Growth is a good thing in business, and it gives us great pleasure at HW&Co. to help our clients achieve sustained, strategic growth in their companies. 
These days, we are especially pleased to bring our own experience and perspective to the growth discussions we have with clients. Our firm has nearly doubled in size over the past four years as we have merged with accounting firms and allied service providers, bringing them under the HW&Co. umbrella and significantly expanding our firm’s service offerings and expertise.
Lessons Learned
We have learned firsthand that growth comes with challenges, and that planning your company’s growth guided by a strategic plan is the best way to build strengths and capabilities incrementally.
Growth changes a company’s relationships with its customers, and it takes work to ensure the changes are positive. If growth comes about as a result of mergers, there are many new clients to service and get to know. For the company that was acquired in a merger, there are new policies and procedures to learn in the new environment; and for the acquiring company, there are new associates to orient to a new way of doing things, as well as new clients that they bring into the fold whose satisfaction and loyalty must be won.
It’s a delicate process, requiring a thoughtful approach to integrating people into a new culture and showing them the value of adapting to a new way of doing things.
Not all the adjustments are made internally. Clients of newly merged companies experience their own transition as they adjust to working with a new firm, even if the professionals they are accustomed to dealing with remain the same. And they may experience a difference in how services are delivered. Perhaps things will take a little longer as new procedures are learned. Or perhaps services will be delivered faster – we’re happy to say that’s been our experience.
Most importantly, clients want to feel that they will continue to be understood by the professionals and the firm in which they’ve put their trust. Chances are your company is not the only merged entity they have worked with in the past few years. Accounting firms, law firms, banks, suppliers and vendors in all sorts of industries are consolidating in search of strong synergies, increased profitability and more prominent branding in their marketplaces. It can be disorienting for customers who have seen one or two trusted advisors or vendors merge each year for the past half decade.
Responding to clients’ concerns with open and consistent communication can help quell any fears that they will be “lost” in a new larger organization. It helps to show them how the merged company’s technology will improve their access to their account information. Tell them about the firm’s increased service offerings and heightened expertise. Use the power of marketing communications – social media, newsletters, email marketing – to help them get to know the company with which they are now working. Above all, help them feel welcome.
Do the same thing internally to help new employees who have merged into the company understand the opportunities that are open to them in a larger organization. They helped build the company you thought was worth merging with yours, and you don’t want to lose them because they feel unnoticed in a larger company.
The Bottom Line
Perhaps the central message in all this is that growth requires a lot of communications work and, above all, listening. Listen to clients, listen to your people and work on improving in the areas that concern them.
Here at HW&Co. we now have about 150 people, and we’ll be taking on 17 interns this year. When I interned here in 1996, I was one of three interns. Our firm’s leaders have learned to make many of the adjustments we’ve asked our employees and clients to make.
As we look to the future and continually set new goals and objectives for our firm, there will be more growth. But it will be thoughtful, deliberative growth guided by one principle – the desire to better serve our clients.
