Case Study
Cherry Bekaert's Client Accounting Services ("CAS") team uses Strongbox to quickly and accurately price projects in the sales process and to increase client value with advisory insights uncovered quickly using the Strongbox output.
Dixie McCurley
Partner, Cherry Bekaert Advisory
THE STORY
Building a CAS Practice
Dixie McCurley established the CAS practice for Cherry Bekaert a year ago with the goal of adding value to clients through advisory insights.
Ranked among the largest accounting and consulting firms in the country, Cherry Bekaert prioritizes investing in efficient, innovative processes to become the "Firm of the Future" for their clients.
THE GOAL
CAS 2.0: A New Era of Advisory Services
Dixie's goal is to build a digitally-driven and industry-aligned CAS practice. Her team needs tools that can help with standardization and organization of data in a practical, easy way.
Rather than only offering financial statements and standard accounting services, the Cherry Bekaert CAS practice delivers business insights that can have an immediate and meaningful impact for their clients.
Meeting this goal while still growing the business and taking on new clients requires that her team be agile and have consistent processes regardless of what systems a client might be using.
THE OPPORTUNITY
"Upskill Our Team and Clients Quickly"
During their sales process, the CB CAS team would estimate what work would need to be done for the potential client. Frequently, however, after spending hours extracting the client's accounting data, a different picture would emerge.
This would require additional reports from the accounting system and unplanned hours from the team to pull the data before the additional analysis could begin.
Regardless of what industry the client is in and what accounting system is used, Dixie's team needed a uniform output that gave a consistent, complete financial picture.
Now, with Strongbox, the CB CAS teams "are able to spend their time analyzing correct data sets with industry insights rather than taking double the time to pull data and then analyze. We are able to upskill our team and clients quickly with the Strongbox information."
THE RESULTS
Faster Insights, Impressed Clients
"Takes Our Services Up a Notch"
Strongbox has given Dixie and her team a competitive advantage. "The ability to share a quick link with a potential client and be able to access all the information we need on their current accounting situation is invaluable. We are able to share specific insights due to the information we gain. Potential clients have been impressed with the advisory style approach, rather than simple bookkeeping."
Strongbox helps CB's CAS clients better understand and buy into the insights their team is offering. They can quickly show, using the Strongbox visualizations, where the client can make better decisions moving forward and how the financial data fits together. While a client may not be able to analyze the several hundred data points with the experience of a controller, Dixie's experienced team can use Strongbox to "narrow the data down to the top 2-5 areas where a client can take action to improve the performance of their business."
And they can do so faster than the competition because of Strongbox. They can offer a 24 hour turn around time without sacrificing quality, in depth analysis. The standardized outputs allow them to have a predictable, structured, and consistent process that keeps the team agile. "Strongbox will enhance our team's ability to standardize across industries and use our controllers at a higher level."
THE OUTPUT
Most Used Strongbox Data
AR & AP agings
Financial ratios
AR & AP aging by customer
Data visualizations
THE FUTURE
Rapid Growth
Dixie sees Strongbox as a powerful tool in her CAS practice's future. "The ability to extract data from systems unlocks potential for standardization that will help our firm grow rapidly."
Additionally, by working with the Strongbox team on customizations, she plans to incorporate Strongbox into other processes and deliverables for their clients, including monthly reporting.
