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Practice Excellence: New firm shortlist

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29th Jul 2016
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Moving from gainful employment to starting your own practice is one of the most daunting things an accountant can do.

To help celebrate those brave enough to go it alone, the Practice Excellence Awards this year has a brand new category: New Firm of the Year.

The award, supported by FreeAgent, recognises success for new starters in the first three years of trading, and in particular firms with a clear idea about who they want to serve and how they want to go about it.

Judge Kevin McCallum wanted to see recognition that technology was something people should enthusiastically adopt when starting a practice.

“A brand new practice is an opportunity to create something from scratch - new services and new ways of interacting with clients. It’s important they have clear idea of their target market and also a clear vision and ambition of what they want to be too,” McCallum said.

For fellow judge Karen Reyburn, innovation around technology and marketing was important, but for this category in particular, she was most excited by the prospect of firms starting with a completely blank slate.

“Lots of firms wish they could start with a blank slate. They tell me they have too many clients of the wrong sort, can’t sack them all at once, so this drags them down. The biggest thing I am always looking for is something that makes me go “oh, that’s clever, hadn’t thought of that,” she said.

Across the new firm applicants, one of the key trends that jumped out was around niching and the concept of developing a niche practice.

Another stand out key trend was about getting the work/life balance right.

Kevin McCallum was struck in a positive way by people raising family at the same time as starting a business.

“It’s laudable and really positive in this day and age. It doesn’t mean you have to wear a suit and commute three hours every day,” he said.

The judges settled on the following four finalists in this category:

Gerrard Financial Consulting

This South West firm has a clear focus and strategy to be go-to accountant for charities and to embrace technology to better serve those clients.

Its three-prong approach to training, social media and expanding the team has put it on a strong footing to achieving those goals, and given the firm’s success in a short period of time, it has a plan and is looking for new ways to help its niche.

Perfect Ledgers

This firm understands its niche inside out, has the ambition to be a market leader and the drive to come up with new solutions to client problems.

With a strong referral-based growth strategy, the London-based practice is a solid contender in the new firm category.

Bright Ideas Accountancy

This Manchester firm also has a niche focus, specifically around contractors, but when it comes to technology it has spent time identifying what would be most useful and worked out why it was useful for them.

In addition the ambitious practice has come up with innovative initiatives around social media, marketing, contributing articles and an ‘out of hours’ service.

KFH Accounting

This successful new firm entrant has built a practice that sits around lifestyles and is in keeping with modern life.

Success for this Essex-based firm is not just about the numbers or growth projections, but also getting the work/life balance right, and not about just getting as rich as possible as quickly as possible.

 

For more details about the award categories and the ceremony taking place in London on 20 October, visit the Practice Excellence website.

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