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$COPE Services

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The $COPE Mindset:

Most CPA firms are “service centric.” A “service centric” firm looks at client needs in relation to the services the firm offers. For example, clients are often slotted in one or more of the following service lines: tax, audit/review, or accounting. Unfortunately, it is difficult to ascertain the overall needs of the client when you have such a lop-sided perspective.

CPA Corporation’s $COPE Services program is driven by a “client centric” service strategy.

It starts with a mindset that looks at the unique needs and issues of each client and uses a special software platform and balanced scorecard framework to provide a multi-perspective approach to planning and performance management designed to help clients identify and achieve both their personal and business goals.

Translated into sports terms . . .

John Madden, famous Oakland Raider football coach and well known commentator spoke once about the influence of technology on the “game” of coaching. He told the story of the early years of coaching where performance of the team and individuals was captured by pencil and paper. As technology became more prevalent, the performance aspect of every play of every game was captured and analyzed. John went on to say that the “pencil and paper” approach resulted in an unbalanced focus on the offensive side of the game. It wasn’t until technology made the process easier and more comprehensive that they realized how their lack of focus on defensive statistics resulted in a very lopsided approach to coaching. Likewise, most accountants are guilty of lop-sided coaching because of their “service centric” client strategy.

With our $COPE Services program we achieve balance in two ways:

Focus Areas include the most common performance areas in a business and $COPE Perspectives facilitates looking at each performance area in many different ways.

$COPE Focus Areas:                    $COPE Perspectives:

$ = Financial                                      Stethoscope: Listen for feelings

C = Customers                                  Telescope: Vision for the Future

O = Operations                                  Kaleidoscope: Multi-perspective Analysis

P = People                                         Microscope: Link Behaviors and Outcomes

E = End in Mind                                 Radarscope: Monitoring Mission Critical Activities

This balanced approach to client needs requires focusing on more than just the financial area of a client's business. 

The $COPE program involves assessing and monitoring all performance areas from multiple perspectives.

 
The old saying, “If all you have is a hammer, all your problems look like a nail” describes most accountants.

 
If accountants only know the client’s financials, then every problem gets analyzed through that filter. The good news is that there are more sophisticated tools available today. Much like the technological impact John Madden referred to, today’s tools provide better insights as to how a client’s business game is actually being played, and even better than John Madden’s tools, can project future outcomes based on current strategies.

Our $COPE Software starts with the financial statements as a baseline and then provides a client friendly interface to “test and analyze” the numbers. For example, many clients struggle with some or all of these conundrums:

• “If we made a profit, where is the cash?” or
• “We keep growing the top line, but why doesn’t the bottom line improve?” or
• “Why is my banker on my back all the time, if we are making a profit?” or
• “Is it possible to grow broke?”

Our  $COPE software platform is uniquely designed to be used face-to-face with the clients, not just as a back office analytical tool like so many others.  It enables us to quantify and illuminate the answers to client questions about how they have performed in the past as well as what to do to improve the numbers in the future by drilling down to the actual business activities and drivers that impact financial outcomes.

So instead of asking the team to help the company be more profitable in a vague and ambiguous way, the business owner (armed with the analysis) can work with the team to develop specific strategies for improvement in their area of business performance.

Additionally, we can help the business owner to monitor and report on the team’s progress toward their identified strategic objectives.

This takes us back to the$COPE “client centric” service strategy. It takes . . .

The right Mind Set, one that looks at the broader needs of your clients.
The right Skill Set, one that can drill down to root causes in a repeatable, effective manner
The right Tool Set, one that educates clients about the implications of past financial outcomes and how to improve them going forward.

This is important because . . .

• Tools, without the right skills to use them, go underutilized.
• Skills, without the right mindset, are mis-directed
• Mind Set alone, without structured application, results in unleveraged activities.

 For more information on our $COPE Services, email Bill Simi at wsimi@cpacorporation.com, call 916-782-8500 or simply click here. 

8780 Auburn-Folsom Rd., Suite 100 • Granite Bay, CA 95746 • (916) 782-8500 • Fax (916 ) 782-9911 • info@cpacorporation.com

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