Beyond Bean Counting, Part II: The CPA as a Strategic Partner

Last year, we ran a post on how your CPA could be a strategic partner entitled Beyond Bean Counting.

It was a good primer for new and smaller businesses, but there’s much more that can be covered.

It’s time for a sequel, one that provides ways that a CPA can drive growth with process improvement, data, scaling operations, and navigating industry challenges.

Let’s go!

Operational Efficiency

No matter the size, every business could stand to improve financial operations. In the age of artificial intelligence and business automation, there’s no shortage of tools to help.

What is in short supply are the resources necessary to find ones that will help your company. It’s easy to dive into the wrong software and be worse off than you were before.

A good CPA will have the time, experience, and knowledge to research these tools and help you make an informed decision.

They can even provide training in some cases.

All these efforts can help generate financial data, which leads us to the next area where your CPA can serve as your strategic partner.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Financial data is excellent, but only if it’s organized in a usable fashion and there’s expertise to provide insight on how to act on it.

But like improving operational efficiency, organizing and using data to align to goals requires time and expertise.

A CPA can help create custom dashboards to display real-time key performance indicators (KPIs) to identify trends that can inform future strategies.

They can even help with future planning based on those strategies, using different finance models to simulate different scenarios and contingencies your business may face.

All these can help your business meet goals and discover unforeseen growth opportunities.

Let’s talk about one of the ways this can done.

Profitability Analysis

Profitability in business is everything, but it can be hard to detect if a product or service is generating a profit.

A CPA can help evaluate whether or not one is using that information to help provide insight into resource allocation. This can increase profits through more revenue and even reduced tax burdens.

And once your business starts growing from the increased profits, a CPA can help scale it by offering expert advice on the most tax-efficient hiring methods or expanding facilities.

All of these efforts can help attract potential investors. So, if outside funding is part of your business strategy, you’ll want to read this next section.

Building Stakeholder Trust

Everyone in your business, from employees to investors, wants to know their financial interests in a business are protected.

So, having precise and reliable financial reports reflecting robust financial controls is necessary. These areas are a CPA’s bread-and-butter.

There are too many ways to list in this blog how they can help, but if your business is deficient in any of these areas, then a CPA can help right your ship and get everyone on board breathing easier again.

The Bottom Line

Businesses face unprecedented opportunities, but they also have increasing demands that make those opportunities challenging to recognize.

By better utilizing your CPA’s skill sets, you can unlock that potential, making them a strategic partner rather than just some vendor that performs routine accounting.

Reach out to a CPA today to unlock your business’s full potential.