Strong showing from midsized accounting firms through recession.
The soon-to-be-released Rosenberg MAP Survey of over 400 mid-market CPA firms is expected to show average net income per partner of $354,000, down 3% from the year before.
Marc Rosenberg
Marc Rosenberg, the creator and author of the survey for the last 12 years, said many partners are grateful it wasn’t worse.
Meanwhile firm revenues inched up a bare 1.4%. But the disparities between the high performing firms and the rest was pronounced, with 38% of firms reporting growth of 5% or more and 41% reporting a decline.
For 2010, firms are projecting revenue gains of 2.6%, with few expecting any declines, a considerable improvement over the latest year.
Will the profession get another Golden Age, like the period from 2002 to 2007 as the result of Sarbanes-Oxley? It’s possible.
“Whenever legislation changes,” Rosenberg said, “accounting firms clean up.” Even in recession, accounting firms have already been out-performing most of the rest of the economy.
Visit www.rosenbergsurvey.com to purchase a copy of the full report.
And dozens of possible answers!
At a recent staff workshop, there was a brainstorming session to answer some key questions about what constitutes excellence in client service. Four questions were placed on the table:
1. How can we make it easier for our clients to do business with us?
2. How do we meet and exceed expectations?
3. How do we overcome an attitude of indifference on our part towards the customer?
4. How do we make the workplace a more positive place to work?
Here are the results from the attendees. How many of these items could you deploy in your office?
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Developing excellence in client service requires a change in organizational culture.
Kevin Phillips, director of consulting services, ProHorizons Network Inc.
And culture change is very difficult.
As valuable as a brainstorming session might be in shaking loose new ideas, Kevin Phillips, director of consulting services at ProHorizons Network Inc. says it’s even better to identify just one or two behaviors that will move the entire organization in a new direction.
“If the firm is profitable, it is probably doing a lot of things right,” he says. “If the firm is human, there is probable one or two adjustments one could make to make it even more profitable. The trick is to identify them.”
To get at culture, Phillips recommends ask these questions:
- What behaviors do we repeat over and over again out of habit that limits the quality of our customer service?
- In what ways to do each each staff member feel constrained, limited or shut down? Where do these experiences overlap?
- Who sets the cultural norm around here? And what benefit does the norm-setter gain at the expense of better customer service?
So before brainstorming begins, it might be helpful to invest some energy in really understanding the firm’s culture.
