For professional services firms, one of the most valuable positions you can occupy is that of trusted adviser.
Clients come to their accountant, lawyer, HR consultant, technology adviser, recruiter or corporate adviser because they trust their judgement. Over time, that relationship often extends well beyond the original service that brought the two organisations together.
Then the client asks a question outside the firm's traditional capability:
“We are thinking about setting up in the Philippines. Can you help us?”
Or perhaps:
“We want to employ people in Vietnam.”
“Can you help us establish payroll in Thailand?”
“We need an office, employees and compliance support in Malaysia.”
The consultancy may understand the client's business extremely well but know very little about establishing or operating a company in Southeast Asia.
The natural response is often, “That isn't something we do.”
It is accurate, but it can also represent a missed opportunity to help the client.
Increasingly, there is another option: have the right partners around you.
Clients do not expect their advisers to know everything
A strong professional relationship is not built on pretending to have expertise where none exists.
Most sophisticated clients understand that an accounting firm in London is unlikely to understand Philippine employment compliance, just as an Australian HR consultancy may not know how to incorporate a company in Vietnam.
What clients value is the ability of their adviser to help them find the right answer.
There is a significant difference between saying:
“We don't do that.”
and:
“That sits outside our specialist capability, but we have a trusted partner who works in this area. We can introduce you and remain involved.”
The second response solves a problem.
It also reinforces why the client uses the adviser in the first place.
Why firms are often unable to help
Southeast Asian market entry touches numerous professional disciplines.
A client establishing an operation may need advice on corporate structure, incorporation, employment, payroll, tax, regulatory compliance, banking, insurance, office space, technology, recruitment and ongoing corporate governance.
Very few firms can realistically maintain experienced internal teams across all of those disciplines and across multiple Southeast Asian jurisdictions.
There are also good reasons not to try.
A law firm should be careful about advising outside jurisdictions where it does not practise. An accounting firm may understand international tax but have no desire to manage local payroll. A recruitment company may find the people but not want responsibility for employment compliance. A management consultancy may design the market entry strategy but have no infrastructure to implement it.
Building internal capability for occasional client enquiries may make little commercial sense.
The alternative is not necessarily to walk away from the requirement. It can be to extend capability through a carefully selected partner.
What a good partnership can look like
Consider an Australian accounting firm whose long standing client decides to establish a service centre in the Philippines.
The accountant may remain responsible for group tax, financial structuring and the Australian parent company.
A regional partner could then help with Philippine incorporation, local registrations, corporate governance, employment compliance, payroll establishment, recruitment and operational setup.
The client does not need to start searching the internet for unfamiliar providers.
The accountant does not need to become a Philippine market entry specialist.
Both remain involved in areas where they can add value.
The same principle can apply in many situations.
A UK law firm may have a client seeking employees in Vietnam but no local employment infrastructure.
A US technology consultancy may discover that its client needs a forty person support operation in the Philippines.
An HR consultancy may be helping an international client restructure its workforce and discover that the business needs an Employer of Record solution in Southeast Asia.
A property adviser may help a client identify office space but then encounter questions about incorporation, hiring, IT infrastructure and compliance.
The partner fills the capability gap rather than replacing the original adviser.
The partnership should protect the client relationship
This is perhaps the most important point.
Professional firms are understandably cautious about introductions.
They have spent years building the client relationship. A referral to the wrong provider can damage that relationship very quickly.
The quality of the partner therefore matters as much as the capability itself.
Before introducing a partner, a professional firm should understand:
- Who will actually manage the client?
- How quickly will they respond?
- What experience do they have with international organisations?
- How transparent are their pricing and processes?
- Will the referring firm remain informed?
- How are conflicts and confidentiality managed?
- Will the partner remain within its agreed scope?
- What happens when the client subsequently needs another service?
A good partnership should make the referring adviser more relevant to the client, not less.
That requires clear boundaries, communication protocols and an understanding of who owns each part of the relationship.
Partnerships can create a better client experience
International expansion can quickly become fragmented.
A company entering a new country may end up dealing with one firm for incorporation, another for employment, another for payroll, another for recruitment and another for property.
Management then becomes responsible for coordinating everybody.
A professional adviser with trusted regional partners can help simplify that experience.
Instead of merely referring a name, the adviser can help frame the requirement, introduce the appropriate specialist, participate in the initial discussion and maintain visibility as the project develops.
For the client, this provides continuity.
For the original consultancy, it creates another reason for the client to continue seeing them as a trusted adviser.
The value is not that the firm suddenly claims expertise in Southeast Asia.
The value is that it can navigate the client toward expertise with confidence.
There can also be commercial value for the referring firm
Partnerships do not need to be purely informal introductions.
Well structured programs can create new commercial value for professional services firms through referral fees, joint engagements, reciprocal referrals, co developed solutions and access to capabilities that complement their own.
Importantly, this does not have to change the firm's core business model.
An accounting practice does not need to establish a Southeast Asian market entry division.
A consultancy does not need to employ lawyers, payroll specialists and recruiters in eight countries.
Instead, it can expand what it is capable of helping clients achieve without carrying the fixed cost and risk of building every capability internally.
The commercial benefit is therefore broader than referral revenue.
It can help retain clients, deepen relationships and create conversations that might otherwise move to another adviser.
This is why Ryoss created a global partner program
Ryoss has established its Global Partner Program around this principle.
It is designed for professional services firms that encounter client requirements across Southeast Asia but do not necessarily want to build those capabilities themselves.
The model is deliberately straightforward. A partner identifies a client requirement, introduces Ryoss where appropriate, and Ryoss manages the regional delivery while seeking to protect the referring firm's relationship and service standards. The program can also provide a commercial return to the referring partner. Ryoss describes the program as selective rather than a volume driven referral model, with an emphasis on credibility, standards and longer term alignment.
The available capability spans areas such as market entry, company setup, Employer of Record, recruitment, HR, compliance, IT and operational support, as well as workplace and property requirements across Southeast Asia.
The objective is not to encourage professional firms to sell services they do not understand.
It is almost the opposite.
Know where your expertise ends, but have confidence in what happens next.
The strongest advisers build networks, not just capabilities
No professional services firm can be everything to every client.
Nor should it try to be.
What distinguishes many strong advisers is their ability to understand what a client needs, recognise when specialist expertise is required and bring the right people into the conversation.
For firms whose clients are increasingly looking toward Southeast Asia, having credible regional relationships can therefore become an important extension of their own client proposition.
You do not need to have every answer.
Sometimes the greater value is knowing who does.
For professional services firms interested in understanding how the Ryoss Global Partner Program works, further information is available here: