“September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression.”, the former head of federal reserve, Ben Bernanke, said. Although seven years have passed since the country has broken out of the crisis, many companies are constantly affected by the fickle health of the economy.

Richard Martin, who is a publicly certified accountant, founded Martin & Associates in 2003. The company provides accounting and financial accounting services such as business consulting, investment review, and tax planning to individual and business clients. For example, it calculates the gross profit percentage for its customer and gives advices on whether its customer needs to adjust production quantity or the pricing. Moreover, Martin & Associates analyzes businesses from a financial perspective, often resulting in financial advisements. When their customers are in debt, Martin & Associates evaluate the financial health of the company and make adjustments necessary to return to a healthy cash flow. What differentiates Martin & Associates from other accounting firms is its commitment to establish valuable relationships with its client base customers. The company truly believes that the success of their clients impacts the success of Martin & Associates significantly.

Further, Martin correlated the state of the economy to his firm by insisting it is all a “chain effect.” The prosperity of Martin & Associates depends on the financial health of its clients. When its clients are financially healthy, there is a more rapid rate of payment and a steadier flow of consulting appointments as they seek advice with investing their surplus cash; however, during times of economic hardship, more effort is required on part of Martin & Associates to ensure that payments are made within a feasible period. If one of its customers is not performing well, it affects Martin & Associates directly because the customers do not have the means to pay the company for its financial services. When their clients file for bankruptcy and go out of business, Martin & Associates feel immense pressure d to actively seek out more clients by going through additional service providers and networking. Interestingly, a large amount of their new client base comes as a result of referrals.

Besides the broad economic environment, the movement of the federal interest rate impacts the client of Martin & Associate the most, inversely impacting them. “The lower the interest rate, the less interest expenses for my clients, resulting in more liquidity. In times of notably high liquidity, my clients seek additional financial consulting”, stated Mr. Martin. When Martin & Associate’s client owns greater amount of capital, they tend to invest in capital goods therefore demand more financial advices. For example, a client with additional cash flow for any given time period, may want to invest in additional land or equipment, and seeks advice from Martin & Associates as to what the financial return of those investments may be.

Additionally, government regulations are one of biggest challenges Martin & Associates is currently facing. Every time a new law or act is put in place, its clients must reallocate their budget breakdown to meet the needs of the change. An example of this may be additional health insurance costs as a result of the Affordable Care Act, or a change in minimum wage. In addition to these widespread regulations, there are also additional changes that vary from industry to industry (being that their client base varies from insurance brokers, to tech companies to restaurant chains). For this reason, it is important that all the employees at Martin & Associates stay up-to-date on changes within various industries and have the knowledge to respond to those changes.

Furthermore, Martin & Associates is an outstanding company because of their personal ethical decisions within their own firm. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, many businesses have made changes within the company in order to survive and remain its status within the market. Some companies offer discounts to its customer in order to maintain its competitiveness. However, instead of lowering the price, Martin & Associates decided to maintain its original price but provide added service. “Once you lower your price, you are competing with other companies on the price level instead of competing on service. Lower price may imply lower quality, and competing on price alone does not build loyalty with customers”, Martin said.

Another significant obstacle that Martin & Associates have strategically conquered is the growing popularity of the Internet. The Internet era not only affects the way people communicate with each other, but also affects the competitive landscape in the accounting field. With the convenience Internet provides, instead of seeking financial advices and services from traditional accounting firm, people turn to online software. In order to raise its company’s competitiveness, Martin suggested that his company understand the trend and further provide extra services to its clients. He mentioned, “Online software servers are able to reach a huge amount of audiences. Technology brings competition, therefore companies have to keep up with the technological innovation to provide added value services.”

Starting a business of your own might not be easy task but keeping the company running through economic hardship is certainly harder. By maintaining relationship close relationship with its clients, creating added value services, and constantly monitoring the economical trend of the market, Martin & Associates is able to withstand through the ups and downs of the economy.