Holden Associates – Accountants & Business Advisers Blog

Den over at AccManPro has written a piece about making strategy work for you.

In it he refers to David Maister and a comment made in David’s forthcoming book:

Any business that tries to deliver all four virtues of quality, cost, variety and speed is doomed to failure.

I would agree with that, but here is where I disagree, I think three out of four can be achieved and the odd one out is cost, for in my opinion to achieve something at a limited or reduced cost would always conflict with the ability to achieve the other three objectives.

However, the other three objectives can only be achieved by ‘professional’ firms if they are run in a manner that is not the ‘traditional route’, I am of course referring to accountancy/business support firms here as that is what we are, and for them to achieve delivery of quality, variety and speed they need to look beyond that usual structure of a firm of accountants in a building where clients have to attend for meetings.

Holden Associates have an office address but we choose not to use it, why not? Mainly because we like to go and see our clients at their premises, why? Simple, this is where they are most comfortable, it also allows us a chance to get a better understanding of who they are and what they are all about, including their businesses, not something that can be done from a client sitting opposite you in your cosy office!

Quality, this we achieve this through our network of professional advisers who we know and have built relationships with over the years, these advisers are used for such things as specialist tax planning by Chartered Tax Advisers, for HR and personnel issues we use the services of firms that are members of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, for legal issues we have several larger firms of Solicitors to choose from, for Pensions and investments advice … I could go on, but I am sure you get the idea, ultimately the quality of work is achieved by using those who are better skilled, qualified and experienced than you in that area.

Variety and speed are also dealt with in the same way as quality is in my comment above, through the use of these other specialists you can offer the variety, and because others are dealing with these areas you don’t suffer a bottle neck situation which usually slows everything up when one person is trying to be ‘all things to all men’.

Our reasons for operating a network in the way we do are however more about being able to go and choose the best ‘service provider’ for the job for our clients, rather than having static staff who may not be the best for the job but hey they are employed therefore!

Another advantage I feel, is that we only have people in our network who share our core values of putting the interests of the client first, this is not always something that can be instilled into your accountants static staff!

Dennis makes the comment at the bottom of his posting ‘for an entirely different take’, I think Dennis has not understood either my posting or that of Stefan, which is a shame, all our postings were intended to do was give the ‘man in the street’ an idea of what he should be looking for or asking of any potential accountant, whereas Dennis, your posting looks at the practice/operation itself, hopefully I have given you a bit more of an insight into who we are.