For the family businesses we work with here at Armstrong Watson, it’s about how we can bring added value to their business and get them the results they need.

Our view is that with something like an audit for example, it’s not just a statutory obligation, it’s an opportunity to look at how businesses can improve.

Some businesses might see an audit as a tickbox exercise. That would be a mistake.

It’s more than just an audit. It gives us the ability to understand how their business works and it gives the owners reassurance that operations are performing or tracking as they should.

It’s all part of getting to know a business. And to get to know a business you need to understand the people behind it.

If you get to know the individuals you get to know their key goals and aspirations, both business and personal.

You often find with family businesses they never get time to talk about their visions and plans. That’s an important part of the work we do.

I specialise in working with family businesses that want or need an audit (predominantly medium or large sized limited companies).

Even with those larger businesses, they might be second or third generation, but they often need some help in getting their plans down on paper. The feedback I often receive from clients is that they are too busy working in the business and that they just don’t have the time to work on the business. We help them in this process to allow them to manage and overcome the challenges they face and achieve their goals.

We are a partner-led team. To us it is about the development of a long term working relationship throughout the lifecycle of the business - not just a once a year phone call about an audit.

A vast number of business owners do not have the end in mind. By understanding both the business and personal objectives we can find out about the ultimate endgame/exit strategy and what great looks like. By helping our clients to understand the numbers, not everyone is an accountant, we can look at KPIs, performance tracking, budgets and forecasting and filter that information for them.

More often than not, the larger family businesses have a team running that side of things for them. In that case, we provide that level of comfort that the financial systems and controls are operating as designed.

Succession is a major issue we often find family owned businesses face. There might be a particular challenge such as passing the business on to the next generation and the next generation don’t actually want to be involved.

We look at how we can structure something that works for everyone – changes to ownership structure, protecting the family’s interest, rewarding the management team who might be running the business for a time or it might be a case of allowing the younger generation to take on the business at a later date and ultimately achieve what the family want to from the business.

Because of the size and scale of our team at Armstrong Watson we can meet all the needs of a family business in-house.

We can take an issue back from a client and brainstorm it with our specialist teams.

We don’t all want the same things in life and family businesses are no different. Maybe dad wants this, son wants that, daughter wants something else, and they are all different.

By working with our clients we come up with a solution which works for everyone.

We have got some exceptionally powerful examples of where brainstorming with our team has worked really well for a client with very successful outcomes.

So do get in touch with us . Let’s talk...

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<li> For more family business advice from Andrew Kennon and the Armstrong Watson team, visit our family business section