Don’t leave success to chance. There’s no better time than the busy season to be planning for your firm retreat.
Meanwhile, how’s busy season so far? Check the Stress-O-Meter.
by Rick Telberg
At Large
Are you asking the right questions?
Sometimes the questions are more important than the answers. If you don’t ask the right questions, you don’t get the right answers.
We’ve been asking questions now for about two decades. We’ve talked to all sizes, types and flavors of CPA firms. We’ve talked to managing partners, partners in charge, seniors, juniors, staffers. We’ve talked to a lot of clients too. Some of the clients were CPAs themselves. And we’ve talked to vendors — some of whom, by virtue of their aerie perspective, know more about running a CPA practice than many CPAs do. By one back-of-the-envelope count, we’ve had maybe 10 million contacts over the years with tax, accounting and finance professionals, their clients and their vendors. READ MORE →
Beyond the click: Web advertising and marketing trends in the accounting and finance channel.
Original air date: 12/28/06 (27 mins)
Produced in Association with Doubleclick and Bay Street Group Research.
Click Here for more…
Description
B2B marketing experts deconstruct the purchase decision cycle for accounting and finance professionals. They share experiences for using the Web to maximize brand awareness, brand validation, “further learning,†consultative selling, lead generation and shortening the sales cycle. They also drill intro campaign measurement tools that go far beyond simply counting clicks and other shortcut “McMetricsâ„¢.â€
Moderator
Hank Berkowitz, AICPA Dir. Online Publishing & Business Development
Panelists
Rick Bruner, Research Director, Doubleclick
Tom Greve, National Advertising Sales Director, AICPA
Sukanya Mitra, Managing Editor, AICPA Insiderâ„¢ e-Newsletter Group
Rick Telberg, President, Bay Street Research Group, LLC
Click Here for more… READ MORE →
We are in the midst of the largest entrepreneurial surge this country has ever seen, Fortune Small Business reports.
According to Small Business Administration projections, nearly 672,000 new companies with employees were created in 2005 — the biggest business birthrate in U.S. history, 30,000 more startups than in 2004, and 12 percent more than at the height of dot-com hysteria in 1996. “And the trend shows no sign of abating,” Fortune says. Sixty-six percent of respondents in a 2006 Yahoo Small Business and Harris Interactive survey said they wanted to start a company someday; 37 percent of those said they hoped to do so within the next five years.
READ MORE →
Staff shortages won’t be solved by just throwing money at the problem.
Next question: Will telecommuting hurt your career? Join the new study. Get the answers.
by Rick Telberg
On Careers
For over a decade, recruitment and retention have been among the biggest challenges facing the business of accounting. The number of accounting graduates and new CPAs has failed to keep up with the number of available positions. Difficulties with recruitment have contributed to a grueling workload that has maybe half of all CPAs open to, if not eager for, any opportunity for better pay or less stress. READ MORE →
“I don’t know anybody under 30 who has ever looked at a classified advertisement in a newspaper.” — Rupert Murdoch, November 2005
“CPA wanted…†just won’t cut it anymore.
Analysis by Bruce W. Marcus
GET THE FREE DOWNLOAD: A White Paper Offered in partnership with The Marcus Letter
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
“CPA wanted. At least 5 years experience with audits. Tax experience a plus. Benefits.â€
It’s amazing how much recruiting advertising is as sparse as that, seeking accounting professionals with the same limited imagination that a storekeeper might use to hire someone to sweep the floor.
No wonder recruiting is such a problem for accounting firms and finance departments.
In these days of acute shortages of trained and experienced professional personnel, in an era of intensive competition between firms for superior personnel, it’s startling to see recruiting techniques that may have worked in the depression years, but are certainly not up to the needs of today’s accounting firms.
Of all the competitive points faced today by accounting firms, perhaps the most urgent is recruiting. With the explosion of work caused by new regulation, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, with the shortage of much needed skilled professionals, especially those versed in new regulations and technologies, with the competition for this kind of talent most urgently needed in smaller communities and particularly in smaller firms, with greater demands from an increasingly sophisticated clientele, new views of recruiting become a major concern.
MORE…
– 9 Essential Ingredients to Fixing the Problem
– 4 Management Techniques You Must know
GET IT NOW: Recruiting the Best Talent in a Competitive Environment. FREE DOWNLOAD. READ MORE →
Mergers, acquisitions roil CPAs.
Join the Study; Get the Instant Download.
by Rick Telberg
At Large
Of all the issues that CPAs have with accounting software, the never-ending trail of vendor mergers and acquisitions stand out as one of the biggest pet peeves. From the low end to the high end, CPAs have watched in horror as big fish gobble up the small fish and eliminate or at least reduce support for software products that accountants have come to know and with which they comfortably make money.
“As fast as we buy one [accounting software package] and get used to it, it gets bought out by someone else and is stuck on a back shelf,” laments Sonny Julian, head of a small CPA practice in Independence, Mo. READ MORE →
HP Unveils Smartphone with Powerful Wireless Email Capabilities for Mobile Professionals
BARCELONA, Spain–(BUSINESS WIRE)–HP has introduced the first in a new series of smartphone — the HP iPAQ 500 series Voice Messenger, which features voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) capabilities, “push†email and the latest Windows® Mobile 6 operating system.
With up to six hours of continuous talk time on a fully charged battery, the HP iPAQ Voice Messenger also leads the competition in battery life. The HP iPAQ 500 series Voice Messenger is expected to be available this spring in the United States direct from HP and select authorized dealers. It was announced at the 3GSM World Congress 2007 in Barcelona.
Additionally, the HP iPAQ Voice Messenger has built-in Wi-Fi to provide business customers a VoIP alternative to traditional office phone setups. By integrating the HP iPAQ Voice Messenger with office phone systems, businesses can eliminate the need for desk phones and benefit from streamlined communications and reduced IT management. The smartphone also includes GSM/EDGE and Bluetoothâ„¢ wireless technology connectivity options. READ MORE →
BALTIMORE, MD – Hodes, Ulman, Pessin & Katz, P.A., one of Maryland’s larger law firms, is launching “Feed a CPA,†an annual program designed “to recognize the amazing work and dedication these brave men and women of the accounting world undertake this time of the year.”
On March 1, HUP&K will be delivering dinners from Sascha’s Catering, to three random CPA firms throughout the state, in the program’s inaugural year – covering Baltimore, Harford, and Howard counties. The law firm is a member of TAGLaw, an affiliate of the International Accounting group, or TIAG.
“CPAs are one of our great allies,†commented Seth Hodes, the law firm’s marketing director. “And since they barely come up to breathe this time of the year, we wanted to do something fun to thank them, while creating some goodwill between our firms.â€
READ MORE →
For the fifth consecutive year, Information Security is the technology initiative expected to have the greatest effect in the upcoming year.
A related initiative, Identity and Access Management, jumped from sixth place in 2006 to second in 2007, according to the AICPA’s 18th Annual Top Technology Initiatives survey.
Privacy Management also nudged its way up from fifth to fourth place, while four new initiatives made their debut in this year’s top 10: Securing and Controlling Information Distribution; Mobile and Remote Computing; Electronic Archiving and Data Retention; and Document, Content and Knowledge Management. READ MORE →
As Seen in “Public Practice E-News,” from the Texas Society of Certified Public Accounatnts
“Study Explores What Clients Really Want
Rick Telberg and his Bay Street Group conducted an interesting study throughout 2006 on the expectation gap between CPA firms and their clients. This article highlights the results – and they may surprise you. For instance, 93 percent of CPAs believe half or most of their clients are sufficiently satisfied to recommend them. However, only 55 percent of clients would recommend the CPA firm they are currently using. Read this article for more key findings in the “New Expectations Gap†study and to download the study’s executive preview for free. Learn More.“
(Can’t log-in to the Texas CPA site? Click here to view the cached page.) READ MORE →
