Paulo Luz, Co-Founder and CEO of TCAGest, Speaks to The Silicon Review: ‘We Exist to Leverage the Maximization of all Business Projects of our Customers, by Rendering Services of Excellence.

“At TCAGest, we bring together a group of professionals with specific training in the most diverse areas, which offer guarantees for the provision of certified services in accounting, taxation, personnel management, consulting, and management support.”

TCAGest is a global organization supporting the accounting and management of companies. With an experience of over two decades, it exists to provide entrepreneurs with the best elements to support decision-making.

The company was founded in 1990 and is based in Portugal. Proud Moment TCAGest was this year awarded as ‘Best Accounting & Management Consulting Firm 2020—Europe’. In Portugal, TCAGest was distinguished by SCORING with the certification ‘Top 5% Best SMEs in Portugal’ 2020 edition. Also, TCAGest obtained an ‘Excellent’ (‘NS 5’) SCORING notation, which gives it the distinction ‘TOP 5%/2020’ in terms of economic and financial sustainability.

Interview Excerpt: Paulo Luz

Q. Being a global organization supporting accounting and business management, how uniquely does TCAGest serve its customers and partners?

Information is, nowadays, one of the engines of human activity or an organization. The truth is that an organization needs information to execute its mission and fulfill its objectives. In a society that increasingly focuses on information as one of its most dominant concerns, an organization’s need to have the appropriate infrastructure for its collection, storage, and processing is critical. That said, a large part of TCAGest’s efforts is focused on this goal.

Any modern organization uses information and communication technologies to ensure the proper function of information systems and support information flow. Thus, TCAGest pioneered the concept of online management by providing a web service exclusively dedicated to the client—My Accountant. Our investment in new technologies allows us to give the customer just in time access to accounting, financial, and human resources information, contributing decisively so that company managers can conduct their decision-making process in a fast and reliable way.

We assumed a differentiating and winning attitude, a posture that has been decisive for us to become a respected entity in the Management Consulting and Support Services segment over the years. There are many customers who since 1990 have trusted in our services. The excellent fulfillment of the principles of rigor, quality, and added value leads us to believe that we can continue to surprise our performance positively.

Q. Would you like to talk about the management tools your company utilize to streamline the process better?

Management tools are techniques and models used to improve processes and improve companies’ performance, reducing risks and increasing business assertiveness.

In the control tools category, we can include methods to control finances, stock, performance, quality, etc. In short, management tools allow you to monitor what is being done and achieved, to make possible corrections and adjustments.

To help companies/clients, our first objective is to understand the needs of our clients. Therefore, we always diagnose the main problems faced by the respective teams and survey possible errors in the execution of processes. From there, we implement the management tools, which are always chosen based on each client’s needs.

Q. How do you support entrepreneurs in their decision-making process? Share an overview.

Using the latest technologies and innovative practices in accounting and management, we present a wide range of services that meet each company’s most demanding needs, whether they are micro, small, and medium-sized businesses or large companies.

Importantly, with the provision of global services to support accounting and management, TCAGest provides just in time a large flow of current and credible information, taken in real-time from the management software with online access shared with customers. The KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) map with economic and financial indicators allows decision-makers and managers greater security and speed in the decision-making process.

At TCAGest, we bring together a group of professionals with specific training in the most diverse areas, which offer guarantees for the provision of certified services in accounting, taxation, personnel management, consulting, and management support.

Q. How do you measure success, and over what time frame? How are these metrics determined?

Anyone who decides to run a company needs to monitor the performance of their business constantly. To do this, some performance indicators are commonly used by companies to measure their success.

Still, we should not get ‘lost’ in the analysis of numerous criteria but should be assertive in what we want to analyze across the board. Thus, we chose the NPS (Net Promoter Score), the ROI, and the Turnover Index as the main measures of business success.

On the other hand, KPIs must be represented by numbers because it is much easier to analyze the level of your performance and whether it is reaching the established goal.

Let’s look at some examples:

NPS is a customer satisfaction survey. The great advantage of NPS is that it can be done in a simple, one-question survey:

• From zero to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company (brand, service, etc.) to a friend or acquaintance? The most commonly used conversion rate refers to sales. But it is not the only one, especially when it comes to digital marketing.

ROI is one of the most widely used organizational performance indicators to measure the profitability of a business, investment, or marketing action.

The formula is very simple:

• [(Earned Value - Spent Value) / Earned Value] x 100 ROI is used to determine how much the company earned for each monetary unit invested, which allows you to evaluate how specific initiatives contribute to the company’s bottom line.

Despite the above, it is also crucial to check how companies perform in relation to their people—the people who make the business happen.

One of the most objective indicators to measure your ability to keep your talents in the company is the Turnover Index. This index measures the percentage ratio between the variation of incoming and outgoing employees and the total number of them. The higher the Turnover Index, the greater the possibility that the company is not meeting the needs of its staff and thus tends to constantly lose talent to the competition.

Q. What new endeavors is your company currently undertaking?

We are currently investing in AI as it, in particular, will impact the way the world functions. Moreover, we have recently opened new offices in Madrid and Barcelona.

“Using the latest technologies and innovative practices in accounting and management, we present a wide range of services that meet each company’s most demanding needs, whether they are micro, small, and medium-sized businesses or large companies.”