Paul Epperlein
Shortly before year end, Paul Epperlein, Vice President of Channel Sales at ADP1, looked into his crystal ball and spied five trends he believes will make the biggest impact upon accountants and accounting during 2020. He summarized these in the SPARK Newsletter powered by ADP1. In a telephone interview with me over the holidays Paul summarized the trends within his feature, 5 Accounting Trends to Watch in the New Year.
Paul's first prediction deals with 'Consolidation of tech'... while currently most accounting firms work with as many as 10 or more different technology systems, Paul believes that will change... that the number of systems they interface with will be reduced as they find 'the right mix' and become more efficient.
When it comes to artificial intelligence Paul sees the accounting industry as being 'Slow (to) embrace artificial intelligence'... citing that the industry is somewhat hesitant to put AI into practice but that in the future firms will embrace AI as a way to eliminate 'monotonous tasks', like audits, giving accountants more freedom to practice consulting.
One of the areas I personally was surprised about was 'diversification of talent for growth and evolution' by accounting firms. I must say that that the stuff old types I talk to a lot in traditional CPA firms give no thought at all about hiring outside of traditional roles of accounting degree applications, bookkeepers and clerks (or 'clarks' as some of them still call them, almost makes you think of 'Scrooge'.) But Paul sees something quite different and this article is about his predictions...not my observations. Paul believes that many accounting firms are moving away from limiting themselves to just the traditional roles and personnel by adding specialists in areas like Human Resources, and Cyber Security, and Fraud, and even Business Operations. This will create firms that can offer much more in the way of comprehensive services not just the traditional accounting services of years past... "Mr. Scrooge you have been replaced by the next generation of big thinkers. (Murph)"
Paul also expects firms to "operationalize and optimize their teams" so as to achieve the challenge of compliance within a smaller organization. He cites that this may be accomplished via outsourced consultants which brings us to his last prediction.
Going right along with both the diversification and optimization trends just mentioned, Paul sees significant 'growth of outsourced accounts' on the horizon of the accounting industry. Some firms will choose to offer the additional services they provide via outside resources... for example they might offer Payroll to their clients exclusive through a reliable outside resource. Now Paul was giving his readers an 'objective review of the topic' but since I'm writing my own review of Paul's article then I can be a little less objective and simply mention that one such resource for payroll would be the various offerings from ADP. (By the way, out of full disclosure, ADP is one of the sponsors of Insightful Accountant's Top 100 and ProAdvisor of the Year Awards for 2020, but that does not make this article 'sponsored content'.) In reality there are any number of services that both 'small and large' accounting firms are starting to offer where they 'need help from time to time' and rather than hire personnel on a part time basis they are turning to qualified resources from outsourced providers for their staffing requirements.
If you want to see Paul's predictions for yourself, then just click on over to the ADP SPARK NEWSLETTER feature, 5 Accounting Trends to Watch in the New Year and give it a read, you will be glad you did.
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