business needs assessment

With each new client, we begin our partnership with a business needs assessment (BNA) project, the goal of which is to help you determine your needs with regard to finance, strategy, governance, and compliance. During this phase, we can help you think through your reporting needs, accounting practices, and other issues within our domain that may affect your operations and growth. Costs for the assessment work generally range from $8k - $12k.

The BNA is not actually a separate service from what we would otherwise need to do, but we present it as a stand-alone project primarily to save our clients the extra cost of “surprise work” that would pop up organically as we get to know and understand your organization.  The assessment helps us to identify at the beginning of our relationship the challenges that affect your business operations, and to begin to develop a plan to address them.  When we started doing this as an up-front, intentional project, our clients were a lot happier than under the old model, when we would find issues organically and have to address them on-the-fly. We noticed that doing the BNA up front saves fees for our clients in the first two years.

With this report in hand, you’ll have a clear picture of what you need to take the organization’s financial management to the next level, and a clear action plan for each objective.

The BNA report generally includes observations and recommendations in the following areas:

  • Compliance (based on a meeting with you to get an understanding of your practices to adhere to various compliance requirements that apply to you)

  • Key Organizational Documents (based on our review of bylaws, key policies, and other important documents)

  • Recent Board and Committee Meetings (based on our review of the meeting materials and minutes)

  • Accounting Controls and Procedures (based on our review of procedures documents and 1-2 extensive interviews with you about your practices)

  • General Ledger Transactions and Structure (based on our review of your accounting data)

Every BNA report is unique, of course, and so yours may be organized slightly differently from the above.

Once we deliver the assessment report, we can begin our long-term partnership, or you can use the results of the assessment to identify other potential partners for the next steps.