We sat down with Kate Douglass CA, Partner at Walker Wayland NSW Sydney, to unpack some of the biggest questions in advisory today:

• What does valuable client advisory look like in practice?

• How do you show value immediately to a client in the room?

• What’s changing in how firms price, deliver, and train for advisory services?

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Walker Wayland NSW use Fathom as a central tool to deliver, grow and scale advisory services that their clients value. Kate says customising services is critical to delivering the highest value.

Kate’s team delivers projects in stages which allows them to tailor deliverables to suit the client’s readiness and the problem being solved. Fathom lets Walker Wayland customise their reports and KPIs and to deliver realtime insights to clients speedily.  

At Walker Wayland NSW, tax compliance and business advisory services are delivered by collaborating teams. This allows their advisors to offer a complete service and to grow additional client services off the back of their existing client existing relationships.  

With 20 accounting firms across Australia and New Zealand, Walker Wayland is embracing technology for growth and efficiency. Fathom is key for visualising financial data, templating monthly management accounts that are customised for each client, and tailoring KPIs.  

We discuss:  

• Understanding the problem: Start with identifying the client’s actual problem to be solved versus what the clients thinks they need.    

• Tailoring every engagement: Valuable advisory is customised to what the client needs and the client’s comfort levels. Complexity stifles client engagement so keep things simple and start with baby steps.  

• Using Fathom reports to kickstart conversations: Fathom reports and the Goalseek tool help show immediate value to a client by speeding up manual processes and providing instant realtime data which can be critical for clients’ timely decisions and responding to market changes.  

• Offering pricing options for clients: Quoting projects in stages, iterating solutions, and adapting with the client’s growing needs make custom pricing a key to retaining clients.  

Kate shares two client examples with us:  

• Client 1: Reducing the time to create reports from 23 days to 7 days using Fathom to simplify consolidated reports for a multi-entity business. This frees up time to deliver higher-value work and give timely, relevant data in strategic meetings.

• Client 2: Automating a sales pack in Fathom to share fast updated data for buyers and using Goalseek to model a 2% price increase to help the client hit revenue targets for a new venture.  

Dive in to learn more!