Productivity in Practice: The Specialist

From the Oct. 2006 Issue

In a time when many accounting practices are rethinking the services they offer to stay competitive, Scott Price and his staff of 26 professionals have found a very successful niche that puts his firm against competition that many practitioners might be intimidated by. The Florida CPA.CITP (who also holds credentials for CISA and CIA) is co-founder and president of SAS 70 Solutions (www.sas70solutions.com), a Tampa-based auditing firm that is the first to specialize exclusively on providing SAS 70 audit services. Aside from being a unique practice specialty for a midsize accounting firm, this niche places the practice in direct competition with the bulls of the accounting world — the Big 4 firms of Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, and KPMG.

A SAS 70 audit is the AICPA’s statement on auditing standards for service organizations, providing them with a method of disclosing control activities and processes to their customers and their customers’ auditors in a uniform reporting format. A SAS 70 examination signifies that a service organization’s internal control objectives and control activities have been examined by an independent accounting and auditing firm, with the formal report including the auditor’s opinion in the Service Auditor’s Report.

Scott and partner Christopher Schellman founded the company in 2002 after Robert Half International announced plans to purchase Arthur Andersen’s Risk Consulting practice, where both were executives. Scott said they realized the potential opening in the market for SAS 70 auditing as a result of the acquisition. “Since many state accounting boards prevent corporations that are less than 50 percent owned by CPAs from being a public accounting firm and thus cannot issue audit opinions, opening a specialty practice seemed like a natural solution,” he said.

Although Scott is officially the president of the company and Chris is vice president, the two share overall responsibilities for the company, and Scott admits that his becoming president was probably not an accident. “My dad’s attorney helped set up the corporation, and someone had to be president, so….” The arrangement has worked well for the pair: “Chris is the thinker and planner, I’m the talker and sales-oriented guy.” Revenue has at least doubled every year they have been in business.

Both of Scott’s parents are accountants, too, with his father, also a CPA in practice in Florida, a founding partner of Price Donoghue and Ridenour, a more traditional accounting firm. Scott actually considered a legal career first, but balked at the length of school and opted for an MST and a CPA credential instead, which led him to Andersen and a specialty in SAS 70 audits.

Scott and his partner were right in their assessment of the market, and SAS 70 Solutions has grown rapidly, now with additional offices in New York, Atlanta and Nashville, as well as remotely officed professionals on the West Coast. The company is approximately the sixth largest provider of SAS 70 audits, with more than 125 SAS 70 audits performed last year. The enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley has also been a benefit to the market, as it has emphasized the need for accountability in all organizations.

Technology has played an integral role in the success of SAS 70 Solutions, according to Scott, who noted that advising their clients on technologies is part of a SAS 70 audit. The firm utilizes a virtual workspace designed by Groove Networks (recently acquired by Microsoft), which enables collaboration between staff and provides clients with secure access to their documents. The firm also helps provide recommendations of cost-efficient applications for its clients. As proof of its dedication to technology, the firm is one of the first in the nation to have every CPA also holding a CITP credential, which demonstrates an in-depth knowledge of business and financial technologies, including knowledge of systems, controls and security.