Why Our Clients Need Us to Be Radical

Woman unlocking car with fobThink customer experience, not customer service.

By Jody Padar
From Success to Significance: The Radical CPA Guide

Innovation isn’t just about the technology you use and how you use it, it’s about how you create an experience for your customer. Still, after all this time, CPAs are unaware that they can create a phenomenal experience around the art of taxes and accounting. I think it’s hard for them to imagine the opportunities to serve and delight their customers in a new way.

MORE ON RADICALISM: 10 Steps to Start Innovating | How ‘Agile’ Applies to CPA Firms | Our Pain Points Are Opportunities | Transitioning to a Radical Firm: Bringing a Legacy Customer Along | The Radical CPA: Always Changing
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We all know our customers are built on relationships; however, in today’s fast-moving world, I’m not sure that is enough. The customer’s expectations have changed around service models and response times. CPAs need to figure out how to match these ever-expanding expectations.
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10 Steps to Start Innovating

Do you want your firm to last after you’re gone?

By Jody Padar
From Success to Significance: The Radical CPA Guide

CPAs are busy people – often to the detriment of their customers. When CPAs don’t have time to understand their customers, they fail to give them real value and creative solutions.

MORE ON RADICALISM: How ‘Agile’ Applies to CPA Firms | Introducing the Fifth Radical Tenet: The Business Model | Dear Midsized Firms: Yes, You Can Change | The Four Tenets of Radical Firms: A Brief Review
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This is really concerning to me. It concerns me that many CPAs are unwilling to do the work to keep their firms relevant. Although they know that the world no longer works the way it did 20 years ago, they simply shrug their shoulders or look the other way because confronting change seems like too much work.
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Donny Shimamoto Explains How ‘Agile’ Applies to CPA Firms


Examine change from three standpoints: financial, technology, and people.

Donny C Shimamoto, CPA CITP IntrapriseTechKnowlogies
Shimamoto

By Jody Padar
From Success to Significance: The Radical CPA Guide

Today we’re going to ask the agility expert. Donny C. Shimamoto, CPA, CITP, CGMA, is managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC.

MORE ON RADICALISM: Introducing the Fifth Radical Tenet: The Business Model | The Value of New Ideas | The Radical Road to (Business) Transformation | The Radical CPA: Always Changing
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JP: Can you describe what your firm does?

DS: We help transform CPA firms in a couple of ways. One is to help them embrace the cloud in a reasonable manner. The second is to embrace new approaches to working. You could even maybe say that we help them become Radical firms.
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Introducing the Fifth Radical Tenet: The Business Model

Businessman switching on "innovation" slider buttonSix barriers to innovation.

By Jody Padar
The Radical CPA

Many Radicals have already made the shift to pricing by value or a fixed price agreement. Yet, they are still tracking time.

MORE ON RADICALISM: The Value of New Ideas | Our Pain Points Are Opportunities | Transitioning to a Radical Firm: Bringing a Legacy Customer Along | The Four Tenets of Radical Firms: A Brief Review | The Radical CPA: Always Changing
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When we value our team on an hour, it leaves almost no time for innovation to occur. An incremental shift could be to allow for a certain number of innovation hours per week. However, once again, this is a huge limit on creating an innovative culture.
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The Value of New Ideas

Question marks5 questions to ask.

By Jody Padar
The Radical CPA

How valuable is a new idea?

MORE ON RADICALISM: Our Pain Points Are Opportunities | Dear Midsized Firms: Yes, You Can Change | The Four Tenets of Radical Firms: A Brief Review
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This is the question every CPA is asking right now. What’s the ROI? Or as futurist Tom Hood of the Maryland Association of CPAs would say, “What’s the return of not investing?”
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Our Pain Points Are Opportunities

"Opportunity just ahead" road sign in desert“Our cultures eat the opportunity to innovate.”

By Jody Padar
The Radical CPA

Opportunities are everywhere. As a successful business owner, you already know this. But when you look at your firm’s biggest challenges, do you see opportunities?

MORE ON RADICALISM: Dear Midsized Firms: Yes, You Can Change | The Radical Road to (Business) Transformation | Transitioning to a Radical Firm: Bringing a Legacy Customer Along | The Four Tenets of Radical Firms: A Brief Review | The Radical CPA: Always Changing
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Opportunities are always openings for innovation or change. As a firm owner, you have a choice: You can address your challenges about the changing market head on or you can just hide your head in the sand and leave them for the next generation to tackle.
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Dear Midsized Firms: Yes, You Can Change

Why you should strive for utopia.

By Jody Padar
The Radical CPA

In a traditional firm, the partner is the center of everything – from technical knowledge to relationship management to operations.

MORE ON RADICALISM: The Radical Road to (Business) Transformation | Transitioning to a Radical Firm: Bringing a Legacy Customer Along | The Four Factors for Fixed Pricing | Target Content to Consumers, Not Industry | Social + Strategy = Success | Make the Cloud Work for You | 5 Ways to Capitalize on Trends

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And, it’s not a pretty sight.

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The Next Step for Radicals

Hint: It’s not optional.

By Jody Padar
The Radical CPA

For Radical CPAs, this is the next step in our business model innovation: Innovation at such a high level that our fathers (and mothers) won’t even recognize our companies as CPA firms.

MORE ON RADICALISM: The Radical Road to (Business) Transformation | Transitioning to a Radical Firm: Bringing a Legacy Customer Along | The Four Tenets of Radical Firms: A Brief Review | The Radical CPA: Always Changing
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This will become more apparent as artificial intelligence (AI) takes over and accounting is truly machine-driven. A CPA will use data completely differently than he or she does today; we don’t know what we don’t know yet.
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