As a business owner, it is crucial you have the support of the right professional advisers to ensure your long-term success. Vinku Shah explains…

The most common professional advisers that a community pharmacy business would tend to use are accountants, independent financial advisers, solicitors, tax advisers and surveyors.

Before you approach a professional adviser, ask yourself these questions:

·      What kind of service or advice do you need?

·      What is your timescale?

·      What is your budget?

·      What is your desired outcome?

·      What level of input/time will you be able to offer?

Once you know the answers to these questions, you should be able to define your needs. Your credibility as a potential client will also be enhanced if you ask the right questions to the prospective professional adviser.

Finding an adviser

There are several ways you can search for suitable advisers, some of which are listed below:

·      Approaching pharmacy organisations that you may be a member of such as the NPA. Looking through pharmaceutical journals as firms that specialise with the pharmacy sector often advertise in these journals. Speaking to your bank as they usually have a panel of recommended advisers.

·      Internet search engines such as Google since any well-established, reputable firm of advisers will almost certainly have an online presence which could provide you an idea about the company, nature of its services and its specialism.

·      Last but not least, and probably the most valuable, is word-of-mouth recommendations. The testimonial on the level of service provided by the prospective adviser will be based on personal experience of your peers and will provide a good deal of assurance when approaching the adviser.

Selecting your adviser

You will most likely identify several potential advisers in your search and the following factors should be considered when making a final decision:

Initial contact – When making initial contact, it is important that the prospective adviser is attentive to your requirements and is able to offer you a no obligation initial consultation.   They should also send you their brochure of services which will give you information such as their experience, qualifications, list of services they provide and, in some cases, client testimonials.

Initial consultation – most advisers will offer a free initial consultation to understand your requirements and provide their opinion as to how they can deal with matter for which you are seeking advice.

You should be able to ask if the prospective adviser has dealt with similar matters or in the case of ongoing services, the number of clients they provide their services to.

The initial consultation will also give you a feel of the service levels expected of the adviser for example, if they were prepared for the meeting, level of knowledge, depth and clarity of initial advice given, if they are willing to provide you with contact details of their own clients so that you can speak to them about their own experience with the adviser, etc. This will also help you narrow down your list of potential advisers further.

Quotations – once you have decided on the advisers, the next step would be to obtain quotes from at least 2 of them. Price alone should never be the deciding factor if you want to have the best level of service but always good to have a comparison. Comparison is only meaningful if it on a like for like basis.

Fee structure – If you are likely to use the adviser on an ongoing basis e.g., accountants, do they offer fixed fees or are their fees based on time spent? With fixed fees you are assured that you will pay an agreed fee for agreed amount of work otherwise you could end up spending more than what you may have budgeted for. For one-off or additional services, they should be able to give an estimate of fees and if the estimate is likely to be exceeded you should be warned. These terms would normally be agreed in the letter of engagement issued by the adviser you have opted to contract.

Added value – one of the most important things you should consider when appointing an adviser is what value they are able to add to the success of your business for example, are they able to take on tasks that you would otherwise carry out thereby creating time for you to concentrate on building your business?

Or are they able to deal with your requirements with minimal input from you to save you valuable time? An ideal adviser will work with you to help you achieve your long-term goals by creating valuable time that can be spent increasing the value of your business.

Adviser’s team – you should find out about the team employed by the adviser that will service you. Are they well trained and qualified staff or does the firm rely on unqualified staff to carry out the work?

Is there a structure in place to ensure sufficient supervision by senior members of the team so that you receive the best possible level of service? One would expect to deal with knowledgeable, friendly and efficient members of the adviser’s team.

Are the team responsive to your requests or do you have to send reminders to them to deal with your matters? Some small, medium and large firms tend to have specialist departments for bookkeeping, payroll, VAT, accounts, tax, tax planning, business growth and advisory, financial planning, etc.

They often have the length and breadth of experts that could meet all your requirements under one roof.

Timescale – You want to have an adviser on board that delivers on what they promise. If your adviser consistently delays in completing the work required within timelines agreed at the outset, then they may not be the right advisers for you.

Having good advisers on board can make a huge difference to any business. Sometimes we get tempted to use friends or family as advisers irrelevant of their experience to save on costs, but this could be detrimental to your business in the long term.

A qualified adviser with a proven track record is crucial to the pharmacy business and pharmacists should be mindful when engaging their services. Ignoring the need for a pharmacy specialist adviser for your business could be a costly error in the long term.

Vinku Shah FCCA is a chartered certified accountant and partner at Silver Levene LLP. He can be contacted on 020 7383 3200 or vinku.shah@silverlevene.co.uk