Disruptors Wiley, Deshayes, Satterley, Etienne, Penczak and Vanover offer their takes on staffing in the accounting profession.
By Amy Welch
In a post-pandemic gig economy, the rest of the world laments the staffing crisis. However, while the solutions may not be easy, they seem to be pretty simple.
In the CPA Trendlines Disruptors one-on-one interview series with Liz Farr, some of the profession’s most innovative thinkers suggest solutions ranging from re-examining your firm’s culture to tapping into two-year colleges for new talent. Here, several weigh in on what they see as the potential answers to one of the most troubling issues in the accounting profession.
With 74 percent of internships designed to lead to permanent employment, these programs are not just supplemental but foundational to preparing students for professional roles.
Still, only 28 percent of college programs make internships integral to the curriculum. READ MORE →
To weave relevance into the fabric of your firm culture, your team must shift from just getting the work done, with relevance as an afterthought, to putting the client at the center of the audit. That starts by building a foundation with the four U’s of understanding your client, the industry, the standards and how to audit.
To master these, you first need a natural sense of curiosity. Out of curiosity comes inquiry. We’ve all been taught that inquiry is one of the fundamental components of the audit process. But too often, inquiry doesn’t go any further than getting some answers to the questions on a checklist. And too often, those questions are the same ones that get asked at every audit engagement. The client has probably heard them (and answered them) more times than you can imagine.
Question: I have a close friend who is also a client. He went through a rough time with his wife threatening a divorce and we spent a lot of time talking about it (out of office settings).
I sent him a bill and he returned it with a notation that “we spoke as friends and not as a professional consultation, and the bill should be canceled.” What should I do?
In a universe where financial chaos threatens to overwhelm even the bravest souls, our trio of accounting change agents emerge to restore order, one ledger at a time. These stewards of integrity are uniting to serve the integrated ecosystem of families, businesses, and communities and aligning their efforts to unlock the power of the accounting profession with their unique blend of wit, wisdom, and, yes, a dash of comedy.
In the inaugural episode, our agents pull back the curtain to reveal the origins of their financial prowess. Delve into the captivating backstories as they share their personal journeys, unveil the driving forces behind their decision to become accounting professionals, and what led them to seek and find ways to improve the world.
The trend for small and midsized CPA firms to merge is accelerating as the competitive environment becomes even more demanding. While hundreds of firms merge every year, history continually shows that at some point in the future, things don’t always work out. Like marriage, some mergers are successful while a great majority fail. Many of the reasons for failure can be avoided if firms do their homework at the front end before entering the merger.
The merger and acquisition drivers are constantly changing. Some of the drivers we see today are a constantly changing marketplace, the creation of megafirms beyond the Big 4, the sophistication of clients, the high demand for qualified people, technology, the cost of acquiring new clients, and finally, the accounting industry being in a mature market.
As we will see, most mergers fail because of non-financial reasons. Unlike the sale of the manufacturing company, mergers of accounting firms are a lot more difficult to accomplish. READ MORE →
EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines was privileged to have a long relationship with Bruce W. Marcus, who was ahead of his time in his thinking and practice in marketing for accounting. We are publishing some of the late expert’s evergreen work, which retains wisdom for the present.
Speaking of change, as we have been, in the several months it took me to write my book and to choose from the hundreds – maybe thousands – of articles I’ve written over the years, a great deal has changed. And not just trivial stuff.
The movement to replace the hourly billing with value billing has accelerated. Firm mergers, consolidations, new boutique firms that bear little resemblance to the historical professional firms, new technology that makes obsolete technology that was itself only months old. It seems that observations (I don’t make predictions) that I made decades ago about the need to go outside the firm for new sources of capital to finance growth have turned out to be accurate. New professional/marketers partnerships are springing up. Professional Services Marketing 3.0 is in full swing. READ MORE →
If you’re a sole practitioner or small-firm operator, you’re probably very good at what you do – or you wouldn’t be in business today. But when it comes to marketing and selling yourself, well, many of us didn’t voluntarily sign up for that part.
As a matter of fact, some of us are resisting – kicking and screaming – marketing ourselves. So no wonder, for some of us, business is slow or not growing at the rate we’d like. READ MORE →
Disruptors Wiley, Deshayes, Satterley, Etienne, Penczak and Vanover offer their takes on staffing in the accounting profession.Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.
