(Slightly longer blog, it’s a big big hairy topic and I hope you get value from it)
It’s long been the thought around the board table here that UK professions will merge to some degree over the next decade.
The evidence is all around us…
Do you remember when garages sold fuel and not much else? Most are mini-supermarkets now. Speaking of Supermarkets, can you remember when electrical goods, clothes, films, music, medicine, garden bits and toys were not available in the aisles?
Accountants are increasingly interested in investment advice, financial advisers are beginning to understand the power of doing a client’s tax return, the city boys don’t care who hands them client monies to speculate with and why should legal man have a monopoly on will writing recurring income or probate?
As the decade progresses, if you don’t ring fence your clients you will be faced with having to defend them relentlessly from the other professions. Those who move across professions will likely see the biggest client land grab wins due to the principle of first mover advantage.
During one conversation last week an owner talked me through how it will be about understanding who was the primary and who was the secondary service provider. He believed accountancy would be the primary service in the future and hence that was where he was positioning his business (a quality wealth management firm). He was also of the opinion that each profession was doing its job reasonably but the lack of a linked up or overarching strategy was a massive detriment to clients. Apparently everyone does their job but nobody actually owns the clients overall real outcome?
Anyway, the prediction from here is that most professional services will remain face to face for the foreseeable future and certainly long enough for this to happen.
How much is outsourcing versus JV versus white label versus franchise versus true multi-disciplined is not so clear yet. Whatever your secondary service is will be the best candidate to be moved to a franchise or even a guided remote or internet based system.
Do you have any thoughts on this? Please just hit reply, I would love to hear them.