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Practice Excellence Awards: Why you need to enter

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23rd May 2012
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Client satisfaction is at the core of every successful accountancy practice, but trying to find out how well you are faring can be expensive and time-consuming.

Putting your firm forward for the Practice Excellence Awards can get you started on this discovery process and it couldn’t be easier at just £99.

But time is running out – the deadline for entries, already extended once, is now Tuesday 5 June.

John Stokdyk, editor of AccountingWEB, explained how entering will help you to find out more about your clients and practice: “What sets the scheme apart is that it gets you involved in an annual client satisfaction survey for less than £100. This is the kind of stuff that consultants would charge you hundreds or even thousands for.”

The underlying objective is to share best practices and raise client care standards across the profession. The data collected and insights shared with individual benchmark reports for each participating firm were “essential for monitoring ongoing development” and were already helping AccountingWEB members to raise the bar, he added.

Gaining client feedback from a reputable source was certainly a priority for last year’s winner in the medium practice category, Bennett Brooks.

Managing director Yvonne Wood said the firm wanted to learn more about what clients really thought of them.

“The great feedback enabled us to tweak some of our procedures here and there and improve our client experience. Winning got us press exposure which was great to be able to talk to our clients and prospects about," Wood said.

The AccountingWEB team originally thought of the Practice Excellence Awards as just an awards event, but it has developed into a comprehensive client satisfaction research programme, based on data collected from those taking part in the scheme.

By entering the awards you’ll not only get the chance to connect on a higher level with your own clients, you’ll also receive the benchmark report to compare your performance against that of your peers.

In addition you’ll have the opportunity to attend the Practice Excellence Forum on the same day as the ceremony where you’ll get the chance to gain even more insights from leading lights in the profession.

Keynote speaker Ric Payne, one of the pioneers in revolutionising accountancy around the world, will share his vision of the future with attendees.

For a taster of where Payne thinks the profession is heading, which involves “tapping into the creative talent and passion of their team members by implementing innovative management models”, read his Tomorrow’s practices article.

Further reading:

The Practice Excellence Awards, in partnership with PracticeWEB, takes place at The London Film Museum on the 20 September. Enter the awards now and receive a benchmark report to see how your firm is performing against your peers.

Replies (5)

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By macdougall
25th May 2012 10:51

Nonsense

Practice excellence award: this is a bit like pots of jam covered in awards and medals.   A complete waste of time.  (Best Strawberry Jam maker in 1956).

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By johnjenkins
25th May 2012 11:07

Not being big headed

but why would I want to pay £99 for someone to tell me how well my business is going when I really should know that myself. Do I want to compare my business with others for £99, I don't think so.

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John Stokdyk, AccountingWEB head of insight
By John Stokdyk
25th May 2012 11:56

Interested to hear your views, as always

There has always been a little spark of controversy surrounding the Practice Excellence Awards and similarly sceptical views were expressed when we first floated the idea last year.

But we know from last year, and previous experiences with our Software Satisfaction Awards that the direct user feedback we collect from these exercises is invaluable to those who are willing to participate.

There are things a client may type into an anonymous online survey form that they wouldn't tell you face-to-face and I have seen some of hair-raising results (good and bad) for myself in last year's survey results.

many of the firms who took part last year have told us that they have changed their processes and thinking after reading their PEA benchmark reports, and the data we have collected on growth and profitability indicate that paying close attention to client perceptions really does produce results.

You're perfectly entitled to run your firms how you like, but as we have made clear over and over, the Practice Excellence Awards and conference aren't just about plastic trophies in your reception cabinet. They're all about learning how to be an even better accountant. You may not want to take part, but there are lots of other AccountingWEB members who do.

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Della Hudson FCA
By Della Hudson
25th May 2012 12:03

Continuous improvement

We do our own client satisfaction questionnaires and always score very highly on these. I still think it will be useful to have independent research to identify areas in which we can continue to improve.

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By guyletts
01st Jun 2012 10:11

Client satisfaction initiatives - 3 benefits & 3 guidelines

If anyone's thinking of their own client satisfaction initiatives, whether related to the awards or internal projects (or both), I've blogged a few guidelines based, in part, on work we've done with a local practice.

http://blog.customersure.com/2012/05/30/the-financial-value-to-accountan...

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