Here’s what you’re looking for: Gale Crosley

OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

Technology Challenges the Accounting Profession

Every year, the 2025 Rosenberg MAP Survey asks the industry’s top consultants to share their observations from CPA firms across the country: How do you think the next 12 months will unfold? Trends? Predictions? Other thoughts? Also, how would you assess the last 12 months? Trends? Observations? Struggles?

Billable hours will remain under attack. They have to go.

By Gale Crosley
 The Rosenberg Survey

Technology will continue to challenge our ability to harness its power. Firms will need to continue to rely heavily on technology consultants to help them sort through the confusing array of options.

MORE: The 2025 Rosenberg MAP Survey is available from CPA Trendlines here.
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Beware of capabilities promised but not yet ready for prime time. Plan to be on a continuous shopping trip in multiple categories of tech because of the rapid advancement in platforms.
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OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

Challenges for the Accounting Profession: Private Equity, Offshoring, Training New Hires

Chalkboard saying indicating that time to change is now

New tech will force firms to examine value pricing if they haven’t already.

By Gale Crosley
The Rosenberg National Survey of CPA Firm Statistics

Private equity interest in the profession will continue. New PE organizations are dotting the landscape, showing interest in firms from the top to the near bottom of the market. Family offices and ESOP investment bankers/consultants are appearing. In the future, firms will have multiple alternative sources of equity capital.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Every year, The 2024 Rosenberg National Survey of CPA Firm Statistics asks the profession’s top consultants two sets of questions:

    • How do you think the next 12 months will unfold? Trends? Predictions? Other thoughts?
    • How would you assess the last 12 months? Trends? Observations? Struggles?

MORE: Recalibration Is Key for Accounting Profession | People Development Still a Concern | Focus on Intentional Growth | Accounting Firms Upshift to Corporate Model | Tech Anxiety Paralyzing Some Accounting Firms | What’s Going to Happen? Lots, Say Consultants | Growth and Complacency Must Concern Accounting Firms This Year | Solving Staffing Requires Intention | How Accounting Firms Are Handling the Staff Shortage | The Future of Fees | As Private Equity Closes In, Firms Seek New Answers to Staffing Problems | When Staffing Falls Short, Clients Get Culled | How Accounting Firms Are Dealing with Retirement | Next Five Years Are Critical for Accounting Firms | Staffing Turnover’s Down, But Why? | What’s Your Firm Worth? Private Equity Wants to Know | The New Pipeline: Outsourcing and Offshoring | Is This the Last Year of Accounting’s Golden Age?
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Private equities that have already invested are starting to more fully understand the vast operational differences between corporate America and CPA firms. This will put pressure on PE-backed firms to perform in more sophisticated ways. On the revenue growth side, corporate-world staples such as effective firmwide pipeline processes, professional sales organizations and a repeatable innovation (product management) process will start cropping up.
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GROWTH STRATEGIES

OUTLOOK: It’s Time for a New Business Model

three people looking at charts on laptop and papers

How about a chief growth officer?

By Gale Crosley
The Rosenberg MAP Survey

EDITOR’S NOTE: Every year, the Rosenberg MAP Survey asks the industry’s top consultants to share their observations from CPA firms across the country. How do you think the next 12 months will unfold? Also, how would you assess the last 12 months?

Our homogenous profession consists of firms with similar ownership and governance structures and business models. Looking forward we’ll see an increased variety of approaches.

MORE: Rosenberg MAP: Partner Incomes Surge 11.4%
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Many will look more like the corporate world, where ownership is not just in the hands of equity partners. Governance structures will include a C-suite of non-CPA players. Business models will include the melting away of geographic borders, value-based pricing and a variety of career paths.
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OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

OUTLOOK 2023: Top Five Trends

Strategic thinking is at a premium.

By Gale Crosley
The Rosenberg MAP Survey: National Study of CPA Firm Statistics

I suspect the next 12 months will bring four sizable developments.

MORE OUTLOOK: Compensation Gets Creative |  The Office Is Over | Private Equity Comes for Accounting Firms
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This has been an unusual year of high uncertainty, unpredictability and sapped energy among our profession’s leaders. Many are facing the most significant business issues and opportunities of their careers. The profession has experienced nearly a century of relative business model certainty and predictability in market conditions, punctuated by occasional disruptive blips.

However, it’s not just one dynamic, such as the dot-com bust, the events leading up to Sarbanes-Oxley or the Great Recession. Rather we are seeing a confluence of four major thunderbolts – disruptive technologies, shifting economic conditions, non-traditional competition and fast-moving regulations. Add to this extensive talent constraint, work-from-anywhere options, unexpected market demand and the relatively new enthusiasm of private equities to invest in our firms. And don’t forget continuing baby-boomer retirements. Wow! I’m exhausted just writing about it.

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FEATURED

Why It’s Time for an Acquisition

Put your firm in the best possible position.

By Gale Crosley
For The Rosenberg MAP Survey

Now more than a year from the start of the pandemic, the long-term ramifications to the accounting industry show us morphing into an “anytime anywhere” work environment.

MORE: Three Ways the Accounting Profession Has Changed | Ramping Up for the Year Ahead
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You choose when and where you want to work – not necessarily just office or home, but wherever you are with your laptop or mobile device. As consultants, we have already been living this life for years. Our office is in an airplane, airport, Starbucks, hotel lobby, etc.
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FEATURED

We’re in the Fast Lane… Can Your Partners Keep Up?

Woman driving a sports carYou need to invest where you haven’t before.

By Gale Crosley

We’re operating now in the super-fast lane. The most significant change is the exposure of gaps in our firms – areas that are holding us back.

MORE: SURVEY: Firms Must Keep Adapting | SURVEY: We Adapted to Remote Work … Now What? | SURVEY: 2020’s Disruptions Are Only the Beginning | COVID Brought Us More and Better Client Communication
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Mostly it starts with mindsets. The viability of virtual work environments is obviously a big one. Tech companies have been operating virtually for over 20 years. We’re finally catching up.
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CLIENT SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES

Help Clients by Pivoting to Projections

https://cpatrendlines.com/2020/04/01/help-clients-by-pivoting-to-projections/Today’s crisis needs analysts more than historians.

By Gale Crosley

Major upheavals in economic conditions present an opportunity for significant growth. For firms prepared to embrace this concept, it’s Go Time for new service innovations that clients and prospects want, need and are willing to pay for.

SEE: All CPA Trendlines Special Crisis Coverage

MORE: Home Alone. But Not Really. | Dicey Disruptions | Be a Consultant or Be Left Behind | Sustainable Innovation: How to Pull It Off
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With so many of us sequestered at home, it may be some time since you’ve actually been in your car. But you’ve probably not forgotten the difference between the view from your rearview mirror and what you see out the windshield. Applying the metaphor to accounting highlights the contrast between where we’ve been and where we need to go as a profession in the current environment.
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CHECKLIST

Home Alone. But Not Really.

https://cpatrendlines.com/tag/coronavirus/
More free coronavirus resources here

Seven tips for teams and leaders dealing with coronavirus lockdowns.

By Gale Crosley

As I stood in the shower one morning earlier this week the words, “This feels like war” came to mind. Not that I’ve been in one. But I’m experienced enough to recognize the panic, uncertainty and vulnerability. Moments later, with coffee in hand in front of the TV, I listened as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo stated, “This is a war. We have to treat it like a war.”

The Coronavirus Crisis: How to Leverage Referral Opportunities in a Crisis  |  10 Things You Can Start Doing Immediately  |  Three Ways to Step Up in Uncertain Times | Accountants Battle Coronavirus Chaos | Smartphone Thermometers Predict Coronavirus Hot Spots | Go Remote with This App You Already Own [#WFH] | The Top Portable Monitors for Working from Home | Why Process Is Key to Remote Work | In These Turbulent Times, Leaders Must Lead! | The Tax Effects of Coronavirus [Live 1-Hour Webinar] | How to Think Straight through the Coronavirus Crisis | Coronavirus Culture-Shift Hits Accounting Firms | How to Sanitize Electronics Against COVID-19 with UV Light

More: CPA Trendlines is providing free access to our latest crisis updates. Start here for a guide to all our coverage.

For PRO Members: Coronavirus Resources for Remote-Working (#WFH)

War, according to military wisdom, requires an approach that is both tactical and strategic. We need to focus on tactics—preparing yourself and marshaling your troops for success on a new kind of battlefield. One with toys underfoot and a dog howling in the background.

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FEATURED

Dicey Disruptions

And the five strategies your firm will need.

By Gale Crosley

A year ago, firms were struggling. The organic growth of the top 100 slid down to 4.6 percent, the lowest level since 2011.

MORE: 2020 Outlook: Upstream Mergers | 2020 Outlook: Staffing Gets Creative
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Was it because…?

  • The profession was resource-constrained?
  • Was it the distraction of technology transformation?
  • What about distractions caused by mergers?
  • Or possibly all of the above?

Here are the five best strategies to consider going forward:

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FEATURED

Why You Need a Tech Strategy Consultant

What to do with these new capabilities? Commercialize them, of course.

By Gale Crosley
The Rosenberg Survey: National Study of CPA Firm Statistics

Last year was a tipping point, as firm leaders began to convincingly acknowledge the fact that technology is going to rock their world. It was the year our colleagues finally got the memo that the profession is poised for transformation. Now the debate is around how quickly and in what sequence.

MORE FROM THE MAP SURVEY: 2019: Three New Trends to Watch | 2019: Why Small Firms Shun Mergers | 2019: Using M&A to Launch Consulting | 2019: Client Service Moves to Fore | 2019: Expect More Alliances | 2019 Trends: Client Service Changes | 2019: Shifts in Hiring & Office Space | 2019: Firms Grapple with Change | Staff Policies Improve, But Not Mentoring
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This is hardly the first time we’ve had to grapple with significant change. But never have so many promising technologies come to practical commercialization at once.
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