Anders + Summit Merger Story
VALUE-BASED BILLING
Growing Virtually Our decision to become the first completely virtual CPA firm—fully distributed in 2013—was motivated by the same outcome: to help our clients grow their business even more efficiently and improve our work environment.
From the very beginning, we did things differently. But every game-changing idea we’ve implemented—from what we offer to how we deliver it—has to meet this standard: We provide a more valuable service to the client and improve our team’s experience. You don’t have to sacrifice one to get the other. In fact, that’s what makes a business great. Take our decision to move away from the traditional hourly billing model to value- based, weekly billing. Hourly billing felt like a lose-lose. We couldn’t predict our cash flow, wasted time chasing accounts receivable and risked compromising our relationship with the client every time we sent out a bill. Would they complain about every .25 hours? Would they laugh at how cheap we seemed? Instead of being able to have substantive conversations about pressing issues, we had to act as a project manager and bill collector. “Hey, I want to have this serious conversation with you, but first you owe me $30,000” is a sentence we were able to remove from our routine at Summit. Once we figured out a price that wasn’t ridiculously low, we moved one step closer to where we wanted to be—in the clients’ corner, doing the work we do best, rather than hovering by the mailbox, waiting for the next check.
It took a little while to convince everyone to come along for the ride, but the switch to a fully distributed firm ended up being one of the best decisions we ever made. It was an opportunity to really live our values of employee empowerment and trust—to show our employees we don’t mind if they have to leave work for a few hours to coach a game or go to a personal appointment; we know they’ll get their work done. That’s what employees really want. And maybe that trust is there in a brick-and-mortar firm, but it’s hard to show it in the same way when everyone is required to be physically present. We also saw major benefits in terms of growth. Going virtual allowed us to grow faster than our brick-and-mortar business ever would have allowed us to, by expanding our talent pool. When we were only getting a few local resumes per week, we often had to decide whether a partial fit was the best way to go. Another lose-lose.
Soon, from a few resumes per week, we started receiving nearly 2,000 per year, allowing us to hire the exact perfect candidate without geographical limits. At the same time, since we were now investing in finding technological solutions to allow seamless online interactions, we were able to concentrate on attracting the kind of growth- oriented clients that make us excited to come to work. We quickly saw the benefits of meeting remotely: We cut wasted commuting time, and we saw how easy it was to loop in new colleagues or members of the clients’ team at a moment’s notice. These benefits have become familiar to a large part of the global workforce since 2020. But well before the pandemic caused remote work to trend, we were figuring out how to leverage technology to make the best possible connections with our clients and within our team.
Once we figured out a price that wasn’t ridiculously low, we moved one step closer to where we wanted to be—in the clients’ corner, doing the work we do best, rather than hovering by the mailbox, waiting for the next check.”
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