Spotlight Reporting founder Richard Francis has embarked on international tour to promote ‘Transform!’, his “make it happen playbook” for the modern advisory practice.
A qualified accountant and serial entrepreneur, Francis has the track record to justify his status as an international advisory guru. He built up his own accountancy practice in New Zealand around an advisory model, but branched out into software development when he and his team built a standardised working papers app called Spotlight Workpapers.
He sold that to Xero and became part of the executive team there, but jumped ship in 2014 to create Spotlight Reporting – a new kind of analysis and reporting app to underpin advisory relationships between practitioners and their business clients.
Spotlight Reporting is now used in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, USA and beyond and Francis has become a regular globetrotter to spread the word about what progressive, advisory accountants can achieve.
“I’m not anti-compliance,” Francis told a seminar of accountants in London recently. “You can still make money from compliance - that’s not going away. My argument is, ‘Is that all we’re good for - tax returns and accounts that look backwards?’”
In his view, compliance is a “sunset” strategy. “The value will come from the great clients you attract from doing great advisory work,” he said.
The attitudes of younger accountants coming through are helping to drive this cultural shift, he continued: “There are no sacred cows anymore. They want to do work of value and purpose. They don’t want to wait 20 years for you to die to become partner.”
But some habits are still deeply engrained within the profession, such as the complaint from firms who resist picking up new tools and approaches because they don’t have the time.
“I find it interesting that even at the progressive end we’ll drop everything to do the tax returns, which is not very inspiring to our clients or employees,” he said.
“You need to make a conscious decision to be ‘advisory by choice’ by making advisory a priority and working out where it fits in your business model… We can do great work if we make mental decision – and not wait for client to say, ‘I need to raise £100,000 next week, do me a forecast.’ Look at it as core strategy.”
Once you get onto this path, it will take work to stay there: “You’re only good as last report and only good as the value you deliver.”
Even though Spotlight Reporting is very good at producing management packs and structured reports, Francis has little time for futuristic approaches to automating advisory processes.
“Advisory is very human. I’m not about Spotlight Reporting taking your data and making charts – you live and die by how you use that.
“I cringe when you get accounting firms that want to automate the process and spit the report out. I die on the inside becasue it completely misses the value of your experience and expertise and the value you can deliver to clients.”
Several extracts from ‘Transform!’ by Richard Francis have been serialised on our US sister site. To find out more and download a copy, visit the The Value Add Playbook page on AccountingWEB.com.
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John Stokdyk sadly passed away in June 2023. He had been with the site since 1999, rising from news editor to editor in chief, global editor and head of insight. As a roving editor, he investigated the profession's use of technology around the world. He devoted his spare time to technology history and an oddball collection of stringed...