Gale Crosley, of Crosley & Co. (www.crosleycompany.com), advises accounting firms to manage delivery of their services by developing, positioning, and continuously improving them.

Here is what must be done:

• Define the services.
• Identify the buyers
• Train your people in the services.
• Determine how to continuously update services to keep them relevant.
• Decide how to deliver services.
• Develop measures of success.

Once these steps are completed, you can begin to market your services. Do this by:

• Using a spreadsheet with the firm’s services along the left axis and service offerings along the top. Xs on the spreadsheet represent your revenue segments
• Assigning ownership of each segment to a person, and developing incentives for that person.
• Forecasting future revenues for each segment.
• Developing strategic initiatives to achieve the forecasted revenues.

Segment “owners” will gauge the segment’s future, learn what the competition is doing, what technologies are being used, how regulations will affect it, and provide comprehensive information for management to make decisions affecting the segment.

From Accounting Today, February 14, 2006. For the complete article, click on the following link: http://www.webcpa.com/article.cfm?articleid=18823&;pg=acctoday.