Making your firm future-proof

Your accounting practice may be entering a state of change. In all honesty, all businesses and professions do but the accounting industry is expanding in terms of scope, scale and necessity the world over. Accounting will never disappear, but it will change, and you need to be on the vanguard of this change to avoid business decline and embrace new modes of business. The upside of course is that by being on your toes and change-ready, you can be presented an opportunity to grow your practice.

Automation will happen

There has been much talk of automation in the accounting industry and the effect this may have on your practice. It’s not nonsense either, although it may be a little blown out of proportion for now. Predictions of proper and genuine AI recasting the accounting profession has merit, but more exciting would be the existence of progressively smarter software and being able to start by incrementally automating simpler tasks.

The advancing tech revolution or evolution will not necessarily redefine accounting roles, but it will definitely recast them. Administrative accounting jobs, however, will be the first on the decline, as this is a space where software is moving the fastest and will be more efficient pretty soon. This can be a real positive, so it is therefore important to ensure that you reconsider any old software and a host of administrative roles that are nearing redundancy. These would be a handbrake on your practice into the future, as your competitors begin to reduce salary overheads and provide a quicker and more reliable service to their clients. It is important you remain vigilant and well-educated when it comes to updating your accounting practice software.

The rise of the specialists

So, what happens when a lot of the more tedious numerical grunt work is being performed by binary code instead of Peter the accounting graduate? You will have scope and hunger for specialists and skilled professionals.

A skilled and specialised workforce will be the cornerstone of your future-proofing efforts, as these employees have skills that cannot be replaced by machines or software. New functions will emerge as practices diverge into advisory roles more so than being tax technicians.

With the nitty gritty being taken care of, you will eventually see specialists engaging your client base in further and further ways to deliver value and enhanced services. If you can create a niche for yourself in a sub-field of accounting, or provide a suite of professionals to be available for a set of sub-specialties, you will be ahead of the pack and prepared for the reality of the future practice. The result is clear, as this form of future-proofing will be invaluable in terms of future prosperity. Find the areas that cannot be replaced by technology and squeeze.

Diversification will become the new normal

So, with a reduced need for admin, a push for skilled specialists over generic skills and a technology driven automation wave, we will see practices start to diversify their services to fill in the holes left behind and create new streams of revenue. This is an important aspect of future-proofing as it will be fundamental to a thriving practice of the future.

Services such as business advice, stronger focus on auditing, strategic consulting, superannuation, data analysis, etc. will become more commonplace in the future accounting practice model. With smart technology also come big data, so being able to analyse this effectively and use it in your practice to enhance services and create roles will also be essential. This again will play on the strengths of the human over the machine, with face-to-face relationships starting to become more important. In this way you can easily see accounting practices morphing into something of an advisory service spanning far more than tax compliance.

Sam Allert, chief executive, Reckon