The team is too small for business growth, the management is critical of innovations and the potential of digitalisation remains untapped: Many fiduciaries are close to their capacity limits. In this blog post, you will learn how your fiduciary can redefine capacity limits using innovative technologies.
Do you sometimes have the feeling – not only during the busy season – that your fiduciary company will soon run out of capacity for new mandates? Have you already had to put growth plans on hold due to the shortage of skilled workers in the fiduciary sector? Do you often wish the working day had more hours so that you and your team could devote more time to counselling in addition to the day-to-day business? If you answer “yes” to at least one of these questions, your fiduciary may reach its capacity limit in the not-too-distant future. What does this mean? According to the business dictionary 24, a capacity limit is “the maximum performance capacity of one or more organisational units in a period of time”. In this blog post, we highlight the most common reasons why fiduciary companies cannot increase their performance and reach capacity limits.
Once upon a time, there were three fiduciaries… No, you cannot expect a fairy tale far removed from the reality of the working world here. To better illustrate the issue of capacity in fiduciaries, we have outlined three examples.
Lack of skilled workers, rigid structures and low innovation capacity prevent growth
At fiduciary A, they are convinced that growth comes primarily from more human resources. For years, fiduciary A has therefore been aggressively recruiting fiduciary professionals. For each major new client project that Fiduciary A wins, it recruits additional fiduciary professionals. However, in view of the continuing shortage of skilled workers in the fiduciary sector, it is becoming increasingly difficult to fill all vacancies. The manager of fiduciary A soon can no longer push ahead with the ambitious plans without putting too much strain on the existing staff.
In fiduciary B there are processes, regulations and plans for everything. Thanks to its strict structures and good planning, Fiduciary B can provide satisfactory services to all its clients. Although the fiduciaries are very busy, tasks and responsibilities are fairly distributed. Overtime is rare, but there is no time for new projects. Fiduciary B has a strict hierarchical structure. Companies with rigid hierarchies are often less able to exploit the potential and opportunities of digitalisation than companies with flat hierarchies due to a lack of agility. In fiduciary B, decision-making paths are long and initiatives for action only come from the top management. Employees have little or no decision-making power. As a result, fiduciary B lacks innovation and is slower to react to changes in the industry than less hierarchically organised companies.
Reading Tip: In this blog post, fiduciary executives can read about what the transformation of the world of work means for the fiduciary industry and why you should break away from rigid hierarchies.
Fiduciary C relies on new technologies alongside qualified employees and established processes with room for agility. Repetitive tasks with high automation potential, such as document extraction or the reconciliation of sub-ledger entries, are no longer carried out by fiduciaries in fiduciary C, but by fiduciary software. The employees can use the time saved to develop new services with which Fiduciary Company C can serve its SME clients even better in the future. The automation of routine activities has also taken the pressure off Fiduciary C to expand the operational team for new projects or to replace staff immediately after termination. Fiduciary C also scores points in the recruitment process with the use of innovative technologies. The fiduciary professionals of generations Y and Z no longer want to deal with only partially digitalised processes and time-consuming software breaks. Technologies have become an important factor in workplace design in recent years.
Only fiduciaries that exploit the potential of digitalisation can grow
The three examples are deliberately somewhat exaggerated, but in many fiduciaries, the scenarios are not quite as far removed from reality as you might think. For example, do fiduciary companies that cannot or do not want to take on additional large projects due to the shortage of skilled workers come to mind? How many fiduciaries lack the ability to innovate due to rigid structures and strict hierarchies? And in how many companies do well-trained clerks still have to type out receipts?
Of the fictitious fiduciaries outlined here, only C, which takes advantage of the opportunities of digitalisation, should be able to grow in the medium term. Outsourcing routine activities to a fitting software (as fiduciary company C does) significantly relieves the burden on fiduciary companies. A fully automated accounting solution without software breaks completely eliminates the need for manual data entry, reducing the accounting workload for you and your team to control tasks.
How fiduciary software helps you redefine capacity limits
Remember that even with the advance of digitalisation and the advent of intuitive accounting software, fiduciary companies remain the one-stop shop for all business and financial concerns of the businesses they serve. As fiduciary professionals, you monitor your clients’ accounting, advise, and proactively intervene in the event of problems. However, digitalisation and the automation of repetitive tasks described above allow more focus on what creates a recognisable added value for your clients.
Now that your fiduciary has redefined its capacity limits, it is time to increase its market share. Define how your fiduciary stands out from the competition. How can you further expand these advantages? Which customer segments do you want to address in the future? Efficiency gains are created through specialisation. To create synergies and exploit economies of scale, your fiduciary should focus on specific client segments. Cultivate customer relationships. It is often easier and cheaper to deepen the relationship with existing clients than to recruit new ones. Whether financing issues, process optimisation or the creation of expense regulations: Find out which administrative activities your clients need support with and what role your fiduciary company can play in this.
