CPA Practice Advisor - 29

BRIDGING THE GAP

Creating a Structure for Innovation
AS THE PROFESSION continues to move forward with business transformation, firms are being
tasked with becoming more innovative. Innovation may come naturally to some, but many firms we
speak to don't know where to start. At our recent Boomer Technology Circles Summit, one of our
JIM BOOMER, CPA.CITP

CEO, Boomer Consulting, Inc.
Director, Boomer Technology Circle™
jim.boomer@cpapracticeadvisor.com

If you're looking for a better way to
encourage and implement innovation
in your firm, consider this five-step
process.

STEP 1: THE IDEA
Ideas can come from many different
directions.
■ Market intelligence from the accounting profession and others provides
an understanding of market trends.
When you are aware of disruptive
technologies, you can identify opportunities to leverage those technologies
to better serve your clients.
■ Client needs. Have more conversations with clients. They will have a
clearer idea of their future and the
future of their industry than you. Get
comfortable asking questions beyond
their current financials. Listen to
their answers and look for ways you
can develop solutions and add value.
■ Staff experience and ideas. Educate
your staff about why your firm needs
to innovate and how being innovative
will affect the firm and its clients. Put
yourself in a position to hear what
people are talking about and ask them
where they are getting their insights.
Start by creating Idea Factory. Not
just a suggestion box, but a method of
gathering innovative ideas from team
members or clients. When people
submit an idea, they begin the process
and complete an Idea Form that:
■ Describes their idea,
■ Estimates the additional revenue
generated, cost savings or other
benefits, and
■ Estimates the cost to implement.

sessions was on the Process of Developing a New Service. We presented a framework for creating
a new service, but the process applies to more than just launching a new service. It can be used for
any internal or external innovations, including new processes, new services and new technology.
Incentivize ideas by entering
submissions into a prize drawing. In
our firm, any ideas that are submitted,
documented and implemented within
the previous 12 months are eligible
for a cash drawing during our annual
strategic planning retreat.

STEP 2: VET YOUR IDEA
Once they've completed an Idea Form,
the individual (or a collaborative group)
needs to continue to vet the idea to
ensure they can prove to themselves
that the concept is a good one. In our
firm, we have two tools that help our
team walk through this process.
■ An Executive Summary that discusses
the need the idea addresses and what
we will be able to accomplish by
implementing the idea.
■ A Project Filter that addresses:
* What the project will accomplish
* The difference it will make in the
firm or to our clients
* What an ideal outcome from the
completed project looks like
* How to measure the success or
failure of the project
It may seem like requiring these
forms puts unnecessary red tape
around innovation, but they are crucial to the process because they force
participants to prove to themselves
that the idea is a good one.

STEP 3: PROOF OF CONCEPT
Once your firm has accepted an
idea and made the decision to move
forward, it's time for proof of concept.
Talk to your existing clients (internal or external) about your idea and

gather feedback. Recruit a handful of
early adopters. This proof of concept
process addresses the questions of:
■ Who will buy or use it?
■ How much will they pay for it, or what
value do they see in it?
■ How often will they buy or use it?
If the innovation will be offered to
clients, this is a good time to loop in
marketing for a marketing plan draft.
Your proof of concept serves two
purposes: it demonstrates the feasibility of implementing this innovation
and increases your team's comfort
level around using the innovation and/
or selling it to new clients.

STEP 4: LAUNCH!
Once you get positive results from Step
3, it's time to get final approval from
your Executive Committee and launch.
Previous steps in the process
involved a small number of employees.
Now it's time to roll it out to the entire
firm. Incorporating your team into the
launch of the innovation makes a huge
difference in its success. Typically,
employees who feel ownership in a
product, service or process take pride
in its outcome, and that pride leads
to an increased effort in ensuring a
successful launch.
Educate your employees by letting
them use the innovation so they can
make informed recommendations
about it. Their input can spur further
discussions about the product, service
or process's implementation and ways
to improve its marketing. Without
education, people tend to feel like
innovation is happening to them as

OCTOBER 2019 ■

opposed to being a part of it.

STEP 5: AFTER ACTION
REVIEW
You may feel like the launch is over
and that's it. However, you need to
continually look at your innovation to
improve the process, the marketing,
and other aspects of the initiative to
ensure you get it right.
The After Action Review process
was developed by the military as a way
to learn quickly from soldiers' experience in the field. With this system,
your team talks about what happened
during the launch and why. You
transfer critical lessons and knowledge
immediately to get the most benefit.
The focus is on learning rather than
blaming, so it leads to an improved
understanding of your innovation,
your launch team's performance, and
it helps people think about how to best
work together to produce better results
on the next project.
Deliberately designing your
innovation process will systematize
and structure an otherwise chaotic
process, shorten the time to market,
more quickly detect flops and increase
the success rate of innovation in
your firm. Keep in mind, innovation
involves failure. Be prepared to fail,
but learn from your failures and fail
fast and forward. Creating a structure
around innovation can't guarantee
that every idea will be a success, but
it can guarantee the thoroughness of
the innovation process by ensuring
that critical steps aren't forgotten or
neglected. ■

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