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A Brisbane-based multi-disciplinary firm has detailed plans to expand both through new service lines and potential new locations in its pursuit of putting the “trusted adviser relationship on steroids”.
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Qld firm eyes new services, geographical expansion
04 August 2017
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Speaking to Accountants Daily, businessDEPOT managing director John Knight said that since its inception three years ago, the firm was never intended to be just an accounting practice.
“When we started businessDEPOT the whole idea was we didn't necessarily want to set up another chartered accounting practice,” Mr Knight said.
“We were trying to be proactive, trying to offer more strategic services, and we decided we wanted to be the real 'trusted advisor' and maybe even put that trusted adviser relationship on steroids.”
Mr Knight believes that in order to help clients solve the problems they are experiencing, the services on offer need to include more than just the traditional accounting work.
“For example being able to talk about exit strategies, involving the lawyer, the accountant, the valuer, the super fund provider, and the finance specialist; that’s the bundled style of service that we strive to provide,” he said.
After first offering services such as marketing and HR assistance, businessDEPOT then forayed into more common non-accounting services such as SMSF, legal and insurance through a combination of in-house service offerings and external referral partnerships.
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Looking ahead Mr Knight said they are considering new services such as finance broking as well as developing areas they already have.
“We have a whole mud map I suppose of all the different services that we want to offer but the immediate goal is to offer a deeper service with some of the areas we already have like marketing and people strategy,” he said.
“What that will mean is a service like a virtual marketing manager or a virtual HR manager to get a deeper relationship.”
In terms of geographical expansion, businessDEPOT launched a Toowoomba office last year and is now considering opening in other states.
“We've already put our toe in the water up in Toowoomba and I quite like the regional strategy because I think you can really potentially stand out from the crowd,” he said.
“Melbourne will probably be the next likely office but we're not rushing that, we're just testing the whole thing will the Toowoomba office, see how that works with geographical expansion and with a ‘people first’ idea that we've got to find the right person to lead it down there before we hang our shingle up there because that's just going to fail.”
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