How do integrated business services provide a broader perspective? Why is it important to look for a single-source provider of legal, tax, accounting, and business advisory services? Perhaps one of the most basic corporate models can provide insight into the importance of integrated professional services.
Why do corporations have a Board of Directors? The Board usually consists of business people with multiple disciplinary backgrounds, such as lawyers, accountants, employment specialists, industry experts, savvy entrepreneurs, and tax advisers who can provide advice, oversight, and guidance to the company based on their area of expertise. The combined strength of the Board of Directors provides the corporation with blended advice from multiple business disciplines to inform crucial business decisions and design and implement needed changes.
Integrated business services provide a broader perspective and substantial value for your company for the same reasons. Most businesses retain multiple, separate professionals such as business attorneys, bookkeepers, CPAs or accountants, tax preparers, tax attorneys, and financial advisers. Each is paid separately and provides insight, recommendations, and advice based on their unique expertise. However, this model does not allow any of the individual professionals to take a broader look at the challenge(s) at hand, nor consider the impact of one discipline upon another within the context of an important decision or business question, such as:
How will this decision affect our tax exposures?
How should we structure the business we are acquiring, and how should costs and profits be distributed within our corporate family?
If we break apart costs and create systems to track finer details at all levels of the organization, how will that impact unit profitability, market awareness, competitive advantage, speed to market, tax advantages, or inform critical corporate decisions?
How can we cut the cost of goods and increase efficiencies to maximize profitability on each unit we produce?
When you combine the invoices of these separate business professionals, the costs are quite high. Yet, there still isn't anyone who can help you discern which pieces of each recommendation will work best with each other to integrate the pieces and implement the right solution. This is the value of advice from a broader perspective and a team who can blend the best contributions of each discipline to address the challenge at hand and implement the solution throughout the company.
Undoubtedly, integrated business services provide a broader perspective when approaching an opportunity or challenge in any business. It is the integration of the pieces that delivers genuine value. The blend of the right ingredients presents the best possible outcome. It is the ability to develop and implement a solution that ultimately provides value and measurable success within your company. Reduce costs, improve quality, solve challenges, and gain additional information from every aspect and department within your business and distill it into up-to-the-minute, valuable data and insight to inform each decision you make.
