Ep: 82 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:
Val Steed | CPA, MA, CITP, accounting, technologist, thought-leader, over 35 year veteran
Vipul Sheth | AdvanceTrack MD, ethically helping firms help clients with global teams
Stephen Heathcote | Chief Executive Officer at PrimeGlobal - The Association of Advisory and Accounting Firms
Dwayne Bragonier | Renowned tech leader, author, recognized for practical, cutting-edge process improvement
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 let's deep dive into today's episode. Today we're soliciting the views of our experts on how good accountants are at giving proactive advice to their business clients. It impacts the whole compliance versus advisory debate and what being proactive really means. What's fascinating is the variety of answers. Let's hear from our experts now about whether business owners are any closer to receiving proactive advice from accountants. We have that there's now Trevor Greenway, CEO of Intervout, where he focuses on streamlining firms, finance and wealth with AI leading the way and applying artificial intelligence to the accounting industry for transformative results. They're certainly closer, and I believe that we've gotten better at it. I believe that there are still some significant headwinds. Some of those are labor related and capacity shortages for sure. And I think that's increasingly problematic. And as we know, people are turning to tech to automate some of the mundane in hopes of really building capacity. But I think the problem in that is that I think some firms believe that that in and of itself is a silver bullet. Well, we've adopted technology, so we're good. And really, no, you've now just automated a portion of a task, but you aren't actually reaping the benefits because you just acted as though it was self-fulfilling and the greatness has been created. And so I think this push to advisory, which has been happening for 10, 15 years, people have been talking about it for a long time. I think the difference is that you can't just push advisory. I think you have to make sure that advisory is mutually beneficial. And that way, the automation that you're creating, you're creating value for business owners, the business owners are aware that what you're bringing to the table is indeed in their best interest as well. You can only have those conversations if you can create that capacity, I think that becomes exceptionally important to this really, this push towards more proactive advice, as opposed to constantly just looking in the rear view mirror, oftentimes it being too late to actually impact the outcome. It's an honor to bring to the microphone Val Steed, a true accounting legend, CPA, MA, CITP, an accounting technologist, Thorlida, another 35 year veteran who's been at the forefront of technology adoption and education in the accounting field. That is a really, really good question. I think that depends on the accountant. I think we're seeing a lot of this change with this client accounting services and client accounting consulting. And I think the firms that get it, if you will, the ones that really kind of understand the more expanded value of an account looking deeper than just the numbers. They're the ones that are actually getting out there and proactively talking to their clients. So I say it depends on the firm, the accountant, and whatever, but I think we're way down the road, to be honest with you, way down the road compared to when I started in the profession. Here with us now is Vipel Shearth, managing director at Advanced Track Countsourcing, helping accounting firms build global teams offering outsource services that enhance capacity and client service without compromising on quality or ethics. In terms of proactive advice, historically a small minority of profession have been delivering proactive advice. And it has been a very small minority. What COVID has shown to clients is the value of that proactive advice. But what it's also shown plans is that clients genuinely value that. And as a consequence, they're demanding it and quite willing to pay for it. So given that those two things are there, that is going to drive that greater proactive advice. More, you could say it's reactive to a degree, but I think lots of the young guns, if you like, coming through in the profession, are seeing that that's where the interesting work is. That's what our looking for. It's definitely the more interesting range of work that any professional print out. And if you're making a difference to the business owner and their families and employees, well, that's a good purpose as to why they want to deliver that. The next question here will be Stephen Hiccup, Chief Executive Officer of Prime Global, the Association of Advisory and Accounting firms. Yes and no. So yes, because all the tools are there, you can get real time reporting, you've got power BIs, you can look ahead and give you a client's advice. But what's happening is across all our firms we work with is our firms are being much more selective about the clients they work with. They're choosing clients and then they're going deep and they're doing all that great predictive work. But then for me, I think, okay, but what about all the clients that are now not getting help? What about all those small businesses out there and small businesses represent 90% of the economy would be as short as we have an accountant, they might actually be getting less help than they had before. So there's a huge opportunity there for firms that can scale and they can actually reach those businesses for new entrepreneurs coming in, new types of advisors coming in, they can really give them that predictive advice they need. There's a huge gap at the moment. The next voice is Dwayne Bragonier, a renowned tech leader author and recognised for his practical cutting edge process improvement in the accounting field leading firms towards innovation. Yes, with the continued automated collection attacking three or a few ways, just since there's all type of integrated specialized reporting that could take place. In some examples we're starting to see is the CFO or CAS advisory services provided on a regular reporting period of quarters or monthly no longer yearly. In fact, now that we've continuously updated reports, we call that type of reporting dash for agent-based monitoring. So our future reliance on global advisors is going to be similar to the auto mechanics world where 120 years ago, the auto mechanic got just basic feedback from the system, what's the speed, the oil temperature, the water temperature. But today there's hundreds of agents that are out there providing lots of data tags. So the mechanics of the mechanics advice today is much more relevant because they have such great detail, not just a gut feel. So us will have much more reliance because we have that much more integrity to the data that we know we have available to us. 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 show 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.
