What tools and applications will you implement?
David Bergstein
By David Bergstein, CPA.CITP
Director, Strategic Relationships, CCH, Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting
Via The Intelligent Solutions Blog at Wolters Kluwer
It is the end of the year and every thought leader is listing the results of this year’s predictions and making predictions on what the trends will be next year. This past year we saw cellular broadband begin to dominate wireless – one of David P McClure’s predictions. He also predicted that “Internet capabilities will increase dramatically, if you pay” (CPA Technology Advisor’s Tech Predictions for 2011).
Randy Johnston predicts that there will be a new generation of web browsers – “browser enablement” – that offer support of HTML5. He also expects to see an easy-to-use generalized dashboard tool: “analytics in dashboards or Excel components” (The Technology World to Come).
Roman Kepczyk also made a few predictions such as an increase in “Secure Data Transfer” via the use of portals etc., and an increase in “front-end scanning” (2011 IT Predictions and 2010 Results). I could go on and on about results for 2010 or predictions for 2011 but what I am looking for is your input on what you see yourself and your firms doing in 2011.
What will your firm be doing this year?
- Will you have three monitors per person in the office now?
- Is your firm moving towards a less paper/paperless environment?
- What do you see happening in the area of “workflow enhancement?”
- What processes and tools are you looking for vendors to employ?
- Will you be utilizing “web services” to connect disparate applications?
- Will you be “virtualizing” your desktop?
I am looking for your thoughts not just in the area of technology but in the area of tools and applications that you want to see reengineered or enhanced.
Predictions for accounting firms
I see change coming in how accounting firms make investments in hardware and software and how they deploy applications. Many firms will now start to think of the cloud (SaaS) or a central data center as the repository of their data – lower cost to the firm and accessible from almost anywhere.
Dashboards will be employed by managers and partners as a means of measuring and monitoring on mobile devices such as iPads or the multitude of tablets that will be released in 2011. Laptops and mobile monitors will be employed in the field in much greater numbers as more work is performed in the clients’ office to justify billings.
COMMENT: What is your prediction or wish list for your firm for 2011? What do you want to see implemented or changed? Click here to comment on Bergstein’s blog.
The 50 Most-Popular Posts Reveal Hot-Button Issues.
Nothing in 2010 ranked as important to accounting firms as client service, satisfaction and retention.
No wonder, of course: After the financial crash made economic casualties of otherwise healthy, long-time customers, firms could only focus on the clients that remained. In fact, client concerns eclipsed long-running concerns over staffing shortages.
To be sure, many things attracted CPA attention in 2010, some important, some trivial, some urgent, and, thankfully, some just fun.
But a close analysis of reader interest also provides clues for what 2011 may hold.
Will client retention shift into new add-on revenue?
Will Washington wrangling deliver more business, or just more trouble?
Where will the new revenue streams come from?
And who will be doing the work?
At CPA Trendlines, we’ll be tracking those issues and more.
Meanwhile, here’s your chance to catch up on what you may have missed and what your colleagues and competitors have been talking about.
Click here for The Top 50 Most-Read CPA Trendlines Posts in 2010
Ranked by page views.
Here’s your chance to catch up on what you may have missed and what your colleagues and competitors have been talking about.
- The 24 Personalities of Individual Tax Returns (and the Clients behind Them)
One day at the offices of Frank J. Pavlica CPA in Inverness, Ill., it dawned on the folks that tax returns, like clients, have their own personalities. They named 24. CPA Trendlines readers have added 50 more… and counting.
- Busy Season Confidence Wanes as Congress Dawdles, Economy Stumbles
In September, only 17% of accountants predicted a tougher season than last year’s. By December, the number had risen to 28%.
- Fun Facts: 12 Accountant Celebrities
Before they were famous, and sometimes after, too… these celebrities were accountants.
- How Clients Squeeze CPAs on Audit Fees
Tougher clients take tough positions.
- Top 100 Firms: New Technologies Boost Client Retention and Revenue Growth
Survey Shows 82% of CPAs at Top 100 Accounting Firms Tie New Technology Adoption to Client Retention and Firm Growth.
- Five Tips for Redesigning Organizations for High Performance
Try one today; see what happens
- Five Top Tech Trends in 60 Seconds [VIDEO]
Number 1: “Everybody wants to be able to work from anywhere, all the time.
- 80 Ways for Accountants to Use Twitter
Answering the question: “What can Twitter do for you?”
- When Will Accounting Firms Be Ready to Start Hiring Again?
Firms maintain headcounts 4% smaller than last year and 8% off pre-recession peak.
- Are You Ready to Raise Your Prices?
After several years of intense pricing pressure, 83% of CPA firm decision-makers say they plan to increase book rates next year.
- 4,700 More Jobless Accountants This Month
Headcount hits new post-crash low.
- 1 in 5 Junior Staffers Planning to Quit
Expect a new hiring crisis.
- 88% of Accountants Are on Facebook
But LinkedIn Is All Business. How to Get a Job: 73% Use LinkedIn.
- Top 10 Fatal Flaws for CPA Leaders
If you think you’re immune, think again
- 36% of Clients Are Dissatisfied and Already Shopping for Another Accounting Firm
Clients seek broader array of services
- Partner Pay Off 3% on 1.4% Revenue Rise
Strong showing from midsized accounting firms through recession.
- CPA Net Income Per Partner Surges 16%
(What recession?)
- Don’t Believe the Lies
CPAs brainwash themselves. Here’s how to fight back and finish strong.
- Salaries Up for New Accounting Grads
While starting salaries for many others decline
- 25 Surefire Ways to Keep a Client for Life
Client service is not just smile training — it’s about treating people the way they wanted to be treated.
- Three Secrets to Easy Billings
Test your firm’s business savvy.
- Five Things to Keep You Awake at Night, from the Incoming AICPA Chairman [VIDEO]
Change is coming hard and fast.
- Eight Ways the Smallest Accounting Firms Compete and Win
What Big Firms Can Learn from Sole Practitioners and Small Firms.
- Too Many Accounting Firms Suffer for Lack of Skilled Leaders, Seven Keys Survey Says
Leadership and management skills are at a premium as we navigate through a recession and a period of unprecedented change.
- Eight Essentials for Measuring Client Service
Don’t wait to find out how well you are serving clients.
- The Big Mistake CPAs Make in Client Service
How to find new success by shifting your firm’s focus from service-centric silos to client-centric goal-setting.
- Price Wars, Partner Layoffs, and Three More Things to Worry About
Will low-balling cause long-term damage?
- SURVEY RESULTS: Accounting Firms Re-Accelerate Technology Spending
Vast majority of firms investing heavily.
- NEW SURVEY RESULTS: Accounting Firms Dive into Digital Marketing
Networking moves to social media.
- Six Reasons Your Big Plans Will Fail
Why do well-formulated strategies fail so often?
- Five Client Retention Tactics You Can’t Afford to Ignore
Believe it or not, as “basic” as some client service procedures are to some, they are very unique to others.
- Why the Next Boom Could be the Worst Thing that Ever Happens to Accountants
And how you can avoid the pitfalls.
- The Ticking Time Bomb in Your Firm
New evidence suggests many CPAs are ignoring malpractice risks.
- Four Tough Questions Facing Every Accounting Firm about Client Service
And dozens of possible answers!
- Best Pay Raises Going to Senior Staffers
But where are the jobs? Companies await economic restart.
- Improving Your Focus With a Niche Accounting Practice
It’s actually much easier to talk about a niche practice than a jack-of-all-trades accounting firm.
- 15 Reasons to Dump a Client
You know the type.
- Can the CPA Techies Get Some Respect?
And will “the cloud” make them obsolete?
- 43 Steps to Gold-Plated Client Service
Never lose a client again.
- Client Service: The Only Thing That Matters Today
Four ways to prove you’re serious about customer satisfaction.
- 70% of Tax Professionals Scan Tax Documents
And four reasons why you should too
- Are You Already Missing the Next Generation of Clients?
Sure, the current generation of accounting firm owners faces a crisis in finding the people for succession.
- The Cost of Staff Turnover: $32,500
Lose People, Lose Money
- CPA Jobs Set for Surge. But When?
Economists predict demand for accountants and auditors will explode over the next few years.
- The Big Accounting Software Packages You Need to Know to Get Hired Today
QuickBooks, Oracle and SAP dominate the want ads.
- The Coming War for Talent: It’s about the Money
Money lures one in five staffers to new job.
- BLS Projects Strong Jobs Outlook for Accountants
Especially CPAs.
- Setting Up Your Accounting Firm for Document Management in the Cloud
What you need to know about cloud computing.
- Are You Getting Your Money’s Worth from Your State CPA Society? [VIDEO]
Here’s what CPAs should expect from their state association in these tough times.
- Strategy Execution: What’s Standing in Your Way?
From the management experts who first calculated that only 10% of strategies are actually implemented.
The pace will only accelerate.
by Rick Telberg
If you thought the pace of shakeout and consolidation among accounting firms couldn’t get any more frenzied, then just wait ’til next year.
When all the deals are tallied, the year could well have hit new highs in mergers and acquisitions in some markets, including New York, Florida, California, Texas and Illinois. Now those same markets seem poised to step it up a notch.
To one CEO of a regional firm based in the Northeast, the pace has gone beyond busy, to frenzied, to manic and, now, in his word, “panicked.” And he expects the trend to accelerate.
READ MORE →
Metzler
But can they cut any further?
Despite little or no growth, profits at some 80% of U.S. CPA firms are coming through the recession relatively unscathed thanks largely to early and aggressive cost-cutting, according to the 2010 National Management of Accounting Practice benchmarking survey conducted by the AICPA and the Texas Society of CPAs
“CPA firms really sharpened their pencils and carefully managed their expenses,” said James C. Metzler, AICPA vice president – small firm interests. “So while revenues were flat, CPA firms still came out ahead on profits.”
Eighty percent of the CPA firms surveyed reported either a decline in revenue, no growth or modest growth over the two years from May 2008 through June 2010, indicating “flat is the new up,” Metzler said.
“Firms are making partners more accountable for the revenue and the bottom line. It’s showing up in the survey statistics. We are seeing leaner, meaner accounting firms,” Metzler said.
“The next challenge for CPA firms will be how to maintain or increase that profitability,” noted Metzler. “Firms have managed expenses so closely the past two years that bottom line growth will have to come from new lines of service such as cloud computing and higher-value consulting and advice.”
To flourish in this increasingly difficult climate, CEOs are looking for creativity in their executive teams and advisors.
In fact, the authors of a vast new IBM survey of 1,500 CEOs across the globe say top executives now believe creativity rivals integrity as the single most important quality in a leader.
“Creative” leaders will need to be more comfortable with ambiguity and experimentation. To motivate and communicate with a new generation of followers and stakeholders, they will need to embrace, in the words of one unnamed professional services CEO in the U.S., “disruptive innovation and continuous re-invention.”
The new mission of tomorrow’s top leaders will be two-fold:
1. Reinvent customer relationships – 84% of U.S. CEOs say “getting connected” to better understand, predict and give customers what they really want is their top priority. That’s somewhat less than the global average. IBM suggests that some U.S. CEOs may be “failing to capitalize fully on the customer data they collect.”
2. Build operating dexterity – 36% of U.S. CEOs are focusing on simplifying their products and operations, chiefly, it seems, through continued cost-cutting. Some 64% of U.S. CEOs “are intent on reducing their fixed and increasing their variable costs, so that they can rapidly scale up or down.” In most other nations, CEOs are emphasizing re-thinking their systems over continued cost-cutting.
Ignoring complexity is no longer an option for CEOs, CFOs and other finance and accounting professionals. Will you allow complexity to strangle improvement, crush morale, or undermine profitability?
The bottom-line question is how will you and your organization respond? How will you develop “the creative leadership, customer relationships and operating dexterity” to turn complexity into a competitive advantage?
A survey of the world’s top CEOs provides clues to the bottom-line needs and expectations of companies and clients.
by Rick Telberg
Finance and accounting professionals may be unprepared for a world of increasing complication in 2011 unless they can learn to be more entrepreneurial and innovative than ever before.
The risks of failure, as we’ve seen from the banking debacle, remain real and ever-present.
At the root of the problem is a world of global inter-connectedness, according to a new IBM survey of 1,541 CEOs, general managers and senior public sector leaders, including 290 respondents in the U.S. The common factors are the issues and problems of worldwide integration.
The study provides a roadmap for some of the biggest challenges and opportunities in the coming New Year and rare insight into the concerns, wants and needs for people like your boss or your clients. To be sure, IBM is addressing the effectiveness of physical and digital infrastructures. But any CPA or CFO understands immediately and intuitively the meaning for finance an accounting.
READ MORE →
