Management Accounting
How much money are you making right now, as of yesterday? Don't know? Not sure? Gut feeling?
Today, answers like that are hardly acceptable. Because business changes so quickly and moves at the speed of thought (according to Microsoft founder, Bill Gates - and he should know) you need to be totally up to date on your financial performance if your business is of reasonable size and above.
By producing regular (often monthly or quarterly) management accounts you will no longer have to rely on a gut feeling or 'instinct' to know how the business is performing.
Our computer consulting services can help get you started, by training your staff to go the next step with your financial reports, but you can do much more.
Why not let us act as a 'Chief Financial Officer" or 'Controller'?
This gives you total access to over 30 years business experience, a keen eye for detail and the knowledge that behind the numbers hides a story.
We offer you all the traditional accounting services, but we understand there is so much more than can be done to help you reach your ideal profits, including assistance with management, marketing, customer service, team retention, working processes and business growth. Our business development services are designed to offer you this extra support to help make your business better, more profitable, and more valuable.
A Ten-Step Business Development Process
Our firm helps you build your financial position by making your business more valuable and more profitable. To do that we've developed a ten-step process to help you grow your business, improve your lifestyle, and increase your profits significantly. Here's how we work with you to develop the true potential of your greatest asset:
1. Preliminary Assessment
To gauge the level of results you can expect from your business, we'll ask you to complete a preliminary questionnaire. Using software tools designed to identify and quantify your potential for profit improvement, we're able to tell you just how much improvement you could expect. You will be considered for our business development processes if your potential for improvement is significant. Now before you think "my business couldn't improve very much," most of our clients are genuinely surprised and pleased when the analysis shows their potential for added value.
2. Initial Consultation
During this step we'll present you with a summary of the improvement potential within your business. You'll see firsthand some of the processes and approaches we use to work with our clients to begin improving the business and its return on investment. When you decide to continue with the process you receive a copy of your customized Business Development Program.
3. Detailed Investigation
Included in your Business Development Program is a more detailed questionnaire that gives you instant insights into the challenges you face and what needs to be done to improve how you handle them. Together we can then identify the strategic opportunities that come from the way you do business (your business processes) and provide you with a documented analysis. This will help you see and develop a course of action made all that much clearer with the next step.
4. Planning Session
Many business owners do not have a clear vision for the future of their businesses. To really achieve improvement, it's important to turn your vision into a crystal clear picture from which you can work back to where you are today, identifying all the strategies you need to implement to achieve your goals. For that process, we use a planning session where our team reviews with you the key issues you face and the potential solutions. Here you really start to see how the process comes together.
5. Action Plan
We've found that clients relate better to action plans than to lengthy, heavily worded business plans. You'll receive a results-oriented action plan that's easy to relate to and simple to implement. This plan provides you with the basis for moving forward with your business development. With specific goals and target dates, you and your team have a clear direction and more likelihood of success.
6. Customer Involvement
To really create a successful business, you need to know exactly what your clients want and what they find frustrating. That way you can adopt strategies and business processes that make your business the one they prefer to deal with. Addressing your customers' issues gives you a competitive edge that's not just based on price. Holding a Client Advisory Board, where we sit down with your customers and listen to them in a structured way, is an invaluable way to add value to your business.
7. Team Involvement
The people who work for you also play a key role in how well your business meets customer expectations, as they deal directly with the issues raised by your customers every day. That often means that they have insights that could benefit the business. A Team Advisory Board generates strategies that improve the processes within your business. We have protocols for working with your team to develop a customer service plan that incorporates the feedback you receive from customers and team members alike - instantly setting your business on a path much more aligned with customer expectations.
8. Process Audit
We look at each business as a collection of people performing a wide range of activities or processes. How well these activities are performed determines the outcomes or results your business achieves, and because most businesses have not truly systematized their processes, outcomes are often random, leaving business owners to feel that they lack real control. Improving business processes is fundamentally about improving the key processes within your business. We use a system to analyze the processes that comprise your business and its activities and to help you identify which ones need to be redesigned for far better results.
9. Documentation
After analyzing what processes comprise your business, we can work with you to set up a documentation system. This will give you greater control over your results and outcomes by defining exactly how each process is to be completed. Another critical outcome to consider is that the value of your business increases as your business moves more and more towards being a turn-key system - a system that produces expected results.
10. Management Control Plan
Imagine having a control panel on your desk, much like the dashboard of your car, with gauges and signals that tell you instantly how your business is running. Compare that to the hectic, reactive nature of most business, large or small. Your key performance indicators and your financial plan offer that level of control for your business, just like your dashboard. Together they make up your Management Control Plan, which helps you track the progress of your business and enables you to respond quickly to changes and new situations, thus generating optimal profits for you. It's important that we, as your business development consultants, play an ongoing role here to track key performance indicators and your financial position with sophisticated software programs.
What story are your numbers telling you? Not sure? Then call us today and let's get started.
Over the years, Joe Truscott has written many individual income tax and business articles which have been posted here for you to review. You can also review many additional articles that have appeared in his quarterly client bulletin called Business Matters.
Please Call Us Today at 905-528-0234 to Discuss Any Concerns You May Have.
