Specialist business consulting firm SMSF Design has launched a Client Strategy Matrix to help accountants and advisers improve their revenue streams in response to the sector’s rapidly changing practitioner landscape.
“The Client Strategy Matrix is designed to be a revenue planner because one of the biggest challenges we had in our accounting business was not knowing where to go next, that is, not knowing what strategies were available and where to take our clients from a strategy point of view,” SMSF Design master SMSF designer Tracey Besters told selfmanagedsuper.
“Also, given that there is such competition in pricing for compliance work now, it’s important, as accountants and advisers, that we should be looking at the strategies we can be providing to boost our revenue while also making sure the clients are getting the best advice on everything they need to do.”
The matrix, presented in a dashboard format, shows projects to be undertaken and the forecast time needed to execute those tasks and the commensurate fees to be charged for supplying the strategies to the client.
The matrix contains a number of embedded strategies chosen from Besters’ experience over the past 15 years and some additional research SMSF Design performed. Each strategy has been broken down into components to make the matrix more user-friendly.
Future developments to the revenue planning tool will allow for the addition of new strategies and the removal of those that become obsolete.
The revenue planning tool was introduced to the market just over a week ago with positive feedback already received from the market.
“One firm ran its 140 SMSFs through the matrix and identified around about 10 strategies they could provide for each of those funds,” Besters said.
“Conservatively if you said on average each of those strategies was worth $1000 per SMSF, then they’ve just identified potential additional revenue of $10,000 per fund they hadn’t even looked at out of their existing client base.
“It translates to $1.4 million of potential additional revenue. That’s not all going to come online now, but at least they’ve got something to focus on and they’re less worried about the pricing points of their compliance work because now they’re going to talk to their clients about different things.”
