Meet the Challenges of the Year Ahead
Source: CPA Trendlines
The following is adapted, with permission, from an article in CPA Trendlines.
What are your critical challenges for 2012, and what can do you about them? A number of the profession's leading lights have been sharing their thoughts with Accounting Today. Here's one:
Dave Sibits, CBIZ Financial Services
Accounting firms are facing:
- An aging of leadership at the partner level.
- A continued erosion of pricing in service areas, due primarily to a challenging business and economic climate.
- Competition for the best and brightest talent, especially among top firms seeking to add specialty expertise or employees to groom for the future.
Some steps we have taken to meet these issues include 1) development of a robust training curriculum for our managers and 2) continued expansion of our Emerging Managing Director Academy – a multifaceted training program that readies our most talented people for the move to the managing director role, and for the changes and responsibilities associated with it. In addition, we continue to improve our process for the transition of client relationships as managing directors reach the end of their professional careers.
Also, our firm has moved toward greater specialization. This led us to the formation of five national niche practices – construction and real estate, not-for-profit, ERISA, forensic and financial services, and specialty tax consulting.
For the complete article, and links to other 2012 strategies, read “Strategy 2012: Leadership, Pricing, Competition.”
From CPA Trendlines, December 22, 2011, http://cpatrendlines.com.