planning for busy season 2009

it’s barely august, but that’s not too early to be thinking about the next busy season.

we received this grim reminder in the form of a phone call from someone who is, indeed, already thinking about next year.

and it got us to thinking, too. so we took a look at last season’s busy season stress-o-meter survey data.

we found a few interesting tidbits worth passing along and thinking about when we compared leaders to laggards. as you may know, we define leaders as survey respondents who self-identify their organizations as competitively, relatively, superior, by any common measure — revenue growth, profitability, staff morale, client satisfaction, etc. and laggards, of course, are, relatively, behind the curve or worse.

(join us in last season’s survey, here, and we’ll make sure you get all the updates and an invitation to join this year’s.)

the differences between leaders and laggards are sometimes startling. for example:

• leaders are more likely to enjoy better, smoother busy seasons than laggards, by a margin of 40% to 24%.

leaders are more likely to report a “significant increase” in:

• revenue, by a ratio of 25% to 9%;
• net profit, by 22% to 9%;
• revenue per client, 10% to 3%; and
• profit per client, 11% to 5%.

at the same time, laggards are more likely than leaders to report problems, such as:

• troublesome partner or office issues, by a margin of 34% to 15%;
• poor planning or scheduling, by 32% to 15%;
• issues with tax code changes, by 22% to 13%;
• technology or software glitches, by 34% to 27%; and
• the general economic situation, by 20% to 12%.

leaders are also significantly happier with their tax preparation systems:

• 39% of them “highly likely” to recommend their current software or service provider, versus only 18% of laggards who would do so.

what are the leaders doing right? they tend to excel at these four skills:

1. minimizing partner conflicts and people problems;
2. planning and managing the workload;
3. communicating with, and properly preparing, clients; and
4. embracing new technologies.

but no skill may be as important as maintaining a positive mental attitude and a healthy personal life. indeed, it may be a matter of survival. more about that, in this post.

what’s your secret for busy season? leave a comment, here.

posted on august 1, 2008