Resource management challenges: 6 common blockers and how to overcome them to achieve your maturity goals

Accountancy practice management software has come a long way. Today, features like automated billing and reconciliations are easily integrated into the day-to-day practice workflow of Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting UK customers.

Our employees work side by side with our customers to create and manage these solutions – driven by a deep understanding of their needs and addressing the rapid changes in their environment.

However, it’s often hard to look beyond improving performance in day-to-day operations. Amid Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and other disruptions, accountancy practices and their clients are dealing with an unpredictable economic landscape. Future business planning can appear daunting.

However, technology can support accountancy practices (and their clients) in making informed business decisions, and planning for the future. In the first part of our Accountancy Practice Management for Future-Fit Growth series, we’ll explore how they can use technology to define and easily track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Doing so gives practices closer control of performance tracking, and deeper insights that will inform strategic growth plans.

Saving Time

For several decades, business technology platforms have enabled practices to track performance metrics that they have customised. This highlights areas that qualify for improvement and underpins strategic planning.

Contemporary technology, such as CCH KPI Monitoring, makes setting up KPIs faster and easier for accountancy practices than ever before. This is vital today. The current business landscape demands that firms assess and amend KPIs more frequently, based on fresh market variables. KPIs such as client retention rate and business time-to-recovery have become increasingly prominent performance indicators in the past year. If clunky technology makes KPI management difficult, practices have less time and insight to plan future growth.

Reducing Risk
CCH KPI Monitoring makes it far easier to track KPIs and report on them. This is fundamental in minimising risk. For example, if a KPI is set to track and escalate debt filtered by overdue dates, the ability to easily set alerts and automatically generate reports is critical to practice performance management.

Some practices are manually running monthly reports to measure KPIs. Others are running real-time reporting engines, a key feature of CCH KPI Monitoring. This latter solution allows practices to review essential data at any time – covering both performance management and compliance requirements. They can do so remotely or on-premise.

This means that firms can assess issues before they become problems, and thus act proactively. Real-time reporting is a true asset in building a future-fit practice.

The Proof is in the Practice
A number of Wolters Kluwer customers have been using CCH KPI Monitoring for several years now. Our customers look to us when they need to be right. Ryecroft Glenton has successfully integrated CCH KPI Monitoring with its own system. This consolidates information from several sources, including CCH Central and CCH Practice Management.

“We can use the year end date to trigger a sequence of reminders. Have we asked for the books? Have they been received? If a request to a client has been outstanding for a certain period, the partner will receive an alert via email. For limited companies, we can monitor the corporation tax and Companies House filing deadlines – as well as the different deadlines for pension schemes”

– Ian Smith, partner at Ryecroft Glenton

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Maturing your resource management leads to firm-wide benefits and ultimately growth. However, to achieve a higher stage of resource management maturity and unlock the associated benefits, firms must firstly overcome their resource management challenges.

In this feature, we outline the most common blockers at each maturity stage and offer advice on how to conquer these either one-by-one or with a more holistic approach depending on the nature of the challenge.

Unsure of your current maturity stage? Take our quiz to find out!

Stage 1 – Stage 2

For firms currently at Stage 1 or Stage 2, your challenges will include:

1. A lack of vision/understanding of how resource management impacts firm-wide goals
2. A lack of budget and/or internal support to manage a transformation project, and/or
3. A need to hire schedulers/dedicated resource managers.


Thankfully, the above challenges can be resolved through education within the firm. The benefits of maturing your resource management are very clear, including:

· Increased utilisation
· Optimised staffing
· Increased revenue and margins
· Proactive engagement performance tracking
· Increased talent retention, and
· Improved strategic decision-making.   


It’s therefore important to communicate these benefits within the firm, specifically at the top level to consequently achieve buy-in, budget, and internal resource for a resource management maturity project. That said, it’s also advantageous to seek support from those who will be impacted by the change. As a result, the project will be much better received throughout the whole organisation.  

For instance, when advocating for dedicated resource managers at the firm, highlight the benefits of increased utilisation and optimised staffing when specialist, subject matter experts are making the scheduling decisions instead of fee-earning staff. This will help to enlighten staff members as to why hiring dedicated resource managers is a business priority.


Stage 3 – Stage 4

For firms currently at Stage 3 or Stage 4, your blockers are typically more nuanced and specific to your firm. For example, a common blocker is resistance to change, and this can be broken down into the following three challenges:  

4. Resistance to change within your internal teams
5. Resistance to change within your processes, and/or
6. Resistance to change within your software.


Firstly, within your internal teams, you may find that there are micro-cultures across different service lines and/or locations with preferences for certain processes and/or software making it challenging to implement the necessary steps to reach your goal stage. This is particularly relevant to those with goals of Stage 4 or Stage 5 where processes and software are both centralised across service lines and/or locations. Speaking to these different teams is the first step to understanding their requirements and concerns, and in time you’ll earn their trust and then their buy-in by outlining how the change will help them.  

Secondly, within your processes you may have to manage changes to your day-to-day procedures. For instance, for those with goals of Stage 4 or Stage 5, there is a lot of focus on centralising processes and using technology where possible to increase efficiencies. If you’re currently at Stage 3, you’ll need to work with your dedicated resource managers to ensure your processes are scalable by utilising technology sufficiently to free up resource managers for more strategic decision-making. Further, you’ll need to opt for a centralised model to ensure resources are being utilised firm wide to enhance client and employee experiences.  

Lastly, within your software you may have difficulty comparing advanced resource management software options and building the business case for upgrading. Many software vendors outline the main differences between competitors to make this easier for you.

View our compete pages:

Dayshape vs Retain
Dayshape vs ProFinda

Additionally, reputable software vendors can help you to build the business case by explaining how their product meets your objectives and alleviates any concerns in tailored demos. Book a tailored Dayshape demo.

To summarise, your firm’s blockers will depend on your current resource management maturity stage as well as your goal stage. What we’ve outlined in this feature are some typical blockers at certain stages with advice on how to tackle them. However, for the complete picture of how to overcome your blockers and achieve your goal stage, we recommend you download The Resource Management Maturity Guide. This will take you through each of the four steps within our blueprint to:

1. Identify and confirm your current stage (guided by our quiz and checklist assessment)
2. Pick your goal stage (considering benefits and blockers)
3. Achieve your goal stage (with case study examples), and
4. Continuously improve your resource management practices.

Apr 2024

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