How often should I reassess my existing tax technology and solution? It’s a looming and daunting question for many tax professionals and business owners, and it’s a question that is simply not always easy to answer. Implementing, transitioning, and adopting new technologies can be time-consuming, requiring training, an assessment of return-on-investment, along with many other factors.
Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting North America Product Managers Stephanie Plaza and Georgia Smith recently said during a “Leveraging Technology to Grow Your Firm and Protect Your Clients” webinar with Accounting Today how difficult adopting new technologies and overcoming change can be for a firm. The overall recommendation for the timing around reassessing existing tax technology solutions is relatively straightforward though.
Assess when pain points are fresh in mind
“Consider it at the end of every tax season, when you start in your period of slowdown. It’ll be fresh in your mind of what went well and what didn’t go well this tax season” says Georgia Smith.
Having pain points fresh in mind will help you start looking for other options that are available to you. Begin by listing out what major problems occurred, what processes made things slow and inefficient, where did your firm incur the most expenses, etc. An option can be to only research different solutions, keeping improvements in mind while your firm works through the next tax season. However, having recent experience with what went wrong and how you’d want to improve can be half the work in getting ahead and being prepared for the next busy season.
Set goals and plan ahead
Stephanie and Georgia also mentioned during the webinar that reassessing tax technologies and solutions come down to goal setting and planning.
Georgia says “Make sure you dedicate the time and resources that you need to go through a conversion process. Make sure to take the time to take advantage of training that is available to you to ensure a smooth transition. As you do your research, determine how does this new technology help me reach my goal? For example, by being on the cloud, or by being partially on the cloud – what does that look like for your firm?”
Weigh out the pros and cons
Finding your goals and determining what services you are offering today and what services you would want to offer in the future will help you determine what to look for and find a solution. Write down your goals, weigh out the pros and cons, and determine if the technologies that you are considering meet the offered services that ultimately meet your goals.
The Wolters Kluwer team of software solution experts is there to help you consider the right solutions, and to make the change process as smooth as possible. For more information, download our whitepaper Building Your Small Firm's Ideal Tech Stack to learn more.
