Changing the profession
Obk have an unusual business model in the world of accountancy practices:
- We have an exclusive focus on business owning clients who are serious about their business
- We offer a wide range of value added services designed to meet the needs of this target market. Our services are designed to help business owners build better businesses
- We work closely with relatively few clients. Having started in 1987, in the 2 years between 1998 and 2000 we went from 500 clients to just 50 as we deliberately redesigned our business to focus on our niche clients
- We price all our work in advance so clients always know how much they will be paying
- We do not keep time sheets and clients can call us whenever they want knowing that these calls are included in their fee
Our ability to run our business along these lines has led to obk being a case study in numerous business books and the subject of many blogs and news articles. We are connected to and supportive of VeraSage, an international think tank that exists to create better professional service firms worldwide. Paul Kennedy speaks at conferences around the world on such topics as:
- Value pricing
- Trashing timesheets
- Practice management
- Competitive strategies for professional service firms
- Creating and running a consulting firm
- Business consulting for the smaller business
Obk are members of Principa, an international network of accountants who share cutting edge business analysis and consulting tools.
As well as speaking at conferences Paul Kennedy also provides consulting services to other accounting firms around the world.
