Optimizing Your Tech Stack Is Just the Start

Implementing technology itself no longer provides a competitive advantage for today’s accounting and consulting firms. A future-ready firm also needs to revisit its people practices, business processes, and workflow to identify how technology can help the firm differentiate its service offerings to clients. If you’re not actively evaluating our strategic partners such as Avalara, Botkeeper, Jirav, and others, you are missing out on an important opportunity to strengthen your strategy for the future.

Rethinking the Sustainable Accounting Firm

Forward-looking firms start with their mission, not their services. Looking at this adaptation of CIMA’s Sustainable Value Chain of Organizational Competencies, you can trace traditional firm thinking against mission- and strategy-driven thinking. In the former, a firm starts with the services it provides then chooses the technologies it needs to offer those services.

But in a mission and strategy-driven approach, the firm asks deeper questions about how it wants to operate into the future and what the firm needs to serve its clients best. This approach is more constituent-driven than an operationally focused approach. It goes beyond the client to envelop the employees as well, addressing how they need to do their work and, as we’ve seen during the pandemic, the location from which they work.

This approach turns traditional thinking on its head a bit. But as those tasks that can be automated are, firms will be forced to differentiate themselves based on the kinds of principles that can only be demonstrated from a mission-based approach. Technology itself becomes a baseline for service delivery, one that is your firm’s front door to the services your clients really need from your people.

Transformation Goes beyond the Tech Stack

In addition to optimizing your tech stack for the delivery of services to clients, you also need to think about how technology can address the needs of your staff and enable you to proactively manage the risks to your practice. Consider the following:

  • Hybrid and Remote Work. Does your tech stack allow people to work remotely? Do you have the ability to appropriately handle digital documents and handoffs between staff? Are tasks managed through email or is there a workflow or project management system in place? Have you addressed both staff and client expectations around response times and the ability to reach staff on the phone?
  • Employee Engagement. Have you figured out how to build and maintain your firm’s culture when you have hybrid or fully remote staff? Have you trained your managers to translate management by walking around into intentional one-on-one conversations and virtual team-building? How do you know if employees are disengaging or not feeling like they’re a part of the team?
  • Employee Development. Oftentimes, senior staff may just grab someone who happens to be in the office to shadow them in a meeting. This doesn’t happen as often when the meeting is virtual, so have you translated ad hoc mentoring into structured development and coaching processes? How will you know if someone is struggling if they are just working on their own and their peers or teammates can’t see them getting frustrated or help them?

If you don’t address the aspects above, you’ll likely see an increase in turnover. In an already tight staffing market, positions can take longer to fill, and the risk of new hires not staying will also be higher if you can’t keep them engaged.

Utilizing “People Technology”

There are a variety of HR solutions or “people technologies” that can help address the issues described above. For example, Allinial Global strategic partner Paychex provides HR tools beyond payroll to help with recruitment, employee development, and compensation analytics. The Allinial Global team is also using Motivosity, an appreciation sharing and team-building platform that helps to create a better virtual firm culture.

This area of technology is growing rapidly and we’re seeing a lot of enhancements at multiple vendors. If your firm is going through a transformation, be sure to take a holistic look at your tech stack and ensure that you are addressing your client service and people needs.

For more insights on rethinking your tech stack, visit our Firm Tech community on AGConnect or consider attending one of their ongoing calls or webinars. Joining this member-driven community is a great way to engage with other Allinial Global firms and learn from their experiences with various technologies.