A New look for a New Way of Accounting

Written by: Richard Rosser Photography by: studio8

For over 30 years, Chapman Robinson & Moore have been the go to trusted advisers for their clients, supporting the start, development and exit of their own business. The firm has ambitious plans for the future, and Mike Foster has joined the team to support the future development.

Mike added; “Making Your Numbers Work is the focal point of our work with clients. We can offer the standard accountancy, tax and audit services that you would expect from any good accountant, however we want to offer more! We pride ourselves on helping our clients to plan, increase profits, manage cashflow, take control, measure performance and improve their business.”

Chapman and Robinson and Moore have recently released a fresh new look for the local, established accountancy practice and have developed a Business Improvement Programme that offers a new way of accounting support for businesses in the county.

Tony Hobbs, Managing Director said; “A couple of years ago, we undertook some research with a group of accountants across the UK, to establish the steps that the more successful businesses in the UK undertook every single year without fail. With this research, we have developed our Business Improvement Programme that integrates those compliance services that every business needs, with our advisory services to help grow the business.

“We help our clients to understand the real numbers in their business, those that influence their success. We help them to plan, forecast, measure, evaluate and improve.

“Of course we offer the traditional accountancy services but wanted to build upon the proactive and collaborative way in which we work with our clients”

There are a few fundamental questions that Chapman Robinson and Moore ask about their clients, to help them best share their expertise with numbers and also their experience of working with similar businesses looking to improve their performance.

As an example, some questions around the 8 step improvement programme are;

• What are your goals and objectives? (Personal and Business)
• What is your exit strategy?
• Are these aligned with other stakeholders in the business?
• Key Predictive Indicators – What are the activity numbers and performance targets you need to achieve to deliver your vision and build into your financial forecast?
• Key Performance Indicators – How did you perform? What do the financial ratios tell you beyond the headline results? What trends are you experiencing and why?
• How did last years performance and business improvements impact on your business valuation? (including the non-financial factors)
• How did last year’s performance compare to your competitors or others in your industry?
• What if…. You lost 20% of your customers? Or interest rates went up 5% on your borrowing? Or a key team member left the business?
• What improvements could you make or do you need to make? How does that impact your financial forecast?

The firm wanted a new look and feel to reflect the modern approach whilst retaining a reflection of its core values.

Tony added; “We started a rebrand exercise, but once we revisited our purpose, values and objectives, we came to the quick conclusion that we were happy with our underlying brand and just needed to refresh our original look and create a greater awareness of what we actually do for our clients. Hence why our new look is not too far away from that which we established over 30 years ago.”

Chapman Robinson and Moore are a mid-size accountancy practice and have ambitious plans for the next few years.