how to develop procedures every client can follow.
by penny breslin
it’s not just the numbers
as back office support, you assist your clients in making timely and accurate business decisions. in the past, you worked on hourly billing doing compliance management. everything was about time.
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when you did work for a client, you may have billed out an $18-per-hour employee at a rate of $60 per hour. when your employee took the time to call the client for the documents, walked down the hall to ask someone how they had previously handled a transaction, then waited for a document to show up with nothing to do until it showed up – all of this time was billed hourly.
flat-fee pricing is the logical way to go for bos services. this means you need to reduce the amount of time it takes your team to track down information stored throughout the firm. how can you do this? the answer is by:
- setting the anticipatory set with your clients via the service level agreement (sla)
- documenting your procedures
- following your procedures
- adapting the procedures when they no longer work
another key to efficiency is having robust search capabilities in your dms or your workflow management tool or both. make sure you check out the search capabilities of any program you invest in. training, support and onboarding are also critical to the decision-making process. those three, working hand in hand, will allow your team to enjoy the efficiencies of any of these applications. if they like it, they will use it more.
always keep in the back of your mind that you may have to move off the application. before committing to one, know the policy for extracting your data, should you choose to switch applications.
what is an anticipatory set?
in education, an anticipatory set is a brief portion of a lesson given at the very beginning to get a student’s attention, activate prior knowledge and prepare them for the day’s learning. also known as advance organizer, hook or set induction. this sets expectations so everyone is on the same page.
benefits of documenting your procedures
we document each client’s specific procedures in a document we call a playbook. some side benefits of making sure there is a playbook for every client are:
- when a new employee joins the team, the learning curve is minimal.
- when someone on the team is ill or on vacation, another member can fill in on the fly.
- everyone is expendable and replaceable.
- clients are sticky to you and not the bookkeeper.
- similar processes and procedures are easily duplicated.
- shared vision is easier to keep in focus.
- you own the brain trust, not the employee.
- when it comes time to sell your firm, you are not just selling a list of client names; you are selling integrated systems that will allow a swift and seamless transfer and maximize your firm’s capital value.
which would you find more valuable if you were buying another firm: a contact list from a crm or a digital, up-to-date, step-by-step set of procedures for the firm and each of the firm’s clients? if you never do bos services, creating this playbook alone will increase the value of your firm.
how is this accomplished? this will take a bit of human engineering on the part of the person in charge. if you have been in business some time, it may even appear daunting. as with anything else, take it one step at a time. be communicative and open with your team while also holding them accountable. you must be a participant in the process – don’t just delegate it and hope it will get done. remember the cpa who just wanted the work done and did not know about his client’s $1 million increase? definitely that firm lacked communication even between its employees.
case study: developing a common procedure
with a firm in ohio, we were asked to come in and review some of their procedures. this firm had eight account managers and was using workflow software. however, procedures were not really written down. they had an admin staff of five, and the office manager was great and very excited about getting more defined procedures. the first point we uncovered was that of the eight account managers, only seven of them were using the workflow software and only four of the seven were following the minimum procedures that had been established.
we started with one common task they all performed. we defined the workflow for that task, then created a checklist so that everyone did the task in the same way. because each of them had their own nuances for doing the specific work, we went through all the differences as a group. we agreed upon and came up with one method and one checklist for the task. this was about three years ago. since then, the account managers have changed but the learning curve for new account manager hires has shrunk and the overall efficiency of the work has increased.
the second thing we did was to add the admin staff as users of what was typically seen as an accountant-only workflow system. this firm became very focused on procedures, and as they are clients of our company, we hold bimonthly meetings on procedures via zoom with the seven-person team on our side. our entire team attends each meeting unless there is a personal reason that prevents them from being there. along with at least one staff accountant there will always be an admin in the meetings making sure that all the checklists and procedures we may have to change are documented. the bos does not do this.
guiding principles for creating procedures
consider escalation or cause and effect when writing procedures. in other words, if something does not flow according to procedure, who receives it up the food chain? your name should only be at the top of the chain. it is very okay to tell your employees to look up the answer to their questions in the procedures. train them to not always come running to you. if you want to be a hero and save everything, do it for your clients.
as i mentioned above, one of the benefits of having solid, well-documented procedures is that you’re not dependent on any one person being around to do the work. think of everyone, including you, as a “red shirt.” by “red shirt,” i am referring to the inevitable security ensign on star trek who dies in the opening of a show. ensign expendable was replaced in every episode with no loss of continuity. but the opposite does tend to happen. when you provide good tools, accept employee input and are active in the input as well as the outcome, fewer people choose to be redshirted.
rules for creating procedures
breaking down something you can do without thinking is difficult. you miss crucial steps. you might wrongly assume mutual knowledge. here are seven rules we follow for creating procedures:
rule number one: do not allow people to write their own procedures without having someone in another position review them. procedures should make sense to someone who does not normally do the work.
rule number two: if you hear the same question three times, document the answer in the appropriate area of the playbook along with the name of the owner.
rule number three: review your procedures regularly to make them more efficient or to reflect updates to the app or software, or to the client’s needs. this is another check on scope creep.
rule number four: make documenting your procedures a priority or it will not get done!
rule number five: assign a dedicated person in your firm the responsibility of managing all procedures for all clients. make sure that person attends all team meetings so he or she can find out immediately about any changes.
rule number six: if you use a workflow app, implement it for everything!
rule number seven: get an application like zoom, loom or otter.ai and record yourself performing the work. you are less likely to skip a step or make assumptions about the reader or viewer. use the voice recorder on your smartphone (it’s free). that way you don’t have to slap your head and say “i could’ve had a v8!”