reports. However, you are likely to end up not using most of them as they don’t make sense to your business. You will have overpaid for the reports you do use.
Supplier Two will spend more time understanding your business and communicating with you. The result will be better value for money achieved in the reporting delivered. Having better reporting will in turn add additional value to your business through providing you the right information.
Our focus on relevance is all about how we can create value for your business.
About the Author
Justin Hogg is the founder of Right Source. He is passionate about driving change in the expectation of what an Accountant is and does, and at the same time raise the bar on what we expect of and from accountants.
If you would like to hear more or share some of your experiences over a coffee, feel free to email on justin.hogg@rightsource.com.auor call 0414 896 696.