Fredericton Chamber Names Teed Saunders Doyle Resilience Award Recipients
FREDERICTON – The Fredericton Chamber of Commerce has named accounting firm Teed Saunders Doyle as its 140 Carleton Resilience Award recipients. The award recognizes a business that has overcome a major challenge that was not exclusively financial in nature.
In 2010, Ralph Gorman, a long-time partner at the accounting firm died suddenly, leaving the rest of the organization without a succession plan (in addition to the two other senior partners also looking towards retirement). While dealing with the loss, the rest of the team decided to focus on the firm’s clients and keep moving forward with business as usual as much as possible. Complicating matters further, Teed Saunders Doyle was going through a period of significant business growth.
“Obviously going through this unexpected transition was a major challenge for our team. There is a close relationship between a client and their accountant and our first priority was working with Ralph’s clients to ensure that they saw no disruption in service,” said Jeff Saunders, partner at Teed Saunders Doyle, in a release “It was actually incredible to see our staff band together during such a difficult time, both professionally and personally – they deserve all the credit in the world.”
The challenge also spurred other changes at the firm.
“During this time, we were so focused on client service that we didn’t have much time to deal with the day-to-day operations of running a business – we liked that and so did our clients,” said T.J. Smith, a partner at the firm. “So much so that we decided to add a Chief Operations Officer to the team so that we could continue to spend almost all of our time on client work.”
“The importance of having a succession plan in place became very obvious to us, of course. This is something that we talk to clients about all the time, but it’s just something you don’t think about that much in your own business,” said John Landry, another partner. “Now we are strategically planning 5, 10, 15 years ahead and continue to be focused on our clients and growth.”
The award is presented by 140 Carleton, a Ross Ventures project, which will build a new 75,000 square foot premium class A mixed use building at the centre of Downtown Fredericton. It will be presented at the 2016 Business Excellence Awards on October 20, 2016 at the Delta Fredericton.