Ep: 87 Top experts answer: "What, if anything, will significantly change accounting in the next few years?"
The Accounting Answers Podcast, hosted by Rob Brown, asks critical questions of the experts, leaders and influencers who shape the decision-making of accountants, CPAs and finance professionals. Today we ask:
What, if anything, will significantly change accounting in the next few years?
You'll hear insightful and passionate answers from these 5 experts and influencers:
Zane Stevens | Thought leader, podcaster, and account business owner helping wineries succeed
Ellen Choi | Co-founder of Aiwyn, bringing practice automation tech to accountants
Eric Gregg | CEO of ClearlyRated, exclusive client experience intel for accounting firms
Eriona Bajrakurtaj | CEO, Major's Accounts, Accounting Leader and Early Tech Adopter
Gary Boomer | Founder/Dot Connector at Boomer Consulting
Tune into more on this daily show for short, sharp episodes that keep you informed of what's happening in the accounting world and the whole ecosystem of consultants, organizations, vendors and advisors who serve them.
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Dan McMahon and Integrated Growth Advisors. IGA are the CPA firm experts in Growth, Building Infrastructure, and Exchanging ownership. This management advisory firm focuses on empowering CPAs to grow their revenues and increase their profitability and firm value. IGA’s methodology delivers on services built upon "IGA GBX" which represents the firm’s value creation model of "firm Growth, Building infrastructure, and eXchanging ownership. https://www.integratedgrowthadvisors.com
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Hi, I'm Rob Brown and welcome you accounting finance professionals tech enthusiasts to the Accounting Answers podcast. We've embarked on a captivating exploration of the future of accounting and its profound connection to the ever changing technology ecosystem. Think for a moment how access to the minds of a range of accounting experts, influencers, vendors and leaders would keep you super informed about what's going on in this wonderful profession. You'd stay relevant and future focused. You'd make better strategic and career decisions. If you know what forces are in play and what factors are driving change to unravel complexities and unveil the future of accounting have personally interviewed 111 leading accounting professionals tech leaders and industry influencers each bring in their unique expertise and insights to the table and together we'll delve into the five critical questions that will shape the accounting world. Through the eyes and minds of people living the accounting life I'll talk into accountants every day. We'll talk about five critical topics that ignite in passion debates and stimulate minds across the globe. We'll map in the transformative trajectory of the accounting profession and its symbiotic relationship with the technological revolution. We'll be asking about the next gen accountants, how far down the advisory line firms are, what's going to change the accounting world, what the software vendors and tech providers could do better to serve accountants and whilst coming up in the future. Let's get straight into the answers for today's topic. Nobody can deny that the accounting landscape is constantly evolving and the next few years are expected to bring even more transformative changes. The adoption cloud-based accounting software, the increase in use of artificial intelligence, the growing emphasis on data analytics, these are just a few of the trends that are shaping the profession that we all work and live in. All this week we're asking a range of experts who are either accountants or who serve them closely, what they think is driving the change. Let's tune into their answers. And now we have Zane Stevens, thought leader, podcaster, accounting firm on a helping winer is succeed where he combines his passion for accounting with the unique challenges of the wine industry to drive success and growth. I think there's a few things in the market now that's creating some waves. One is the shortage of accountants and how do we solve that problem. The second part of it is the introduction to the marketing of AI. AI has been around for a long time. There's been a lot of computer learning in the background for a lot of software, but it's obviously the Vogue word right now and everybody in their mother is trying to use AI or sell AI as a feature within their business. So I do think it makes a big change because a lot of the heads of tasks will be taken over by machine learning, as it has for a while in the software. But I think it'll become even more relevant because people are aware of it, clients are aware of it and we'll start refusing to pay for things that they know a computer can do. So that's coupled with not enough people, meaning we have to replace some of the jobs within the accounting space and we have to continue to focus on how do we help these clients stay successful. As a firm owner myself, I want my clients to be as successful as possible because I mean they will use me for as long as possible. So I have to figure out ways to make sure that we're spending less time on the repetitive work and more time having conversations with our clients on about their numbers so that they can be more successful. So between the shortage as well as the AI, I think we're going to have even a further shift to the consulting side of the accounting practice away from the repetitive task bookkeeping work and that's just going to continue to, you know, really shut, like, you know, shake the cage on sort of who's going to, who's going to survive in this. Up next is Alan Choi, co-founder of A-Win, bringing practice automation technology to accountants, helping them to transform their practices with innovative solutions that save time and improve accuracy. A lot of significant changes, just really seismic shifts in the accounting profession in the next few years. One is that there's a lot of modern technology solutions coming into the market to serve accounting firms and, you know, accountants today, which means more integrated solutions, more connectivity, just more tech stack, you know, that's able to talk to each other and be able to automate things, which is very exciting. And we're also seeing more and more accounting work done by non-traditional capacity. And what I mean by that is outsourcing AI, maybe non-CPA is taking on some work that used to be done by traditional CPAs and we are going to see acceleration of that in the next few years because the problem, the labor problem, the supply and demand problem of accountants isn't going to go away. And restructuring of that partnership incentive, you know, in terms of professionalizing whether the firms are selling to PE, MNA, whatever it may be, the ESOP, you know, by video, we're going to see more and more of that in terms of the accounting firms rethinking how they have structured, you know, their board, their compliance, incentive structures in the past. And finally, private equity, MNA, we have seen a large amount of those transactions and we're just going to see more and more of the acceleration as more partners that are on the retiree and actually do retire and there aren't good succession plans. So there are going to be more and more accounting firms that get bought, you know, the fold, going to the PE umbrella, whatever it may be. Joining the conversation is Eric Greg, CEO of Clearly Rated, offering exclusive plan experience intelligence for accounting films, helping them to differentiate and excel through superior service. I think there's a couple things that are really going to change this and technology adoption is the one I'm going to say. And I bet that that's going to be said by a number of people. The amount of technology that's coming into play is pretty well known for the industry. What I want to focus on is how we interact with that technology. And is that technology ultimately going to dehumanize the experience for clients, which is not what they want? Or is it going to dehumanize the experience for clients, which is ideally what they want? And this is one of the big areas that we see shifting and this goes to some of the demographics of clients and their expectations. But really, however you look at it, you know, the consumerization of B2B, the consumerization of professional services, what people want is they want to be able to do the task oriented things on their own, on their own time, self directed, but they want to be able to have all of the insight and expertise and it's tailored to their needs and their unique situation coming from the professionals when they do need it. So that's really what we're looking at is how do you get rid of these tasks that are not value add, but replace them with high value add, high relationship and high delivery of positive experiences for those clients. And that insights from Mariana Barakataj, CEO of Majors Accounts and Accounting Lead and early tech adopter at the forefront of incorporating technology into accounting for enhanced efficiency and appliance service. So in the UK, we have making tax digital, which means the way that we submit our information to HMRC changes radically, it's already, we've had a few departmental areas of the accounting world that we're able to do that, but it's going to go through to absolutely every part of the accounting. Other parts of the world have either already done it and they were way more ahead of us and some parts of the world are still thinking about it and what they need to do. But I think for us, that's going to make a huge difference to the way accounting will work. To get on board with this, they will either find out what they need to do to change or they're likely to just leave the perfection because it's too much for those. We turn now to none other than Gary Boomer, founder and doc connector at Boomer Consulting, a visionary driving the accounting profession forward with innovative strategies and technologies that facilitate growth and efficiency. Well, competition and the market along with disruptive technology will be the driving factors in that change and ultimately, this will change the education system for accounting. I believe there will be more non-CPA members of the accounting team or the advisory team. For example, IT has been a major factor, data science, marketing sales, as I mentioned early on, and talent development will all have seats at the table. They're going to be asked to set in leadership and management roles in firms. I think one of the things that we understand oftentimes is when we look at other professions other than our own and we've talked about the education system needs to change, we don't go to the teachers union to ask how to change a education profession and the same can be said for the accounting profession or medical or law. So there you have five great answers to the question, what if anything will significantly change accounting in the next few years? Every work in depth, a week Monday through Friday, we give you the insights of five top influencers in the accounting world on this critical area of what is coming up change-wise for accountants. That's 25 valuable perspectives, viewpoints and best thinking every week, and with a fresh week comes a fresh question and more thoughts from the best influencers and leaders we can find in the accounting world. Thanks for listening to the Accounting Answers podcast and sharing this brand new show with your friends and colleagues. If you want to join the conversation, you can plug into our community of influencers at accountinginfluencers.com and check out our virtual speed networking events. These happen every few months for the North America region and the UK Europe region. These are great opportunities to raise your profile, build valuable connections and share your thoughts with influential peers. Until next time, this is your host Rob Brown saying stay informed, stay relevant and stay connected. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]
