The reality is that people, despite their best efforts, create mess and complexity across the various parts of their lives. Many attempt to ignore this mess, perhaps ignorant to the fact that, at some point, either they or somebody else will have to make sense of it all.
Unfortunately, this habitual procrastination by people and/or their advisers too often leads to significant emotional trauma, financial loss and relationship dislocation.
Professional advisers have, for generations, recognised the downside to poor management and planning by their clients across a diverse range of areas, but particularly when it comes to business succession planning.
Due to the complexity of the issues involved and the breadth of skills and knowledge required, most people (and their advisers) have put this critical activity into the ‘too hard’ basket.
However, by effectively connecting the moving parts that make up the advice areas of succession planning, valuations, due diligence and acquisitions (people, emotions, structure, assets, objectives, value, transition etc), the process can be streamlined and simplified.
Understand the client
The advisory process is more than just analysing numbers and data. It’s about helping people plan ahead.
Advisers need to have the right tools to enable them to have the right conversations. Potentially delicate subjects need to be appropriately addressed with clients to gain a big picture understanding of long and short-term requirements and goals, as well as what’s important to them. By asking the right questions, the areas which require immediate action and those that require future attention can then be easily determined.
Centralise information
Too often, client information ends up as a collection of scribbled or typed notes, out-of-date documents, fact-finds and multiple spreadsheets. Finding a particular piece of information is something akin to a treasure hunt where ‘x’ marks an entire section of documents. In addition, the information collected can vary widely from adviser to adviser, depending upon their experience and working style.
An easily accessible and logical structure to capture a client’s information digitally is required so that everything is in one place. Essentially, a digital organiser and filing cabinet for all client information collected during the planning process.
Structure the process
After collecting information from a client, it can be overwhelming to be confronted with a large file of information to sort through and piece together. With crucial information scattered across multiple documents, it can be a headache to assemble everything and see the big picture.
Simplify the process into three parts: organisation, people and actions. Collect the required client business and personal information and then use this key information to create a series of actions, such as analysing business performance, performing business appraisals (and valuations, if suitably qualified) and facilitating the sale or transfer of a business.
Provide a framework for business appraisals
When determining the indicative value of a client’s business, it is critical that advisers have a transparent and controlled framework rather than taking a mystery ‘black box’ approach. Advisers should be able to effectively evaluate the overall performance of a business, benchmark the analysis against real comparative data and develop a number of scenario assessments, in a straightforward and efficient way.
By effectively delivering these areas of advice, transactional advisers can genuinely provide perpetual life-changing value to their clients, as well as their client’s families and communities, and move from the reactive value fringe to high quality, recurring strategic engagements.
reG3n, from MYP, is a cloud-based solution (designed by advisers for advisers) that thrives on turning the complex areas of succession planning, valuations and due diligence into the understandable.
If you want to be seen by your clients as extraordinary, have a look at reG3n and share in the satisfaction of taking businesses from now to next.
- MYPcon17 – Time to refresh your thinking – MYP Corporation - 20 October 2016
- The New Way to Manage Your Personal and Business World - 5 November 2015
- Taking Business From Now To Next - 23 June 2015
