Burgers and bookkeeping

Most businesses are in control of how they provide products or services to their customers.

A McDonald’s burger is a McDonald’s burger. It’s done the same way, every time. When you get a flight you turn up at the airport, do check in, go through security and passport control, sit in your selected seat and follow the process. In a restaurant you are greeted, shown to your table, choose your food, it arrives, you eat, you leave.

McDonald’s is the extreme example of a business owning and controlling the process but most businesses do the same, to some degree.

Except, perhaps accountants. All our clients are different it seems. Some provide their records to us in a carrier bag, some in shiny folders in monthly batches, some via email or Dropbox, some summarised on Excel spreadsheets, some on accounting software. Some tidy and reconciled, many not.

So often we work in different ways and using a different process for different clients. That’s a challenge because we need to adapt to each client and have a good working knowledge of multiple accounting systems. ‘That’s what our clients want’, many accountants would say. Maybe, but it’s not terribly efficient and maybe our clients ‘Don’t know what they don’t know’

I’m happy to admit that we have followed what we believed to be the ‘client friendly’ method. However the records are presented, we will find a way of coping with it.

I believe now that things have moved on and we are not acting in the client’s interest if we do not direct the process more than we have in the past. If we can scan receipts, quickly and easily why would we not encourage our clients to do this to save time and simplify the process? If we can use software which downloads the bank feed and automatically matches invoices to payments and receipts, why wouldn’t we take advantage of that? And why would we not use intuitive dashboards rather than paper-based or pdf reports?

Some firms have taken this on board such that they work with a single accounting package with associated apps and they own and control the accounting process with their clients, including doing the bookkeeping in most cases. They get huge efficiencies and economies of scale which they can pass onto clients in terms of improved services and ‘value-adding’ advisory support.

We may not go quite to the extent of prescribing a single accounting system but I do believe standardising how we receive records from our clients and our own internal processes is beneficial for us and our clients.

Accountancy may be different from burgers in a bun but we can learn a lot about consistency, value and service from Ray Kroc and his empire.

www.base52.co.uk

Grinding it out

Ray Kroc, the founder of the McDonalds empire has always been one of my business heroes.

I didn't know much about him until recently, apart from the fact that he started McDonalds at the ripe old age of 52. As a late starter to business myself, that was enough for me, along with the ingenuity of the McDonalds concept - simple, effective processes, brilliantly executed can make for a great business.

So I was delighted to stumble upon Ray's autobiography, 'Grinding it out' in a second hand bookshop a couple of weeks ago. It's an honest, fast paced read about his rise to fame and riches. As the title suggests it wasn't an easy ride and success didn't fall in his lap. He earned it.

His work ethic was incredible. Ray was first and foremost a salesman. But he had other attributes as well. Not least he was an accomplished pianist.

In his early years he sold paper cups. Rising at 6am to pound his beat looking for new orders. He finished around 6pm and dashed off to his evening job - playing piano on a radio show. After the 6 to 8 shift he nipped home for a couple of hours to have tea and spend some time with his wife. Then back to the studio for the 10pm to 2am shift!

I've had periods of working fairly hard every now and then but Ray was at another level.

Of course his obsession with business left casualties. He was married three times and had some big business dust ups too. Business came first, rising to the top of his industry selling paper cups and mixers and then building McDonalds.

So why isn't McDonalds called Krocs? Well the McDonald brothers had already opened a successful burger restaurant with the signature attributes of simple processes, well executed and quick and friendly service. They were happy with their one successful store and had no desire to expand. Ray saw the opportunity, did a licencing deal with them and the rest is history. It was a fraught and strained relationship but the McDonalds brothers became rich beyond their wildest dreams when Ray finally bought them out many years later.

Like many super successful entrepreneurs he was multi-faceted. He was tough and driven but also had strong values of honesty and trust and had a knack for creating a strong, loyal team. He was also good at giving his team independence and freedom to make their own mistakes.

So this book in putting some flesh on the bones of Ray's life didn't disappoint. By today's standards he wasn't politically correct but it was a different era and I'll cut him some slack for that. He has left a thriving and enduring legacy and he remains for me a brilliant and innovative entrepreneur. He is an inspiration for me and other over 50s that it's not too late to do something great. Maybe not something as ambitious as a global food empire but something nonetheless.

www.base52.co.uk