Ep: 83 Top experts answer: "Are business owners any closer to receiving proactive advice from accountants?"
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:
Are business owners any closer to receiving proactive advice from accountants?
You'll hear insightful and passionate answers from these 5 experts and influencers:
Adam Rakich | Accounting technology enthusiast and Director of Strategic Alliances at DataBlend
Adrienne Lester | Senior Sales Director at Citrix, Sharefile and RightSignature
Alice Grey Harrison | Communications expert: Guiding firms through change, fostering alignment and success
Amanda C. Watts | Business Advisor Academy founder helping accountants escape the compliance cage
Amy Holdsworth | Clarity Street CEO, guiding the industry in connected software
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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How do you stay informed about what's happening in the accounting world? Not so much the news and the day today, but the trends, the patterns, the drivers of change. What if you had an advisory board of experts help you gauge what the world is thinking about vital trends and patterns in the accounting world, about what's working and what isn't. You could put some prompts into chat GPT and get an idea, but what if you could go to the real people themselves who are on the front line working with and in accounting firms. I'm talking about real people, real opinions, real insights. I'm Rob Brown, and for this brand new accounting answers podcast, I've interviewed 111 people in the know from tons of different countries, roles, viewpoints, all to keep you ahead of what the world is thinking in accounting finance and tech. And I've asked them all the same five questions about change, talent, people, tech, and the future of accounting. That's over 500 brilliant passionate and articulate perceptions, insights, viewpoints from professionals with a say in this game. And in this show, coming out every working day for the next few weeks, you're going to hear every single answer. Each episode will focus on one of the five questions and give you answers from five of our experts. So that's deep dive into today's episode. In this episode, we'll continue to probe with our accounting influencers and leaders whether accountants are getting better with client advisory services or whatever you call that. It may seem obvious because accountants are the trusted advisors, right, which means being future focused and proactive, rather than historically focused and reacted. But maybe we're not so far on as we think. Let's find out as we ask our experts. Now, here is Adam Rackage, an accounting technology enthusiast and director of strategic alliances at DataBlend passionate about connecting businesses with the right technological solutions to streamline their accounting processes. With the advances in automation in any area of accounting, which we hear about all the time, there's going to come a point. It's not going to be too long where a ton of people simply won't be needing to hire an accountant just to process transactions and prepare returns. That may be doing that today. So the firms that stick around, they're going to be doing so by lending their analytical eye, their experience of seeing a broad range of businesses operating their different business models and helping the business owners that retain them make better decisions. So I think every firm should be recognizing this, altering their model accordingly. I mean, I speak to plenty of firms that are doing just that. How many are going to make it across that jump? A little bit more of an open question for now. Let's get the thoughts of Adrian Lester, Senior Sales Director at Citrix, share file and write signature where she drives sales strategies and partnerships to empower businesses with secure document sharing and the e-signature solutions. So I see this as a two-pronged issue. The first being that the amount of students that are enrolling in accounting specific programs and then graduate and enter into the job market is decreasing overall. You just don't have quite the same level of demand. And then the collegiate and master's programs that are offered for accounting are typically more focused on turning out students that can simply just pass the CPA exam versus studying more of the elective style advisory type of services. All of that said, there's a great desire on behalf of accounting firms to be able to offer advisory services up to 70% said that they plan to do that and a large number already doing it. So basically, how do you solve it? We can try and change the education system, which, good luck, I'm not certainly suggesting that. Or we could try and make the work and effort that they do a lot more efficient. So how can you automate a lot of the repetitive work that we do know is so evident in accounting? How do you make those the very task-based things to be able to be done in a lot faster in a repetitive way? And so I think that is really where this is heading, is removal of that allows me to have free time to be able to be more advisory focused and really, really complete more of the business side advisory type of work where I think a lot of people like to play. The next voice is Alice Grey Harrison, a communications expert who specializes in guiding accounting firms through change, fostering alignment and ensuring success through effective communication strategies and employee engagement. I want to say yes. I think the answer is yes. What are the things that I think is really interesting about the emergence of AI into the profession? Is that AI is enabling accountants to push some of the lower level routine repetitive tasks to AI? So then you have your entry level accountants doing a fire level of work. So then that kind of moves up this good chain. So when you have the partner level and the very experienced level, they have more head space, more time to be able to think proactively for their client. And so I actually see AI as really benefiting our clients in that, well, the repetitive work is going to have less mistakes because AI tends to not make as many mistakes as we humans. But also it is freeing up our partners to be able to think in a more advisory manner to help clients. Coming up now is Amanda Seawatts, founder of the Business Advisor Academy dedicated to helping accounts that to escape the compliance cage and grow their practices to advisory services. Business owners are almost nearer to receiving proactive advice. However, I do not think it is coming from accountants at the moment. I feel that there is a lot of proactive advice that is coming from coaches and consultants and people who are able to share their ideas across the social media channels. So once upon a time, the only person, the only person that a business owner could talk to was their accountant. Then in the 70s, 80s and 90s, we saw a surge of business coaches come into the world and business owners would look around and they go, oh, I need a business coach. This is, I need a mentor or I need someone. And they would turn to business coaches. Now, sadly, we have been beating our drum and saying that accountants need to transition more into advisory and giving more advice to their clients, but business coaches are still dealing the clients and the business, the number of accountants that are actually moving over to advisory is not as many as it should be. So your question is, are we giving more proactive advice, not the accountants? No. Few of them are turning themselves into business coaches, but we're not seeing that shift that we need to really see for accountants to own their place in their profession. Next question here will be Amy Holsworth, CEO of Clarity Street, guiding the industry in connected software and helping account in firms leverage technology for efficiency and growth. I think there's an improvement. I think that there's still a long way to go. There are lots of tools that support pro-activeness and providing proactive advice. But ultimately, I think that comes down to the drive of the individual accountant and the relationship that they have with their client. It's definitely improved over the last couple of years. I would suggest, but I still think that there is a long way to go where it's front of mind where I'm getting phone calls from my accountant. My personal accountant is great, which is why I'm with him. But as a generalization, I think it's improved compared to when I first started working within this industry, but there's still definitely a long ways to go. And that comes down to the individual accountant. I also think that it comes down to issues with compliance, regulations from different governing bodies, different task departments, no matter where you are in the country, what compliance requirements are. I think it's a fine line and a balance between allowing accountants to be proactive with business advice and juggling what their compliance requirements are from each governing body, essentially. So it's an issue, which I appreciate. It doesn't help by not having as much talent within the industry that we've had in price gone by as well. So it's better that it has been for quite some time, but I think that there's still a long ways to go. So there you have five great answers to the question. Are business owners any closer to receiving proactive advice from accountants? Every working day of the week, Monday through Friday, we give you the insights of five top influencers in the accounting world on this critical area for proactive advice from accountants. That's 25 valuable perspectives, viewpoints and best thinking every week. And with each fresh week comes a fresh question with more thoughts from the best accounting influencers and leaders we can find. Thanks for listening to the Accounting Answers podcast and sharing this brand you share with your friends. 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. 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. [MUSIC PLAYING]
