Here are some startling but recent research report backed headlines on CPATrendlines:Staff Turnover Escalates into Epidemic at CPA Firms: Professional staff turnover has jumped by as much as 50% in one year, averaging now almost 18%. These results were across all firm size ranges.Accounting Firms Launch New War for Talent: Firms are hiring, and many staffers are thinking about a job change.
Today’s Top Priorities for New Accounting Grads: In choice between money or lifestyle, lifestyle wins more new hires to Big Four.
It all points to only one possibility – a tougher next tax season, unless you manage these three issues at your firm now…
Lets summarize again – more experienced staff are leaving in search for better work life balance and new accounting grads are looking for the same.
The impact? Your cost of retaining good staff goes up and your delegation choices become limited. You need the firepower to keep your earnings unhurt, if not growing.
The good news is that it’s the same challenge for your competitors too. And here is how TOM can help you.
Technology: Hands-down the two most important things you can do now is to get yourself a good work-flow solution and get yourself a client portal / file sharing solution on cloud – if you don’t have one or either. The efficiency and productivity gains by using these solutions will be huge – with two key benefits – one – you actually reduce workload on your staff to give them better work-life balance and two – your client service quality goes up several notches.
Operations: Lets say your procedures are great, working well for quite some time and give you good control. But be the devil’s advocate and take a deep look at “time wasters” for each “hand-off” – between step A to B to C and so on and also between different departments / levels within your firm. Take a closer look at your “paper filing” procedures. It is ideal to get into “front-end” scanning so that you handle paper just once – when it comes into your firm. If you have always felt that paper-based processes, even when well defined, are chaotic, do something now and test the new efficient processes before the next tax season.
Marketing: New technologies are making marketing a totally different ball game. Unbelievable artificial intelligence is being curated from Social Media Networks and web – that too at fraction of the cost of owning such technologies yourself. Include at least three new age marketing technologies into your overall marketing plan to get more clients onto your doorsteps.
Technology, Operations, Marketing: Remember TOM.
What I Hope You Take from This Article:
I hope you’ve gotten something valuable from what you read here. I spent a lot of time trying to make sure that the thoughts and information above weren’t something you’ve heard many times before or, if it was, I hope I’ve at least made you rethink your strategies for next tax season.
I hope you got something here that you’re excited to try. And if you experience a different next tax season, I hope you’ll write me and let me know. I’d love to see how you’ve taken action upon some of these suggestions.
If nothing else, I hope you got thinking about what you want to do differently. And that is the one big secret to changing your situation — learn about something that might work and try it; take action. If this article inspired an idea, please write it down before you forget it! And then try it in your practice.
Everything you do or delegate in your business — whether it fails or succeeds — will eventually help you save time and money and serve your clients better. It will help you and your staff get better quality of life. Tax season need not be taxing on your and your staff’s life, if you are determined enough not to let it. Remember TOM.
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