Small and medium-sized businesses are the lifeblood of our economy.
However, all too often, they struggle to access the quality, tailored guidance and support they need to thrive and achieve long-term, sustainable growth. Traditional advisory firms (even accounting practices with advisory specialisations) tend to either overlook or under-serve the sector.
Here are some reasons this may be the case…
1. Target market and service offer
Larger advisory firms (let’s not name names) are unlikely to actively target the SME segment because of the profit hurdles they need to clear. They do, after all, have significant overheads to cover…
Plus, services tailored to the larger corporates they serve may or may not be readily transferable to smaller businesses. These traditional advisory firms structure their services around the needs of larger enterprises, offering solutions tailored to complex business structures.
Services on that scale are generally not readily transferable to smaller businesses that need more focused and affordable advice, not to mention a more personal approach to delivery of those services.
2. Agility
Regardless of intent, it’s difficult for larger providers of business advice to be as agile as necessary when working in the SME market. Their size, along with quite rigid advice delivery models and processes gets in the way.
That’s not ideal when providing advice to SMEs.
3. A siloed approach to advice
Every business is a complex system comprising many moving parts. Moving a lever in one area of a business will inevitably have an impact on at least one, and probably more, other functional areas.
That required deliberate collaboration between specialist advisors.
Such collaboration is typically difficult to achieve in a large advisory house. That’s just a result of the way they’re structured and how individual advisers are rewarded. We’re not suggesting that’s necessarily a bad thing across the board…their larger clients seem to want their issues dealt with in quite a siloed, specialised way. That’s just the nature of the beast.
But it doesn’t usually suit the needs of SMEs..
4. Offer and availability of ongoing support
When a business seeks out advice, the usual result is a suite of recommended actions designed to address a challenge (or a number of challenges). Experience tells us that larger businesses are quite happy to take those recommendations on board and project manage their execution in-house. That’s the advantage of size – they have a bigger pool of resources to allocate to the process.
By contrast, smaller businesses don’t have that luxury. For them, ongoing involvement from their advisers to help with change management isn’t just a nice to have…it’s a necessity.
Realistically, though, it’s not something larger advisory houses routinely offer. If they do, it’s most likely going to be prohibitive for an SME from a cost perspective.
It may be that some of the larger players in the business advisory market recognise some of these issues and are adapting their models to accommodate what looks to be a growing demand among SMEs. But at least for now smaller, more agile advisory firms are better placed in that market
What about accounting practices with “advisory” capabilities?
They’re a bit of a mixed bag. Some offer deep and broad services and work really well with SMEs.
Others (the majority in our experience) are stuck in an accountancy mindset. Not to be super-critical, but the traditional role of an accountant is a backward-looking one. In the business advisory space, the required mindset is very much one that focuses on the future and what’s possible.
As to providing the breadth of integrated advice a small business might need, that’s something that’s still a challenge. For example, an accounting practice with an advisory offer may be great at strategy and business planning but lack the skills required to create a communications program to help employees understand and get behind that strategy.
Where does that leave us?
As a business owner/leader you’re great at identifying problems getting in the way of achieving your growth aspirations. You intuitively know, for example, that there are pockets of employees who aren’t engaged, or that they have an employee turnover problem. What you’re maybe less good at is taking the time to fully understand the likely causes of those problems. It’s not that you can’t or don’t want to, it’s just that the thing you need the most – time – is the thing you have in shortest supply.
You need access to advisers who have a process in place to help you do that quickly, efficiently and effectively. That process should consider all the drivers in your business and how pulling a lever in one area might impact the effectiveness of other drivers.
More than that, you need someone to help you create an effective plan to address the issues and who’ll stick around to help you get it executed.
And all that should ideally be provided by a team of like-minded specialists who collaborate on addressing your needs in a way that the majority of advisory businesses do not.
At Konektis, our mission is to bridge the gap. We understand SMEs need specialist attention, strategic foresight and a comprehensive approach that addresses their unique challenges and opportunities. It’s a “one strategy” approach, which means you get a single, multi-disciplinary plan of action collaboratively created by specialists in their fields…not a series of discreet strategies created in isolation from one another which are, more likely than not, quite disconnected.
Every business deserves the opportunity to thrive and meet its potential…to build a foundation for lasting success. A “one strategy” outcome recognises this and strives to deliver cross-functional advice that is connected, rather than potentially creating inconsistencies. Do the pulse check to begin your journey towards success.
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