Michael Ramos, Author at CPA Trendlines

The Training Mindset: Mapping Firm Attitudes to Performance

What Corporate America knows that CPAs ignore: Training pays.

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By Michael Ramos
Michael Ramos + Associates

To maintain their licenses, professionals are required to meet annual continuing education requirements. To practice in certain areas (e.g., government audits) or maintain a designation (e.g., Certified Financial Planner, Certified Fraud Examiner) also requires continuing education. Thus was born the multibillion-dollar continuing professional education industry, to meet the needs of millions of professionals forced to comply with continuing education requirements.

MORE: Top CPE Trends: How Accountants Are Re-Tooling for 2017 | CPE Survey: Why Some CPAs Are Focusing on Accounting & Financial Reporting This Year | Ohio CPA Society Teams with CPA Trendlines to Improve CPE ROI | How to Choose the Right CPE | The Missing Link: Developing Your People to Achieve Profitability |

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Outside of the professions, most businesses face few if any mandated training requirements. Though not required, businesses still train their employees regularly and at great cost. One study shows that the typical small business trains each employee an average of 40 hours each year – the same as a CPA.

Sadly, most CPA firms do not share this mindset. Whether it’s because of the overt regulatory nature of professional CPE requirements or for some other reason, compliance with licensing requirements continues to be a major driver for training at most CPA firms. Few firms approach training as an investment of strategic value.

OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

How to Build a Powerhouse Learning Team for Your CPA Firm

Create competitive value by combining practitioners and educators on the same team.

By Michael Ramos and Cate Miller

CPAs bring a diverse range of skills to any business problem. At small firms, partners wear many hats, including management of the learning function. But as firms grow, it soon becomes apparent that one of the firm’s partners – no matter how talented he or she may be – is not functioning at their highest and best use if they have to manage the entire learning function on their own.

Part 3 in a 3-Part Series: Run Training Like a Business

Part 1: 4 Steps to Get More from Your Training Budget

Part 2: How to Manage CPE by the Numbers

Part 3: How to Build a Powerhouse Learning Team

With size comes a diversity of learning needs and management of the learning function becomes more complex. The opportunity cost of having firm partners and managers limit their billable hours to coordinate training begins to outweigh the costs of engaging the help of a learning professional.

Thus is born the need for a learning team.

OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

How to Manage CPE by the Numbers

Developing and monitoring learning metrics. By Michael Ramos and Cate Miller Accounting is the language of business. CPAs help business owners understand and manage their business by analyzing financial and non-financial metrics. To improve the results of the firm’s professional development efforts, … Continued

OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

4 Steps to Get More from Your Training Budget

How to run your training like a business.

By Michael Ramos and Cate Miller

With CPA firms spending 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent of revenue on learning, budgets can be hundreds of thousands of dollars even for a modest-sized firm. But firms invest in learning because it is a critical component in addressing many of the top issues facing CPA firms today.

Part 1 in a 3-Part Series: Run Training Like a Business

Part 1: 4 Steps to Get More from Your Training Budget

Part 2: How to Manage CPE by the Numbers

Part 3: How to Build a Powerhouse Learning Team

The best organizations view learning as an investment, and they manage their investment the same way a venture capitalist manages a portfolio company – like a business. Unfortunately, many CPA firms have a less disciplined approach to learning, which means they’re probably leaving money on the table. READ MORE →

OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

Three Tips for Creating Training Metrics

Plus: Effective budgeting and management.

By Michael Ramos
Michael Ramos and Associates

CPA firms want to establish metrics for their learning function as a way to monitor and manage their learning activities. Ideally, firms would do their learning strategies and goals first and then use these strategies to drive the related metrics.

But we do not live in an ideal world, and some firms choose to establish metrics while simultaneously working on firmwide learning structures and goals.

MORE: High-Impact Learning: 4 Ways to Maximize CPE ROI

Recognizing the risks inherent in prematurely defining metrics, here are three tips for creating meaningful learning metrics at your firm that will help manage the learning function and drive performance. READ MORE →

OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

High-Impact Learning: 4 Ways to Maximize CPE ROI

And the fatal mistake CPA firms make in their training budgets.

By Michael Ramos

For years CPA firms have tried to measure the ROI from their learning and development spend, an effort that has produced mostly unsatisfactory results.

Standard learning and development metrics provide some insight into the training function, but firm partners are more interested in measuring something much more elusive: tangible economic benefit from training spend. What the profession has struggled with is, while measuring costs is easy, measuring direct return has proven to be quite difficult. Faced with an incomplete ROI model, firms turn to the only side of the equation they can control, the cost side, which leads them to take the only option that seems viable – cutting costs as a way to drive ROI.

The problem is firms are asking the wrong question. Instead of focusing on precise measures of return on training dollars, CPA firms would be better served by asking the more subjective question, “What should we do to make sure our training dollars are being spent wisely?” The answer to that question may lack the precision firm leaders desire, but it does have one distinct advantage over precise objective measures: It is a question firms can answer. And the answer, if thoughtfully considered, may achieve the ultimate goal: providing high-impact training at an affordable cost. READ MORE →

GROWTH STRATEGIES

Four New CPA Opportunities for the New Economy

CPA Mike Ramos sees government policies moving the economy in a new direction.

This will affect your clients’ business — and their business needs. Your opportunity is to provide a service to address those changing needs.

Four promising areas to consider:

1. Tax planning and compliance: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) — dubbed the stimulus package — brought major changes to the tax code. So does the Obama administration’s budget. The tax code overhaul offers significant opportunities in tax planning and compliance.

2. Services for state and local governments: Firms skilled in audits of state and local governments and the requirements of OMB Circular A-133 are well positioned to expand their practice. The ARRA’s reporting requirements go far beyond existing rules for those receiving federal funds. ARRA fund recipients have many questions.

3. Services for nonprofit organizations: Many nonprofits are receiving ARRA funding. They face the same issues facing state and local government receiving ARRA funds. Moreover, many nonprofits will face another challenge: preparing for their first A-133 audit.

4. Renewable energy: Keep your eye on wind, solar and other renewable energy sources. The Obama administration has signaled it will make significant investments in the rapidly growing renewable energy sector.

In these historic times, Ramos says, CPA firms that decline to change their pre-2007 business model risk being overtaken by competitors.

via Four Trends CPAs Need to Know.

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