The days of sustaining a profitable compliance only small accountancy practice are rapidly becoming numbered. Yes, clients will always want and need to buy compliance services from you. However, technology is driving a massive hole through the profitability of compliance only clients. This collection of articles shows you the things you need to think about if you want to move from a compliance-led practice to an advisory-led practice.

 

Becoming an advisory led firm: What you will need to restructure

So you have decided you want to prepare for the future, and you have thought about what advisory services might mean for your firm. After all, adding in higher yield services such as coaching, makes it much easier to grow a million pound firm. Perhaps you’ve started to define them. But how will you change things in your firm, it's probably going to involve restructuring your firm. This is a bigger change than you might think and big change projects need careful planning, management and implementation. This article looks at what you may need to think about when it comes to restructuring your firm so can sustainably and profitably scale its advisory services offering. Read more

6 avenues to explore to help you decide what advisory services to offer your clients

So, you’ve thought about where the profession is going, and your place in it. Like the most progressive and successful accountancy firms, you’ve decided to enhance your future by giving clients more value and becoming an advisory led firm (i.e. one that obtains a significant portion of its turnover from advisory work, rather than fees for annual compliance tasks). (see 5 reasons why the shift to becoming an advisory-led firm has accelerated) Taking the time to stop and to define advisory services and what it means for your practice will mean a better implementation of your new services. This article considers how to find out what you mean by advisory services. Read more

Becoming an Advisory-Led firm: What does this actually mean?

I've judged the Practice Excellence Small Firm award every year for the last three years. This year, for the first time, the entries were dominated by firms taking their first (and sometimes subsequent) step into becoming an advisory led practice. Adding advisory services into your mix is not only good future proofing for your firm, but also a way to introduce higher yield services and help clients become 'stickier'.

In this article, I'm going to be discussing fundamentally what advice does an advisory led firm offer? What do you do if you have clients that don't want to pay for advisory services and what about if you don't want to offer them? Read more

5 reasons why the shift to becoming an advisory led firm has accelerated

There is lots of talk about accountants shifting from compliance to advisory work within their firms. But what does it mean for a typical small practice to go from compliance to advisory? What should you be thinking about in your firm? Are advisory services for accountants worth your time and how might you start? Read more