Compliancy and Growth in Professional Services – Do These Really Go Together?

Can you identify when things are not going the way you want? For professional services, being predictable is key to success. To be predictable, you need standards, consistency and of course compliance. Often we may think of compliance as a roadblock to growth, slows things down, or in other negative terms. At TOP Step, we look at compliance as a way to empower your team and allow you to build a successful practice.

Here are the three areas of compliance that will put you on the right track of a predictable and successful business.

Policy

This category includes things that protect and prevent both the company and the individual and typically what we think of when we discuss compliance. They may include things such as SOX compliance, following ISO9001 standards, security policies, and policies that assist in ensuring you maintain accreditations and certification.

These types of compliance areas are the things that you must prove or show that the business is doing, or the business is complying with. Lack of compliance to policy may cause audits to be very difficult or even impact the business by the loss of a certification.

A PSA tool can play a valuable part in measuring and managing compliance. For example, measuring bill rates to prove that you follow VSOE.

Management/Process

This category of compliance is about how you do business and how you make sure your staff is doing things in a similar or consistent way. An organization that does not have consistent processes in place has to rely on the power of the individual, which is a challenging way to ensure all staff members execute in most efficient way.

The management process includes things like methodology, standard operating procedures, guidelines, checklists and templates. These are all things that will empower your team to be successful and efficient by capturing tried and tested experience versus winging it.

Tactical

Then there are those things that are tactical. These are things that fall into the area of “did you do this, or is this on time,” etc. Typical things that fall into this area are timesheet compliance, scheduling vs. actuals, and project status. Nearly every professional services organization has these types of compliance measures in place. These are typically put in very clear terms with deadlines and due dates.

When we think of compliance as a larger framework, we can provide a foundation for building business growth and have a predictable business model.

Learn more about Compliancy in Professional Services