Create a Comprehensive Business Plan
As part of the initial steps of setting up a business, it is necessary to establish the mission, vision, and general values of the business. For instance, a Chartered Accounting firm’s mission could be – ‘To offer complete support to customers, reliability of performance and continuous innovation in dealing with problems associated to accounting’. Defining the core values of an organisation and what each value stands for, will aid in building the very unique selling proposition (USP) that sets apart a CA firm from the rest of the CA firms in the market. A pre-defined mission, vision, and values helps a business to stay focussed, work towards acquiring clients in the initial stage, and building customer relationships and creating a firm’s goodwill in the long run
Also, a CA must decide which sector he/she is going to focus on. For instance, will a Chartered Accountancy firm deal with specific domains of accounting or will it cater to all accountancy services i.e. a general practice. In order to decide the focus area of a firm, it is imperative for a business owner to assess his/her capabilities/skills and categorise what he/she will be able to do best. Typically, these areas consist of audits (internal audit/external audit), taxation, mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Apart from this, a CA firm should also assess the addressable market, competitor analysis; it can also think about working through strategic partners or alliances
Furthermore, once a CA firm is sure about the services it is going to offer, the subsequent step is to target the customers. The area of expertise, opted by a CA firm, will facilitate the firm to fragment the market and classify the potential clients. Once the clients have been identified, the subsequent step is to acquire them – here the business development skills of an individual comes into play. With digital platforms playing an imperative role in targeting customers, firms can opt to use e-services as a client acquisition strategy – develop a company website, use LinkedIn to build a network, use blogs, Instagram etc. to promote the business offerings. Due to increase in unified communication platforms such a Skype of business, it is estimated that virtual service providers will be able to generate 40% of their revenue from such platforms
Once a CA firm has defined its marketing, and customer acquisition strategy it must invest time in researching the most competitive price for the services it is going to offer. A pricing strategy will define the rate of customer acquisition. It is imperative to choose how much the business will charge from a client. A chartered accountancy firm in India can select from a range of fee structures such as fixed fee structure, performance-based fee structure, or a time-based fee structure. Whatsoever option a CA firm selects, make certain that the correct fee is charged to the clients that will help to cover business costs and work in the direction of achieving the financial targets – under-quoting can result in financial distress/financial problems, whereas, over-quoting will drive customers away to the business competition. So, it is essential to set an optimum rate that will facilitate the business to earn profits, along with meeting the customer’s expectation
