Get Ready for the Next Big Thing
Source: CPA Trendlines
The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from an article by Rick Telberg. The article is adapted from the forthcoming book Seven Keys to Successful CPA Firm Management.
Accounting firms have options today they never had before. Options to compete. Options in ownership. Options in staffing. Options in off-shoring and outsourcing. Options in technology. Options in management and governance. Indeed, the chief innovation in the CPA firm industry in the past 30 years is not, as is often said, technology. Technology doesn't change anything in and of itself; it simply expedites, according to Bruce W. Marcus writing in “Professional Services Marketing 3.0.” No, change in the CPA business is driven by competition. And competition drives innovation. In turn, innovation is creating a diversity of options for progressive firms.
With the options available to CPA firms today, we're now seeing a mix of business models.
- You can start a firm with a laptop and a cell phone in a corner of Starbucks.
- You can do accounting without being an accounting firm.
- You can do no accounting at all, just bring in the clients and ship the back-office work out of state or out of the country.
- You can be global as a soloist, or you can be a global firm that operates like a bunch of soloists.
There's even a model for an accounting business that operates for free; it makes its revenue on advertising. And how long will the 1040 business be around? Some 12 million customers disappeared from the paid-preparer market between 2010 and 2012 as they adopted do-it-yourself software programs.
The profession seems poised, I believe, for a great leap forward. Who knows what it will be? Maybe, in fact, it won't be one leap, but many. Whatever comes next will be built on the diversity of today's rapidly widening options. Looking at how diversity has affected other spheres – looking at it through historical, sociological, and technological lenses – suggests that the change will come so quickly we won't see it coming.
In fact, the next big thing is probably already here. We just don't know it yet.
For the complete article, read “‘Keeping up' Is Not a Strategy.”
From CPA Trendlines, March 26, 2013, http://cpatrendlines.com.