Firm Management
A New Way of Working
Being a leader right now isn’t easy. It can be challenging to recognize how employees want to work and make their wishes a reality while serving clients and meeting firm goals.
Jim Boomer
Jim Boomer is the CEO of Boomer Consulting, Inc. He is the director of the Boomer Technology Circles ™ and an expert on managing technology within an accounting firm. He also serves as a strategic planning and technology consultant and firm adviser in the areas of performance and risk management. In addition, Jim is leading a new program, The Producer Circle, in collaboration with CPA2BIZ and the AICPA. Jim was selected for the 2011 AICPA Leadership Program and the inaugural class of the KSCPA’s "20 Under 40” Leadership Program. He has been named to The CPA Technology Advisor’s "Forty Under Forty” and "Top 25 Thought Leaders” lists multiple times.
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Firm Management
Your Firm’s Next Hire: A Project Manager
Running a modern firm is a team sport. So if you want to increase your capacity and capability to get these projects done successfully, you need to hire a project manager.
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Advisory
Marketing for the Modern Accounting Firm
We live in a digital world. And yet, the marketing plans of many accounting firms are still analog. They spend thousands of dollars on printed brochures and rely on referrals and word of mouth to scale and grow.
Advisory
Compliance or Advisory? You Can Do Both
Unless something drastic changes in tax law or financial regulations, your clients will continue to need tax returns and financial statements. These continue to be profitable areas in an accounting firm, even as advisory services take up a growing ...
Contributors
What Is Your Long-Term Remote Work Strategy?
Contributors
Another Virtual Event? Not with the Spatial Web
For accounting firm leaders, now is the time to start to research and experiment with these technologies. While your clients might not build their own Spatial Web, they will likely participate in it. When your clients inevitably start ...
COVID-19
Building Connections in a Virtual World
In the past six months, several organizations in the accounting profession have postponed or canceled their conferences in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, while others have taken their events virtual.
Firm Management
Practice Management in a Future-Ready CPA Firm
Has your firm committed to aligning people, processes and technology? Are you positioned to meet the leadership challenges of the future? If so, congratulations! If not, it’s time to get started!
Contributors
6 Steps for Adopting a Growth Mindset
Most of the time, the difference between success and failure of a project comes down to mindset. In the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, author Carol S. Dweck explains how mindset impacts growth and change.
Contributors
6 Steps for Adopting a Growth Mindset
Our mindset shapes whether we can learn and change and grow. The good news is that anyone can adopt a growth mindset, think differently and become more open to innovation and growth.
Contributors
Does Your Firm Need a Technology Steering Committee?
In an accounting firm, technology is embedded in everything we do. Yet too often, we see firms hand off responsibility for all technology projects to their IT teams. Firms that successfully leverage technology as a strategic asset recognize that ...
Advisory
3 Small Steps Toward Transformation
The CPA profession is undergoing a significant disruption which will change the way partners and staff work and the services firms provide. It’s an exciting time for all of us, yet even as firm leaders want to take the next steps in their firms’ ...
Firm Management
Creating a Structure for Innovation
As the profession continues to move forward with business transformation, firms are being tasked with becoming more innovative. Innovation may come naturally to some, but many firms we speak to don’t know where to start.
Firm Management
Addressing the Fear of Automation
The tasks being automated aren’t what clients value. Does anyone truly believe that clients appreciate that your staff manually enters every number into a tax return or trial balance? Of course not.
Firm Management
Does Your Technology Meet Client Expectations?
We’re living in an era where every part of our daily lives is impacted by technology in one way or another. We have numerous new methods of electronic communication and seemly endless options for home entertainment and improved technology that ...
Advisory
Leveraging the Four Cs to Automation and Advisory
When we ask practitioners why they continue to focus their efforts on transactional and compliance services, we find that most feel they don’t feel comfortable providing performance- and strategic-based advisory services because their experience and ...
Firm Management
Automation is Here. How Are You Leveraging It?
CPA firms are in the midst of a transition. For years, research firms and thought leaders have been predicting the disruption of the profession through automation. That disruption isn’t a vision for the future – it’s here now. In 2017, Gartner ...
Advisory
Focus on the Digital Client Experience and the Revenue Will Follow
A combination of technology and process can provide powerful tools for your team and clients, but the overall mindset within your firm is also critical. Leaders must prioritize making clients’ lives easier and focus on continuous improvement.
Firm Management
Creating Structure Around Innovation
The innovation process within firms is often chaotic and uncoordinated if it exists at all. While it’s true that innovation is messy, leaders cannot expect to merely tell people the goal is to be innovative and expect amazing things.
Contributors
Work Is About Results, Not Location
The first thing many people do when they wake up is reach for their smartphone. In fact, your smartphone probably is your alarm clock. But we also use it to send and receive email, check our calendar and so much more. Before we officially sit down ...
Firm Management
Mindset is the Differentiator
When you embark on a new technology initiative, you may focus on choosing the right software or working with the right consultant. These things are essential, but what really makes or breaks a project occurs before any of these decisions are made.
Contributors
Got Bots?
When we talk about AI, the image that comes to mind for most people is robots doing many of the jobs we’re doing today. But AI is not just a futuristic vision for accounting firms. In proactive firms, the future is already here.
Advisory
5 Keys to Success in Value Pricing
Value pricing is a way of billing a client for services provided based on the value of the service (or advice) instead of the number of hours spent. Consider one of your clients calls for tax advice on how to structure a real estate transaction.
Contributors
IT Planning for Mergers & Acquisitions
A common issue firms run into when acquiring a new firm is under-licensing. The firm being purchased may be completely under-licensed in certain software programs. Non-compliance can be costly in terms of fees and penalties – running into the tens of ...
Advisory
The Value of Big Data in an Accounting Firm
Big data has become a buzzword in the accounting profession, but like other trending topics such as blockchain, AI and machine learning, it’s one that CPAs really need to understand.
Advisory
Client Accounting Services – What Is It, Really?
Leaders in CPA firms across the country agree that Client Accounting Services (CAS) is an emerging, growing and profitable opportunity. In fact, it is one of the fastest growing new revenue segments of many Top 100 Firms, but it is relevant and ...
Contributors
The State of Accounting Firm Succession
According to the 19th Annual Rosenberg Practice Management Survey, for firms in the $2 million to $10 million category, 65.5% of partners are over the age of 50. Among sole practitioners and smaller firms, the percentage is 71.1%.
Firm Management
The Ideal Hire? Sometimes it’s Not an Accountant
As I’ve written about previously, many firms are expanding into technology consulting, either by buying an existing technology consulting firm or building it from scratch. So it’s no surprise that one of the major skillsets for non-accountant hires is ...
Contributors
Convenience vs. Security in the Internet of Things
Any device that communicates and can be accessed via the internet based upon its IP addresses plays a role in your firm’s security. This obviously includes mobile devices, but it may also include copiers, printers, thermostats, televisions, motion ...
Firm Management
How GDPR Will Impact U.S.-Based Firms
If you pay attention to overseas regulations, the term GDPR has probably entered your consciousness. But what is it exactly? More importantly, can it potentially impact U.S.-based firms?
Firm Management
5 Keys to Successful Technology Consulting
More CPA firms are recognizing the value of providing technology consulting services to their clients. As a trusted advisor to your clients, you have a valuable understanding of your client’s business, and it’s natural for your clients to turn to you ...
Contributors
From Performance Management to Continuous Feedback
Enhancing employee engagement is a goal for many firms today. An employee who remains engaged throughout the year is better motivated, more productive and more dedicated to the firm than employees who are disengaged. One crucial way to improve employee...
Advisory
How Accounting Firms Can Leverage the Gig Economy
While freelancing is a part-time or side-gig for many people, a growing number of people make it a full-time living. Twenty-nine percent of survey respondents said their freelance business is their only source of income, up from 17% in 2014.
Firm Management
Is the Password Dying?
It’s not hard to see why people don’t like passwords. We share a lot of sensitive personal information with companies, including Social Security numbers, health records, and bank account and credit card numbers. Even password managers don’t eliminate ...
Contributors
You've Been Breached. Now What?
Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in America and accounting firms, with their wealth of taxpayer personal information, are often ground zero for cybercriminals. For many, the question is not if you’ll be the target of a cyber-attack, but when.
Contributors
How to Create a Culture of Innovation
The word innovation is thrown around a lot in our profession. Everyone wants ideas for doing things faster, easier, cheaper, or better. But rather than drive innovation from within the firm, they’re trying to keep up with what others are doing ...
Contributors
One Simple Step Toward Better Strategic Business Partnerships
When you make a list of your firm’s strategic business partners, do your technology solution providers make the cut? If your answer is no, you’re likely approaching these relationships in a way that limits your opportunities to truly leverage ...
Contributors
Are You Focused on the Right Things?
We’re midway through 2017. How are you coming along with the goals you set at the beginning of the year? Do you still have a positive outlook for what lies ahead? Almost before we know it, fall deadlines will be here, then year end, then many of you ...
Firm Management
Protect Your Firm and Clients with Multi-Factor Authentication
Authentication is simply a process that verifies a user’s identity. The most common form of authentication is a password, but given the rise of tax-related identity theft and phishing schemes that accounting firms face, a password is no longer enough ...
Contributors
Reaching Clarity On Remote Work Policies
Remote work is a popular topic of discussion at many firms across the country. Yet few firms sit down to flesh out detailed policies for remote workers before their first virtual employee is in place. Typically, one valuable employee requests to work ...
Advisory
Cognitive Computing and the Future of the Accounting Profession
Cognitive computing is especially valuable in tax compliance, an area that is heavily regulated and often faces rapid changes. The process of preparing filings, ensuring compliance, and optimizing a business’ tax position is complicated, resource ...
Firm Management
Is Your Accounting Firm Serious About Security?
As I wrote in a previous column, whether it’s securing a perimeter in a war zone or an accounting firm, the strength of the defense is only as robust as the front lines. In your firm, the front line is your people who are handling sensitive client data on
Firm Management
Increase Accountability in 2017
One reason our goals fall by the wayside is that we often just think about them. We internalize what we want to accomplish but don’t write it down or share it with anyone. This keeps things simple, but it also increases the chance of failure.
Advisory
Is Your Technology Meeting Client Expectations?
Too many firms are stuck in the paper age; continuing to do things the way they always have. Beyond the aversion to change is the deep-rooted belief that if they don’t send out a tangible stack of paper, the client will question the value they ...
Firm Management
8 Rules for Effective Technology Management
The ongoing war for talent, coupled with the rapid advancement of technology, is fueling exponential growth in the importance of technology. It creates a challenge and an opportunity. From the challenge side, we are already being forced to do more ...
Firm Management
Is Your Technology Planning Process in Alignment?
The fact that technology is part of everything we do to run our firms and serve clients is why your Chief Information Officer (CIO) or technology leader should have a seat at the management table. To truly align the technology plan, the leader ...
Advisory
Change Management in Accounting Firms
Firm Management
How Security Savvy Is Your Firm?
Security continues to be a top priority for firms today. Clients trust CPAs with some of their most sensitive data and it’s our responsibility to do everything possible to protect it. While most wish there was a magic bullet that would guarantee 100% ...
Firm Management
Does Your Firm Have Technical Debt?
Technical debt is now a common term in the software development industry. Companies spend money assessing, controlling and “paying down” their technical debt in order to keep their products agile enough to compete in an environment where slow to market or
Firm Management
Scammers Move From Phish to Whales
Whaling is a form of phishing attack where senior executives and others with access to valuable and sensitive data are sent very personal and well researched emails. The attacker may send the target an email that appears to be from someone they ...
Firm Management
Is It Easy To Do Business With Your Firm?
If your firm is like most, you are constantly looking for ways to fuel growth. The fastest and easiest way to grow is by leveraging your existing client base. And to do so you need to make sure that your base is full of happy clients.
Firm Management
Collaboration + Leadership = Success
The greatest leaders surround themselves with tremendous talent on their leadership team. They understand their own unique abilities and the areas where they fall short. They look for individuals who can complement their strengths and minimize their ...
Firm Management
The People You Meet & The Books You Read
If you look around our profession at the most successful individuals, they all have two things in common: they are well connected and are lifelong readers. The late author and speaker, Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, used to always say ...
Firm Management
The Next Generation Accounting Firm Office
Accounting firms aren’t always quick to adopt change but we can all be assured that changes will continue to come in our profession. One area in which we are seeing considerable change over the last few years is in the utilization of office space.
Firm Management
It's Time To Smarten Up Your Conference Room
Although projector and screen setups are still quite prevalent in conference rooms across the country, we are seeing an increasing number of flat panel displays taking the place of this arrangement. Even though HD projectors are increasing in ...
Firm Management
A Simple Approach to Training
While you certainly have to take into account learning styles, I would like to share a simple training approach that I learned from my partner, Dustin Hostetler. It is a proven process that has been used successfully by our clients and in a variety of ...
Firm Management
Does IT Have a Seat at Your Firm's Management Table?
Technology, Marketing, HR and every other functional area of your firm is striving to have their voices heard and ensure that their strategy aligns with the overall firm vision.
Firm Management
Prepare for the Remote Worker
As the number of companies offering workplace flexibility and remote work arrangements continues to grow, the likelihood that your firm will get the request to work outside the office (or already has) is quite high. Ensuring that you’re prepared for ...
Firm Management
How to Retain Your Firm's IT Superstars
Retention is a huge challenge for CPA firms across the country and most of the focus and discussion is on accounting staff. What isn’t addressed nearly enough is retaining talent in important functional areas such as IT, HR, Marketing and Training.
Firm Management
Is Your Firm Ready for Automation?
The opportunities for automation created by advances in technology are greater than ever before and this is changing the expectations of clients, employees and partners about how they exchange data with your firm. It will also continue to have a major ...
Firm Management
Is Your Firm Using Electronic Signatures?
So you think you’re a progressive firm, right? You’re committed to going digital and eliminating, or at least minimizing, paper. Your engagement letters are all electronic and are emailed to clients and prospects for signature.
Firm Management
Security - A Balancing Act for Accounting Firms
Security has been a top priority for firms for years. It has consistently ranked at or near the top of the AICPA’s annual top technology initiatives. So why does it seem there is more chatter now on the topic than in recent years?
Accounting & Audit
The 7 Critical Skills of an Effective CIO
A well-qualified CIO can and should be a key member of your management team, yet few firms are taking full advantage of this strategic resource. By well-qualified CIO, I am referring to those IT professionals that display both acumen and potential in a va
Firm Management
5 Technology Traps to Avoid
In the rapidly changing world of technology it can be hard to keep up. For this very reason we often look for shortcuts to keep us from falling behind the competition. It’s not that we don’t want to research every detail about every solution ...
Firm Management
Elevate Your Thinking
Whether its technology, processes or new service lines, we, as a profession, have the tendency to follow the herd. We watch a handful of progressive firms test new or different ideas and only when they’ve had success do we jump on board and try to ...
Firm Management
IT's Role in Mergers and Acquisitions of Accounting Firms
So what is technology’s role in all this activity? Unfortunately, in a lot of these deals, IT is involved too little and too late.
Technology
5 Technologies to Develop More Business for Your Firm
Firm Management
How to Turn Conflict into a Strategic Asset
Conflict. Whether it is related to decisions about firm management, technology or personnel, most of us try to avoid it like the plague. After all, wouldn’t life be easier if we could just make decisions in a vacuum and not worry about what others thought?
Firm Management
10 Strategies to Leverage Your Firm's IT Investment
Technology is embedded in every area of your firm, and leveraging IT investment is key to business success. Here are 10 strategies to help your firm maximize its IT investment.
Firm Management
Whether You Think You Can, or Think You Can't ... You're Right
A famous Henry Ford quote, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right,” emphasizes how much attitude determines success or failure.
Firm Management
How Your Firm Can Set SMART Goals
Our minds are constantly at work coming up with great ideas about the things we should accomplish. Interestingly, however, we rarely formalize these thoughts into written goals.
Advisory
Is Your Firm Playing Above the Line?
There is a lot of interest, discussion and action taking place around client accounting and advisory services these days. Firms are recognizing the opportunities offered by advances in technology and cloud accounting systems. However, it’s not the technology platform driving this movement, rather firms’ desire to transition from a trusted technical advisor to a trusted business advisor. Before you even get into the discussion about which cloud accounting platform is right for your firm and clients, you must first ask if your firm is prepared to play above the line.
Firm Management
Get Intentional About Innovation in Your Firm
Innovation and growth are directly linked, and it should be no surprise that the most successful accounting firms commit focus, time, energy, and money to innovative services, processes, and technology.
Firm Management
5 Tips for Using Technology as a Strategic Asset
Is your firm leveraging technology as a strategic asset or is it viewed as simply a cost of doing business? Successful firms view it as an asset and build an IT leadership and governance model that helps harness the power of technology as an accelerator toward improved performance, profitability and growth. There are five aspects of IT governance that are differentiating the best from rest.
Firm Management
Should Your Firm Make an App for Clients?
We live in a mobile world that is becoming increasingly so every day. Expectations are growing among mobile users that they should be able to do anything and communicate with anyone (including your firm) from the convenience of applications on their mobile devices.
Firm Management
6 Criteria for Cloud Evaluation
Cloud computing continues to be the topic of much discussion and debate as firms map out their future technology roadmaps. Much that’s written is about the benefits and challenges of the cloud as a whole.
Firm Management
How to Increase Accountabilty in Your Firm
From top to bottom, firms continually struggle with accountability. Partners face challenges holding one another accountable. With junior staff, managers too often focus on the wrong things: Whether an employee put in enough hours or whether an employee checked Facebook during business hours, for instance.
Firm Management
Should Your Firm Consider a Cloud Ecosystem?
When a Software as a Service (SaaS) vendor becomes a major player in the market or the leading solution for a given problem, they attract an ecosystem.
Firm Management
How to Proactively Manage Change in Your Accounting Firm
From cloud computing and mobile to the next generation of leader/employee, change is all around us. How firms manage this change is a major determinant of future success.
Firm Management
4 Tips to Improve Firm Workflow Processes
Process improvement has been a stated goal in most firms for some time now. Looking for ways to do more with less became even more important during the economic downturn. And the concepts of Lean Six Sigma that started in manufacturing are now making their way into professional services firms, including accounting.
Accounting & Audit
The Benefits and Challenges of Cloud Accounting
Accounting firms across the country are looking to the cloud to transform their client accounting services. They are looking to move from simply transactional bookkeeping services to higher value advisory services more in line with the CFO function.
Accounting & Audit
Tablets - Tech Toys or Tools?
Today, many tablet owners are pondering the question, “Is it just a tech toy? Or is it a true productivity tool?”
Accounting & Audit
Embrace Consumerization!
Oh the glory days of IT – the calculator, the brick mobile phone, the fax machine! Remember back when new technologies got their start in business markets?
Firm Management
Five Steps to Effective Delegation
Delegation is an important tool to help free up time, allowing us to focus on the things we do best and that add the most value to the firm. Unfortunately, however, delegation is a tool that too infrequently makes it out of the toolbox.
Firm Management
Work is What You Do, Not Where You Go!
Whether we like it or not, cloud and mobile technologies are catapulting us toward an anytime/anywhere work environment. No longer are we bound by the four walls we call “the office” to check things off our to-do list. This shift of work being completely about what you do, and not about where you do it is a significant one.
Firm Management
Great Leaders Make Themselves Replaceable!
What would happen if you suddenly and unexpectedly could not work? What would happen to your firm? Would things run smoothly, or would it be utter chaos?
Firm Management
Are you investing in your next generation?
Time and time again, I hear firms talk about how they have enough young people to fill the impending leadership void when Baby Boomers start retiring in the coming years.
Firm Management
Disaster Recovery in the Cloud
The cloud continues to be the center of great debate. Supporters focus on the long list of benefits ranging from freeing up internal resources to focus on more strategic initiatives to smoothing the monthly IT budget.
Practice Management
Has Your Firm Accessed the Power of the Crowd
CPA firms across the country continue to look for innovative ways to market their services, people and organizations as a whole. And branding and design are often important components to successfully executing an effective marketing strategy.
Practice Management
Accountability – The Key to Firm Success
An overall strategic plan is important to chart the course for your firm’s future success. And individual game plans outline the roles each team member plays in achieving the firm’s strategic objectives.
Practice Management
Is CRM Part of Your Firm’s Strategy?
Client relationships are the lifeblood of any accounting firm and should be maintained in an efficient, organized system. Too often, firms relay on a number of disparate back office systems to manage this critical information resulting in redundancy, inconsistency and missed opportunities.
Firm Management
IT Strategic Planning & Budgeting
IT strategic planning and budget are crucial concepts for IT leaders to understand when communicating with partners.
Align IT Strategy with the Firm Vision
Keeping up with the changing landscape of technology is challenging and more so when you don’t have the proper IT governance structure in place. What exactly is IT governance and how should a firm go about it? Let’s start with the AICPA’s definition of IT Governance:
Backup & Security
Do Your Backup Strategies Involve the Cloud?
As more and more firms assess whether the cloud is the right strategy for them, one of the first areas that is often looked at is backup.
Practice Management
A Seat at the Management Table
A far too common myth in many CPA firms is that you must be a CPA to manage and understand the firm. This is simply not true and is costing firms a lot of time and money while reducing their ability to compete today and into the future.
Business Management
Knowledge Management: A Strategic Priority
The leadership in firms across the country is aging, and most are concerned with where the next wave of leaders will come from.
E-Tools
Tablets Speed Adoption of Electronic Signatures
Consumer technologies such as the iPad and iPhone are driving the use of electronic signatures using tools like DocuSign and Adobe EchoSign.
Technology
Develop Talent : Invest in Your Firm's Future!
Talent development should always be a top priority! When we talk to firms across the country, most would agree. Unfortunately, the actions of many firms the last few years have not supported this sentiment.
Have You Accessed the Crowd?
Business Management
The Next Generation of Leadership
Column: Bridging the Gap
Product & Service Guide
Did the Recession Kill Training & Learning in CPA Firms?
Practice Management
The Changing Role of the IT Professional
The role of IT professionals in tax & accounting firms is changing. More and more firms have either moved to the cloud or are preparing to make the leap.
Business Management
Hold Yourself Accountable
Accountability should be a key component of your firm’s internal operations and culture. It’s a pretty simple concept – do what you say you’ll do! The difficult part is maintaining the discipline to hold yourself and your peers accountable for what they said they would do.
Business Management
Are You Ready for BYOD?
The growing trend of employees bringing their own mobile devices into the workplace is referred to as BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) or the consumerization of IT and is one that deserves your attention.
Practice Management
Does Your Firm Have a Technology Committee?
A technology committee, if built correctly, can be a valuable asset in building the firm’s technology strategy.
Business Management
Collaboration and Leadership
These two concepts are critical to the success of your firm.
Business Management
A Seat at the Management Table
Why CIOs should have a seat at the partner's table.
Are you Ready for BYOD?
It seems that everywhere you turn someone is talking or writing about the “consumerization of IT” or BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
Business Management
Is Knowledge Management on Your Radar?
The leadership of firms in our profession is aging and firms across the country are concerned about where the next wave of leaders will come from.
Business Management
Bridging the Gap Between Technology & Firm Strategy
Keeping up with the changing landscape of technology and practice issues is challenging.
Bridging the Gap
Coming Soon.