Whether you are a long-standing or new client of the firm, or one of our many friends in the business community, we would like to thank you for your patronage and, most importantly, your friendship. We hope you had a successful and healthy 2014 and wish you our best for 2015.
As we begin 2015, I thought it would be a good time to share some of the changes happening at Clayton & McKervey.
Airplane Travel Increases
Although many of our clients are located in Michigan, many are surprised to learn we have a large number of clients located outside the state. We regularly have members of our team traveling from coast to coast to service our clients’ needs. Often those needs involve performing audit services, but we also help companies across the country address their transfer pricing needs.
In addition, many members of our firm are traveling internationally as part of our involvement with PKF International. PKF International Limited is a network of independent member firms that do business in over 100 countries around the world. Because our clients often need to utilize the services of accounting firms outside the US, we feel it is important we personally get to know the firms that are part of the PKF International network so there is an open line of communication.
We attend the organization’s annual audit, tax, and consulting meetings and also meet with these firms when we travel to other countries to visit our clients. In 2014, Clayton & McKervey employees traveled to England, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, China, Mexico, and Canada. We are pleased we were able to help our clients establish relationships in Asia, Europe, South America, and throughout North America, allowing them to continue to grow and expand their businesses.
M&A Activities
We have always worked closely with our clients when they sought to buy or sell a business. However, it seems Merger and Acquisition activity has picked up dramatically. Two of our owners, Tim Hilligoss and Margaret Amsden, lead a team of individuals who have worked with many of our clients in connection with their growth or divestiture plans. We have gained a strong reputation with the legal and financial communities involved in this field and that reputation has helped our clients successfully pursue their financial interests.
Washington D.C. Office
2015 marks the third year of our office in Washington D.C. Our newest owner, Sarah Russell, lives in D.C. and leads our presence on the east coast. We felt there was an opportunity to bring Clayton & McKervey to Washington, so we leased office space and started to let the community know we had arrived. We have been quickly embraced and are optimistic our desire to serve Growth Driven Entrepreneurs with a Global Reach in the D.C. market will prove to be a great expansion opportunity.
In The Cloud
Clayton & McKervey has conducted its business “in the cloud” for the last four years. We feel taking this step has greatly improved our ability to serve our clients and attract talented individuals to our team. Having the ability to access client data remotely and to provide our employees with the flexibility they need in their busy lives has proven to be a catalyst to our continued growth.
We’ve also begun providing to our foreign-owned clients the ability to maintain their accounting records “in the cloud.” Secure remote access to their data via a customizable “dashboard” puts critical information access at their fingertips so they can analyze and manage their businesses. We are very excited to be able to help our clients continue to grow through the use of technology.
Don’t Change Everything
As much as we have made changes to stay ahead of the opportunities and challenges our clients face, and adapted where and how we serve them, we have not navigated away from our commitment to living the core values at the heart of our organization. I am pleased to say our firm has again been recognized by our employees as one of Metropolitan Detroit’s 101 Best & Brightest Companies to Work For. That’s 10 years in a row! We are very proud of this feedback and feel this recognition has been received because each and every member of the team possesses and lives our core values:
- A Passion to Help Others Succeed
- A Can Do Attitude
- Perform to the Best of Your Ability
- Have Fun
During our annual strategic planning process we revisit our core values and they have stood the test of time. More importantly, our employees embody these core values and make us all proud to be part of the Clayton & McKervey team every day.
Please feel free to talk to your Clayton & McKervey representative about any and all of the above changes. There are probably other changes happening I have failed to touch upon, so don’t be surprised if you hear about a few more.
We appreciate our relationship with all of you and wish you a healthy and happy 2015.
