Company Outline
Osbornes Chartered Accountants is the longest running accounting firm in Otorohanga and are proud to have supported families and businesses throughout New Zealand for over 70 years. They currently employ 13 members of staff and continue to be at the forefront of technological advances within the industry, offering 'cloud based' services amongst other cutting-edge software developments.
Problem
Despite their deep roots in the industry, Osbornes was suffering from a variety of problems which were hindering their performance as a firm. Their previous business coach had been ineffective and had failed to work with leaders to establish a clear direction and purpose for the business. There was also a reluctance to address short-comings within the team, and as a business they lacked a means of collecting client feedback so were underequipped when it came to making informed business decisions. On top of these issues, they were struggling to adapt to the recent retirement of namesake, Graham Osborne.
Solution
Since Osbornes approached Deep Waters Consulting’s Nick Harvey in 2015, they have worked together to turn the business around. Together, they developed a set of core values and a purpose which the team could get behind. They have implemented measures of accountability, and complete regular goal setting on both the management and individual level. They then worked to develop and put in to practice methods of measuring levels of staff and client satisfaction, and also implemented DiSC profiling; an effective means of increasing the efficiency of their team. These changes increased the ability of leaders to create meaningful and effective relationships with the team.
Outcome
The result is a more integrated and outward focussed practice. Now that they have the processes in place to collect and analyse client feedback they are able to better respond to their needs, for example they now offer Xero seminars. They have seen increased numbers of client and job referrals and have since introduced ambitious new personal to their team to keep up with the workload. Leaders now appreciate the importance of being able to ask the hard questions and are having more productive talks with clients and their team as a result. Business has improved so much so that Osbornes is now undergoing expansion, with a new office set to be set up in Hamilton.
Summary
In the years since Nick was initially engaged, the business has continued to experience growth and development. Both Nick and the team at Osbornes are happy with how far they have come on this journey together and are excited about the challenges ahead.
