Only Firms partnership offers accountants all-in-one consulting service
A recently launched partnership between four experts is already seeing strong demand from accounting firms for its advisory and consulting services.
The Only Firms partnership is a collaboration between four industry experts, including accounting technology expert Alan FitzGerald, digital transformation consultant Olwyn Connolly, CFO and accounting partner Tyler Caskey, and software and business advisor Matthew Peng.
After having known each other for many years, the group decided to join forces in order to offer professional firms including accounting practices a broader range of services.
“I’ve known the others in the group for many years and we all have skills that are in demand from various accounting firms in particular. We decided that positioning ourselves as working together would be a good idea,” said Mr FitzGerald.
He further noted: “So you can either have one of us or two, or all four, and we can each target particular areas of the firm. So we each come in and fix a particular area and then move on, and so far it’s been working surprisingly well.
“For example, we’re working with a firm in Sydney at the moment that are changing all their practice management software and their various systems, so Matthew is doing the integration side of things.
“One of the partners at the firm had a client with 30 or 40 branches, each with their own copy of Xero. Consolidating all of that reporting was progressively becoming more of an overhead and a significant headache. They asked if we had someone to implement an ERP system for this client, and we were able to arrange for Tyler to set that up. In the past few weeks, we’ve set up an engagement with that client to move them onto a more capable CRM or ERP system for their platform.”
The setup of the partnership works particularly well for clients who don’t know where to look for an expert with a particular set of skills.
“We do everything from practice management and ERP systems through to payroll systems, change management and putting all the pieces together. That’s really what the unique selling point is,” said Mr FitzGerald.
The collective nature of Only Firms has also seen the group to attract business from larger firms.
“We’re getting referrals from larger firms that we probably wouldn’t have gotten as individuals, but this house of brands strategy means that the accounting firm can have a discussion with all of us and everybody knows what everyone else is doing so you get that turnkey solution,” he shared.
In addition to attracting demand from accounting firms, the firm has also attracted interest from other industry experts wanting to offer their services through the partnership.
“We’ve had people with different skill sets to ours asking to be part of it so there’s been collective interest from all facets,” he said.
“In just the past few weeks we’ve been approached by a couple of directors from big four firms saying that they want to be part of it.”
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