Sunday 14 October 2018

Tailor made or one size fits all?

I'm thinking about booking a holiday.


We know what we want. A bit of a tour with some sightseeing and then a few days at the end in a nice hotel to relax and unwind. We have spoken to a few travel companies to see what they offer. Some are fairly rigid. ' This is the tour we offer and it can't be changed'. Some are happy to tweak parts of the tour to fit in one or two extras we would like to see. One will make it completely 'tailor-made'. We can have what we want and they will price it up accordingly.

It made me think about my own accountancy practice and how we have evolved into more of a 'tailor-made' approach. That wasn't necessarily my intention when I started out 15 years ago. The aim was to provide accountancy support to small businesses. Naturally, in the early days we tried to fit in with what our customers and prospective customers wanted and the tailor made approach developed from there.

We have different 'products' or bundles of services from a basic, 'essentials' service focussed mainly on compliance to a full 'expert' service which is more akin to having your own outsourced finance department. If our customers want something more bespoke than our standard products we are happy to look at this and see if we can provide a more individual service.

Like in other areas, technology is having a huge impact on the accountancy sector. HMRC's major change programme, 'Making Tax Digital' is encouraging (and will ultimately compel) businesses to maintain their records in a digital format. New scanning software is able to read receipts and categorise expenses without the need for manual input, bank data feeds automatically into accounting software.

These changes have driven some accountancy practices towards a 'one size fits all' strategy. They choose a single software provider, throw all their eggs in that basket and provide their clients with a standardised way of working. It's ruthlessly efficient and in the longer run will drive down their costs.

But is it what their customers want? Sure, many will be happy with the one size fits all package if the price is right. But some won't. They may want to move at their own pace. Hang on to their manual records for a little while longer. Stick with the software they have been using for the last 10 years and fits well with their business.

We intend to  stick with our tailor made approach. That's not to say we will ignore the march of new technology. Far from it. We need to embrace this change and offer it to our customers who are ready to make the leap.

That's a little more complicated to manage as we have multiple accounting systems and multiple processes to work with. Following our customers has served us well so far however so that's what we will continue to do.

Oh, by the way it looks like the 'tailor-made' holiday option is the front-runner -  Viva Mexico!

www.base52.co.uk

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