With the accounting profession in a position where 300,000 professionals have left their jobs within two years and fewer are entering the field to fill these positions, advisory services can be transformative for your team. After all, your firm is unique. It’s important to home in on what your existing clients already want and need. It’s often more affordable and easier to sell to existing clients than attract new ones, so start thinking of offering more to the clients you already have relationships with.

But what if your clients really want or need a service that you’re not equipped to offer? Or what if your resources are stretched and you want to launch your services with as little friction as possible? Technology can help solve both problems.

Leveraging Technology

The right technology can help bridge skills gaps, ensure your services are delivered efficiently, provide the necessary insights and save time by automating tasks.

While there are many solutions available, here are a few apps that will help you start offering advisory services:

• Ignition automates proposals and payments for your advisory services to help you reclaim revenue and improve cash flow management.
• Clockwork.ai is AI-powered financial planning and analysis (FP&A) software built for professionals. Use it to provide clients with real-time financial insights and automate technical finance tasks like scenario planning and cash flow forecasting.
• Karbon is a practice management platform that can help you streamline your workflow and enhance the delivery of your services.

Every firm will have its own goals and audience. You may find that there are other solutions that help meet your individual needs. However, these three apps will cover the basics and help you deliver your advisory services more efficiently.

Once you’ve hammered out your services, pricing and technology, the only thing left to do is implement your services and monitor your results.

Monitor and Improve

Once you’ve launched your services, this isn’t the end of the road. Your goal is to deliver quality service that meets your clients’ needs and position yourself as a one-stop shop for their financial needs.

Implementing a feedback loop can help you determine whether you’re on track to reaching these goals. Then, you can use client feedback to improve your services over time.

For example:

• You can send out questionnaires and services regularly to ask, “how am I doing.”
• After client meetings, ask how you can improve or whether there are services they want or need that you don’t offer.

Make sure that you review this feedback regularly and actively implement changes to improve your services.

Scaling Your Advisory Services

As you continue to improve your services over time, you may reach a point where you’d like to scale your services. Clockwork has an excellent guide on how to scale advisory services that I highly recommend you check out.