What are business advisory services?
Business advisory services are very different from traditional accounting services which are classed as “business advisory services”. Often accountants will offer “business services” such as business continuation plans, wealth creation or broad advisory services but do not actually provide true business services. Accounting services have drastically changed over the recent few years and accountants have been placed in a unique situation of having a vast amount of information at their fingertips in a short period of time. True business advisory services review a businesses processes and develop strategies to improve many facets of the business such as underlying profit, cash-flow, staffing, marketing planning etc.
The main component of this is there is no set formal to success. Business advisory is the continual adaption to the client needs and market forces to develop a successful strategy.
What business services are offered?
Depending on the scale of business and industry that a business lies in has a big impact on what advisory services would benefit a business. By having a business advisory in place, not only do they maintain the compliance obligations of a business they add a tangible impact on how a business is run and how successful it is.
A business advisor will provide these key fundamentals for a business:
Challenging business owners
Often a business owner is left to their own devices and is never challenged. A business advisor will challenge their client to be more. We will set targets for our clients to achieve and hold them accountable to meeting these chosen targets. It may be confornting to have this in place but it becomes highly rewarding for all stakeholders and drastically increases a businesses value.
Strategic thinking
A business advisor will offer strategic thinking which not only takes into account their skillset but also market trends. An advisor that can offer this into a business can narrow down the focus points of effort to get the greatest results.
Coaching
Providing coaching services in business is not a new thing however accountants having the time now to coach businesses through the phases of the business cycle are highly beneficial to business owners. Having a coach that has been through it before and seen the mistakes and successes can fast track the progress of a business.
How long does this take and what are the benefits?
Results can be seen straight away or take months to develop. It depends largely on the position of the business and the amount of resources that a willing to be developed.
Phases of business advisory
Data
Developed of data such as cash-flow or costings models to understanding the numbers of the business.
Insights
A review of the data and development of key areas of focus such as key performance indicators (KPI’s). Its a review of data, why its happening and where we want it to be.
Problem solving
The process of developing the strategies of the insights and what might be implemented to overcome the main issues in the business preventing them from their goals.
Strategy
Is the plan and mechanisms which will be put in place with the goal of reaching the desired outcomes.
Implementation
The final piece, actually implementing the plan which is often done by the business management team. This is a critical component or nothing will be achieved from all the data review.
Review and adapt
The real final piece. This is reviewing how everything went after a period of time and seeing what needs to be changed and what has changed in the marketplace. Its absolutely critical to have this constant review in place as the business environment is constantly changing and things don’t always work the way we would like.
What types of results have been seen?
When a business undertakes this activity often success is inevitable as the plan is constantly adapted until it is successful. Our firms personal experience has seen businesses grow over a number of years but say 20% but has also had clients expand by 10 times