Grow Your Business
I recently had the pleasure of meeting with with Caroline Cummings of Palo Alto Software, Steve Schultz and Leslie Jorgensen from Supporting Strategies and Hitendra Patil of Pransform, Inc. I am writing about them together because they ultimately share the same goal. All three companies want to help you grow your business, but they take three different approaches to get you to that goal. Palo Alto Software wants to help you grow your business by providing a plethora of templates, tools, resources and training aids to help you focus on your business. Supporting Strategies wants to help you grow your business by providing a scalable franchise model that gives you the step by step framework and tools to grow your business, and along a similar vein, Pransform wants to help you by being your outsourced back office.
Caroline Cummings said “LivePlan helps accountants stay connected to their SMB clients all year long through easy-to-use business planning and financial tracking tools. The Scoreboard feature in LivePlan integrates with QuickBook (Desktop), and will soon integrate with Xero (Nov 28) and QBO (Jan 2014). The Scoreboard presents top line accounting data to business owners so they can see how their business is doing at a glance, and compare their actual performance to their plan, last month, last year - and make critical business decisions.” In a nutshell, “LivePlan serves the SMB Owner and the Accounting Professional by giving them the tools needed to build a better company and grow their business.”
As a back office support firm, Supporting Strategies knows accounting and bookkeeping. They have taken their hands on experience and knowledge of the business and built a franchise model that bookkeeping and accounting firms can buy into and leverage to exponentially grow their business. According to Steve Schultz, “the Supporting Strategies business model offers one of the fastest ways an accounting professional can grow their business”.
At it's heart Pransform, Inc. leverages it's collective technology knowledge to help the accounting professional scale without adding headcount or overhead. The company offers a variety of pricing plans custom fit to meet the needs of different firms. In addition to offering various pricing plans for their outsourced tax and accounting services, Pransform can also work with you to develop your own customized technology solutions for less than you might expect.
Whether you choose to build your business from the ground up in a more traditional way, follow the franchise route or the pure outsourced method, these companies are worth looking into to see if they can help you reach your growth goals. I have signed up for my FREE BPlans account and look forward to seeing how their resources can help me grow Intuitive Accountant into the business it has the potential to become.