Business advisory services are becoming a featured aspect to many accounting firms within Australia and across the globe. With the rise of automation, the longevity of the industry will swiftly rely upon personalised advice that boosts productivity and offers real-life results. While the tenants of accounting will always remain, clients are wanting their accountants to offer them more beyond compliance, and the industry is looking to meet demand.
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One of the most important steps to take as you begin your journey into business advisory services is to choose the best team to represent your firm. Know the strengths of your staff, how to implement them in an impactful way, and which members are enthusiastic about transitioning to a new path in their career. Some team members may show strength in number crunching and the compliance sector, while others have long been asking for more. Your role is to differentiate how to select the most effective team so both your firm and your clients can see long-term success while ensuring your staff are happy too.
Getting to know the goals and ideal trajectory of your staff is a great way to assemble your business advisory taskforce. Schedule a one-on-one meeting with each member outside of your regular check-ins to assess where they see themselves as the firm moves toward a new phase. This conversation can also be one that is continuous with your team as the firm shifts to business advisory. Some questions you can ask to gauge their interest could be:
If you notice that a member of staff is looking to branch out from their current responsibilities and has a great repertoire with your clients, this could mean they would be suited to actioning business advisory services. On the flipside, if you have a few colleagues who prefer providing technical support or enjoy the consistency of compliance, they might not want to extend their duties.
Soft skills will take you further than technical skills when implementing business advisory services. You need your team to exercise critical thinking, empathy, listening abilities, and problem-solving (to name a few) when enacting business advisory services. If you notice some members are lacking in certain areas, you can work with them to brush up on their soft skills so that once they begin the practical side of advisory, they are ready to hit the ground running.
Some ways to help out your team improve their soft skills are:
One of the most impactful ways your team can learn how to enact these services is by taking them with you as your shadow on a business advisory meeting. They will be able to see in real time how these meetings play out and how you field questions. Allow them to insert their own pre-approved questions where needed and follow up with them later to discuss how it impacted the meeting and if they have any questions about how it went.
You can also assess if they are suitable to progress to this next step of their career by how they interacted with your client.
How your staff member approaches your client and interacts with them is a key factor in deciding if they would be a suitable candidate to progress to this next chapter.
Business advisory services is a role that contains multitudes and can be time-consuming. Once you choose your team to begin this exciting new chapter, you will need to find someone to replace their current workload. With the ongoing shortages in recruitment in the accounting sector in Australia, the answer might not be simple. The Hays 2025 Skills Report shows that 84% of hiring managers across the accounting industry are experiencing staff shortages. This can present a problem when shifting responsibilities for staff that are already working in the compliance sector of your firm.
Some Australian firms are turning to offshoring and outsourcing options to combat skills shortages and recruitment woes. If you’re looking to shift a team from their compliance tasks, there are companies who are highly trained in tailoring their approach to your specialised workflow. Remember to choose a company who has a deep understanding of accounting practices, prioritises certified security protocols so that your data is kept safe, and is committed to long term partnerships.
