Scaling FP&A Advisory Begins with Productizing your Service
Do you want to add profitable monthly recurring advisory services to your accounting firm? Of course you do. But how? There are many different ways to do it. Here's how we do it at GrowthLab. We call it "Finance-as-a-Service, or "FaaS." We’ve built our FaaS framework by servicing our customers through cadence, rigor, and the team.
We purposely put the team in the third position to deemphasize the people aspect of our service. At the core of building a FaaS or sometimes referred to as CAS (Client Accounting Services) in the accounting industry, is your ability to have a fixed price fee for a fixed service level. This is also known as “productizing services.”
Productization is the framework by which service-based businesses delink time from value. Although I don’t want to get into the theoretical trade off of selling time versus value, my goal here is to help service-based industries like the accounting industry to begin to scale an FaaS practice inside of your firm.
The Pillars of Productization: Cadence and Rigor
The accounting profession figured out decades ago that bookkeeping and accounting could be productized because of the inherent framework that bookkeeping lends itself to… cadence and rigor of deliverables. Cadence is all about when the activity happens for example, bank reconciliations are completed by the 5th of the month so that a financial review can happen at the 10th of the month. Rigor is about what gets delivered consistently such as, actuals to budget report or a cash flow statement. So why is it so difficult for our industry to sell a perceived higher value human capital through a similar framework for advisory services? I believe the simple answer is a FaaS framework versus unstructured and ad hoc advisory.
If you can figure out the cadence, rigor, and the team to service the customer then you are on a path to productizing your advisory services. Therefore, your firm can now begin to sell your advisory services constantly and consistently, month in and month out, at a fixed price versus on an hourly basis. There are many advantages to moving from hourly to fixed price more importantly because it reduces credit risk due to AR exposure while also eliminating inefficiencies and cost in tracking time, invoicing, and collections.
The Annual Strategic Business Cycle Framework
We believe that in order to productize human capital and advisory services, you need to start with a framework grounded in cadence and rigor. At GrowthLab, we call our framework The Annual Strategic Business Cycle. We believe that business strategy is grounded in process and therefore can lend itself to an elevated repeatable framework that is the starting point for the industry to design their services. The framework helps define our customers needs, and more importantly when to deliver the value to meet those needs.
We’ve defined The Annual Strategic Business Cycle to be both short term and longer term in nature. So we start with the longer term view of the cycle which starts with company goals: GDP (Goal Deployment Plan), followed by the development of a longer range plan. Once the LRP is created we can then move on to the Annual Operating Plan (AOP). The first part of our framework essentially created the baseline or backdrop which is updated annually.
The second part of our framework is essentially the checks and balances needed throughout the year to measure and adjust operational strategy and execution to ensure your customer meets their annual and longer term goals. Below I have included an illustration of The Annual Strategic Business Cycle which includes cadence and deliverables.
The depth and breadth of your framework and therefore your productized service is adjusted based on the client profile including industry, size, complexity, and capital requirements. Once you’ve been able to define when to deliver and what to deliver on an annual and monthly basis, you can begin to understand the capabilities and capacity needed to design the team to meet the customers demands.
In closing, I return to my open comments, in order to scale an FP&A advisory practice you must productize services. Start with
what you’re delivering and
when you’re delivering it in order to scope out that monthly recurring service.
Key Takeaways
Productization: Shift from selling time to selling value by creating a fixed-price, fixed-service model.
Cadence & Rigor: Scale advisory by defining when activities happen and what consistently gets delivered.
Fixed Pricing: Moving to fixed fees reduces accounts receivable (AR) exposure and eliminates the overhead of time tracking.
Strategic Framework: Use a repeatable "Annual Strategic Business Cycle" to align services with client goals.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are cadence and rigor so important in productizing advisory services?
Cadence defines when services are delivered, while rigor defines what is delivered consistently. Together, they create clarity, accountability, and repeatability, enabling high-value advisory services to be delivered in a structured, scalable way.
How does productizing advisory services improve firm profitability?
By shifting from hourly billing to fixed monthly pricing, firms reduce revenue volatility, improve cash flow predictability, and lower administrative costs related to time tracking, invoicing, and collections. Productization also improves team utilization, enabling firms to scale advisory services more efficiently and profitably.
What is the Annual Strategic Business Cycle?
The Annual Strategic Business Cycle is GrowthLab’s core advisory framework. It connects long-term strategic planning (GDP, LRP, AOP) with short-term execution and monitoring. This cycle defines both the timing and content of advisory deliverables, allowing firms to provide structured, ongoing strategic support throughout the year.
What's the best way to measure AI automation ROI?
Track capacity metrics (hours saved, cycle time reduction), avoided hires as revenue grows, and margin trends with operational explanations rather than expecting immediate headcount reductions from individual automations.
How is FaaS different from traditional advisory services?
Traditional advisory services are often unstructured, reactive, and difficult to scale. FaaS replaces ad hoc work with a systematic, repeatable framework that allows firms to deliver consistent value, create predictable recurring revenue, and scale advisory services without proportional increases in staffing.
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