leadership

the 12 winning traits of a great cpa firm

they don’t get there by accident.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

the 2022 karbon practice excellence report takes a good look at, well, practice excellency. it finds that excellency stands on four pillars:

  1. strategy
  2. efficiency
  3. management
  4. growth

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the strength of those pillars – and thus the performance of a given accounting firm – is determined by 12 competencies:

  1. technology
  2. strategy adoption
  3. business strategy
  4. innovation
  5. marketing
  6. sales
  7. client management
  8. organization management
  9. talent management
  10. change management
  11. operations management
  12. business processes

by assessing accounting practices based on these criteria and the practice’s output – that is, revenue per employee – the karbon report is able to divide practices into four quadrants:

  1. laggards (those below average in both practice excellence scores and revenue per employee)
  2. progressives (above-average scores but below-average revenue per employee)
  3. high performers: (below-average scores by above-average revenues)
  4. leaders (above average in both scores and revenues)

the competency gap

it’s not surprising to find that firms in the leader quadrant are stronger in all 12 competencies than those in the laggard quadrant. the difference is called the competency gap.

the largest gap is in marketing, where leaders lead by 66 percent.

the second largest gap is organizational management, where leaders are 62 percent stronger,.

third: talent management, where leaders are ahead by 56 percent.

across the board, the leader firms are generally more competent in activities that contribute to their growth and overall success of firm and staff.

  • they are 82 percent stronger at leveraging the tools that enable growth and success.
  • they are 133 percent better at using management techniques.
data illustration
average revenue per employee by business tenure

 

so what do leader firms do all day?

  1. they use more technology.
  2. they use reporting metrics to monitor outputs, identify bottlenecks and adapt quickly.
  3. they use client relationship management tools (120-130 percent more than laggards).
  4. they use business intelligence tools (238 percent more than laggards).
  5. they use the cost of client acquisition and client lifetime value metrics (300 times more than laggards).
  6. they use net promoter score metrics (200 times more than laggards).
  7. they are 80 percent more likely to identify target markets and ideal client profiles.
  8. they leverage targeted marketing activities, such as search engine optimization.
  9. they use more management techniques, such as personality tests, 360 performance evaluations, and objectives and key results.

membership in the leader quadrant doesn’t happen by accident. it happens through efforts to develop and deploy competencies. competencies are the bridge from laggards to leadership.