Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/667870
6 April 2016 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com FROM THE TRENCHES By Randy Johnston Sure, you can do this on a yellow tablet or in a spreadsheet, but these tools should only be used to start the process. Tey can work well for stra- tegic thinking and prototyping, but if you intend to operationalize your oferings, you' ll need to integrate the right practice management or customer relationship management (CR M) product into your everyday life. Tese tools may even be inte- grated with work fow and document management. A few suppliers to the profession have created tools that they believe serve your needs. A mong these are high end tools like Commercial Logic A PS or PowerPM as well as products like OfceTools and Pascal Work fow that are targeted at small frms. Using a system that has CR M, document management and work fow integrated, like A PS, gives you one place to do your work. Consultants to the profession ofen encourage the use of CR M products such as SalesForce, Sage CR M or Results CR M, but don't always recommend that you integrate these systems into your mobile phones, practice management systems or website, which is a strategic and tactical error. Other full featured social media marketing tools like InFusionSof and Karbon Practice Management try to integrate all of your activities in a single place. Unfortunately, the major practice management prod- ucts don't have enough CR M-like capabilities to help your entire frm be efective at marketing, but some of these publisher's strategies will change in 2016. More important than the tool is the culture of business development, discovery meetings, referral clients and omni-channel marketing. Since many accounting professionals have not been trained in marketing, this leads to common errors and mis- starts. You'll need to use some efort considering the right marketing strategy and methods for your frm. Tere are a number of well-thought methodologies in the market, but few are supported properly by the right technical tools. You can apply the principles of these marketing methods to your technology tools. What Should You Look For? Te key features of practice manage- ment or CR M that is integrated into practice management include the following: • Integration to mobile dev ices – T h is a l lows pa r tners a nd sta f f to 6 A p r i l 2 0 1 6 • w w w . C P A P r a c t i c e A d Randy Johnston is executive vice president and partner of K2 Enterprises and Network Management Group, Inc. He is a nationally recognized educator, consultant and writer with over 30 years' experience. He can be contacted at randy.johnston@cpapracticeadvisor.com . P roviding the best client service pos- sible is an important accounting professional mantra. Expanding your services within your client base is a common strategy. Adding new clients in your specialty or niche can be another. How do you manage your opportunities and pipeline? How do you apply product management principles to your services? Practice Management - An Opportunity to GROW