What Are Some of The Big Trends in Firm Management You See Affecting The Accounting Industry in 2022?
We’re seeing a few trends affecting tax and accounting firms right now. At Wolters Kluwer, we’re seeing challenges around capacity and resources, gaining and maintaining visibility, and an increased focus on better servicing clients.
The overarching trend or hurdle I see firms dealing with right now is capacity and resources. Questions such as do we have the appropriate number of people to get through compressed tax or audit seasons? How do we make sure the solutions that get us through those busy seasons are integrated to drive efficiency and productivity gains?
The second trend firms are focusing on is visibility, making sure they know what’s going on. Where is the work, is there a line of sight to all filing deadlines, are we minimizing the risk of missing a deadline for a customer, yes. But also visibility and making sure that they’re providing that enhanced client experience.
Client expectations have changed; back when I was in practice it was okay to wait a couple of days to respond to an email or a phone call. These days client expectations are different, especially when it comes to communication. Accounting professionals want to answer a client on the spot when they call in with a question.
How we service clients to add value is the last trend I’m seeing. This ties into the expectation of people in the profession, especially the younger staff members, of working at the top of their capability, doing what they went to school to do, being an advisor and adding value to clients – making their lives better,
These three tie in together - taking on the capacity challenges, ensuring that the solutions are integrated, and ensuring that visibility is there so that accountants, auditors, and tax staff can take a step back, add that value and make that situation better.
Are There Technologies That Can Help Improve Client Experience?
Absolutely. Look up any industry research online, and you’ll see that the customer experience and how you do business matters, and not just from a retention standpoint. How you greet your customers – whether virtually or physically – and how you work with them will determine if they refer you.
As far as technologies go, we have CCH Axcess™ Client Collaboration, which I call our virtual Sherpa through the tax process. Staff can provide clients with the link, and the client will get virtually guided through the tax process – from signing an engagement letter and the document requests to connecting digitally to the financial institution. It’s all about making the experience a little more frictionless on all sides.
One of the benefits we hear that both firms and clients like is the ability to see what’s outstanding – clients can work from the virtual checklist, and tax professionals know when to engage on that work and when to walk away, minimizing that multiple touchpoint process that kills efficiency.
What Technologies Do You Think Have The Most Potential for Transforming The Profession?
This is where I work closely with my tax and audit counterparts to assess current and emerging technologies and focus on the holistic view of supporting our customers – and make sure we’re ahead of the curve.
Where we’re focused on right now is leveraging APIs. We provide the core foundation of the firm operating system on how they get through the tax season of the audit season through CCH Axcess™. We can’t be all things to all people, and that’s why we have an open API policy; to ensure that our clients can leverage APIs to make that seamless integration, pushing and pulling data, automating tasks through those APIs.
Another area is leveraging robotic process automation or machine learning to minimize those mundane, monotonous tasks. The people that firms are hiring don’t want to do those types of tasks. They want to feel important and that their work matters, which is great. I think sometimes we look at that in the industry as a bad thing. But empowering our employees is a great thing, and taking away those transactional, monotonous tasks will help that. And the way that we see that happening is through RPA and machine learning.
