The AVN Performance Measurement and Improvement System

Research shows that businesses want more from their accountants.

Inspired by this extract from a recent publication by The Institute of Chartered Accountants In England and Wales...

"every aircraft in the world would be grounded if air traffic control relied on the same type of system as companies use to report their information… current reporting formats provide too little too late"

...we have worked with hundreds of other leading accountants across the UK to formalise an 8-step best-practice process.

Called The AVN Performance Measurement and Improvement System, it is based on what the UK's most successful businesses do every single year. And the 8 sections of this folder - which we have co-developed with those other firms –follow those same 8 steps in exactly the same order.

Step 1 Decide what you want to achieve in the year - i.e. take your goals and plans and turn them into forecasts and budgets.

Step 2 Measure how well you actually perform each month - using a combination of traditional management accounting information and other key performance indicators, so that you have your finger on the pulse of everything that matters. And then use that information to fine-tune your action plans.

Step 3 Measure your full year's performance - by producing full financial accounts at the end of the year, as required by law.

Step 4 Evaluate your performance by comparing to previous years - so that the underlying trends are crystal clear.

Step 5 Evaluate your performance by comparing it to the rest of your industry - using benchmarking to identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Step 6 Estimate how much your business is worth - so that you can assess how well you are creating value for the business owners.

Step 7 Calculate how much more profitable and valuable your business could be - use everything you have learned about your own performance and the performance of others to estimate how much more successful your business could be.

Step 8 Develop a performance improvement plan – i.e. an action plan setting out precisely what you are going to do to improve your performance.

It is, of course, entirely up to you how much input and support you want in those eight steps. At one end of the spectrum, you may decide to do all the work yourself - using the folder and 8-step process it contains to guide you and to help you file everything that matters in one place. And at the other end of the spectrum, you may want to make your life easy by getting us involved at every stage - perhaps even asking us to tailor the generic system to your precise needs.

You decide. You can have as much - or as little - help from us as you want. Either way, as your accountants we do strongly recommend that you use the 8-step AVN Performance Measurement and Improvement System to help make your business even more successful.

To help you do that, you will find more details on each step in the appropriate sections of this folder. You will also find details of the specific ways we can help you, in each of those sections.

However you choose to use it, we are sure you will agree that this 8-step process does indeed live up to its aim of helping you to get more from your accountants and from your business.