The modern-day accountants also provide advisory services besides offering traditional services including taxation, compilation, audit, etc that are statutory or regulatory.
Due to the changing nature of the services offered by accounting professionals in modern-day, the role of trust, relationships, and professional ethics for business advice become all the more important.
This article talks about the various ways in which accounting firms in Singapore can help their clients:
Build on work-related and personal factors
Trust is one of the major factors responsible for reducing transaction costs and also provides an accounting practice with a competitive advantage. Therefore, accounting professionals can establish trust by focussing on work-related factors such as competency, integrity, objectivity, independence, and confidentiality, and personal factors, such as empathy.
However, the accounting firms would be able to build on these attributes over some time since clients get a good understanding of how accounting professionals work and offer services.
Create value for money
Businesses shy away from taking services from accountants unless they perceive that the services offered by such accounting professionals provide value for money.
Traditional compliance services such as audit, taxation, forensic support services, etc were considered beneficial in terms of cost, and business owners were quite satisfied in terms of the value derived from spending costs on such traditional services. Thus, accountants need to strengthen both their areas of strengths and weaknesses.
Communicate authentically and frequently
Good communication is the very foundation for a client relationship to grow and build trust. The accounting firms need to have a system in place that helps them to connect with their clients directly one on one.
The accounting professional needs to understand that communication is not just about providing clients with financial information and analysis. Rather, it is also about listening to the concerns of the clients.
Provide continuous training
Whenever clients face any sort of challenge and ask for the advice, never lose an opportunity to showcase your expertise.
Make every effort to explain to your clients the technicality behind the challenge faced by him as it helps your clients to understand what is happening at the backdrop.
