Service under one roof?

[Anonymous]

I am looking into setting up a company that will provide small and medium business with every service under one roof. I am wanting to know if small business will find this service any good.

I will offer:
-Accountancy
-Commerical brokering (mortgages)
-IT solutions
-Business Planning/ consultant
-Finding the best bank for that business
-IFA
-Also on demand support

I know that you can get this all put it is a time saver and also I will have more time to spend with the business than other goverment agencies. All at aprice that is affordable to SME.

Please give me your thoughts.

[James Smith]

There are lots of medium sized accounting firms that have "in house" IFA's who will therefore deal with pretty much everything on the list, Most firms tend to outsource much of the routine IT, although I know of one locally who covers all 3 services (Accountant, IT and IFA). Accountants typically only deal with accounting systems, but this is changing.

Therefore yes, I don’t see why you can’t have a "one stop shop" of this type as there are several of them around right now. Most of these types of partnerships seem to grow from cross referrals that nearly all professionals have in place, I think its more a practical problem of finding a Chartered Accountant, IFA and IT guy all in your local area waiting to join forces (although presumably you are one of these yourself), and I don’t think you could cover all three roles with one or even two individuals to any competent standard given the volume of technical and administrative change in each of the three areas.

[Alpha]

Paul

I would say go for it.

I already operate in that way and give all the services you mention.

I am an accountant by training although in my employed years I also operated as a systems manager and was responsible for the development of both financial, distribution, manufacturing and commercial systems particularly EDI which was popular at the time.

As James said I work closely with an independant IFA group to provide financial services (I am not authorised to provide these myself).

I also provide business planning and coaching.

The problem quite often with the latter is getting SME's to see the benefit and pay for it. :D

Which of the services mentioned would you provide personally with your background and skillsets?

[Anonymous]

Well by trade I am a Business Banker and I will look to provide business coaching, advice, the commercial brokering and also look at my business as a whole.

I have a business partner who specilises in IT, and we are looking to out source the IFA and possibly the Accountantcy but can I tell people that I will take their accounts, then I will pass them on to the accountancy firm that we have out sourced to? And return them to the customer as if my firm have done the work and we have an accountantcy department?

Is it cheaper to hire an accountant? I am doing my CIMA exams at the min so I might even do them myself but not too sure.

But yes how do I explain to SME that they should pay for all this? I think I am trying to pull on societies pay someone else to do it theme. I had a case recently where a company wanted to borrow some money and so I ask for forecasts and a business plan as the person had no trading history the first thing they said was could we pay someone to do it?