5D Planning – planning your clients’ futures from every dimension

Why 5D Planning?

You’ve not seen anything like this before!

Finally, a joined-up and complete end-to-end process that works, that clients understand and that creates immense value; and that is affordable for clients, yet incredibly profitable for the firm. 

Are your plans solely focussed on cash?

Most planning tools and systems are one or possibly two dimensional and may just focus on cash or cashflow. We all get that cash is king and the fuel for business. But focussing only on cash, is like planning and going on car journey only thinking about your fuel gauge and how and when you will fill the tank. If you ignore everything else that goes into that scenario, driving a car and going on a trip, you will most likely not get where you want to go or, worst case, you will crash! It’s exactly the same with only looking at, thinking about and planning, on the basis of cash in the business.

Clients don’t know what they need to do

Often planning tools don’t look at the entire business model; how it will deliver value, and/or how it will grow sustainably, how it will turn operating profit into operating cash, how it will innovate and how it will help the business owner achieve their goals. But most importantly, they rarely focus on how a business owner is going actually to achieve the plan in the first place!

Clients don’t understand/value traditional business plans

We know that traditional financial plans on their own don’t work for small business owners. They don’t understand them. They don’t understand what they need to do to achieve them and they don’t understand how to use them to see how they are doing and whether they’re on or off track. Because they don’t understand them, they don’t value them. Most business owners also don’t understand what’s possible in their business, how long it would take to get there and why they would want to in the first place. And there is a disconnect between what small business owners want (more time, more money, more freedom or a combination of all these) and what accountants are ‘selling’ them (management reporting, cashflow projections, KPI dashboards).

Initial reactions to 5D Planning

Although we hadn’t launched it yet – a few of our members have had early access to the updates

Clients can now clearly see the value throughout the process

“Clients can clearly now see the value we can add, from both sides now – before they start working with us, and along the way, the value we have created with them. It makes it easy for them to decide whether to work with us and see how well they’re doing as a result of that” Shahida Azam, Pisces Accounts

5D Planning is Genius!

“The new updates are genius! It’s brilliant the way you have brought the simplicity of the 7 Key Numbers (which clients get) all the way through the process. Clients can easily understand where they are now, what’s possible in their business, how to achieve that and how they are doing along the way. It’s even easier for us to help them achieve success” Graeme Tennick, Tennick Accountants 

I don’t need any other apps now

“Wow, I now don’t need to use any other apps to deliver business advisory. But if I choose to do so, with those few who may need greater detail, they now understand why we need to use those apps, the associated costs and can see the overall value.” Roy Lyness, Lyness Accounting