Many of us find change challenging. We rationalise our caution by saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, which provides an easy justification for personal and organisational inertia.
But sometimes, change is unavoidable. Here are the main drivers for change that affect modern accountancy practices.
The economy
There’s not a lot you can do to stop the economy nose-diving. Or expanding, for that matter. But there are things you can do to protect yourself against the worst effects of a slowdown and exploit the opportunities offered by an upturn. New attitudes, new working practices and new technology should be an important part of your response.
Laws and regulations
Laws and regulations have a profound effect on how accountants work. GDPR, Making Tax Digital and FRS 102 are just a few recent examples of this kind of change. Be prepared to change the internal procedures and workflows within your practice together with your software and other IT systems in order to keep up.
Client demand
Over time, new clients will make new demands on you. Even long-standing clients will expect you to offer them more services, or expect you to deliver those services differently. Online accounting; mobile access to financial data; secure client portals; a social media presence… What technology will you need to meet these demands?
Staff expectation
To be the best, you have to employ the best, so your practice needs to be able to hire and retain talent. As well as flexible working, better work / life balance and a range of interesting and challenging assignments, staff these days want to be able to broaden and deepen their technical skills. They also expect to have access to the latest technology to help them do their job. Better make sure you’re providing it!
Self-development
Your staff, partners and managers aren’t the only people who may look for opportunities to extend their technical and other skills. Over the course of a working life you will naturally look for new challenges, both to develop your career and to explore your own potential. This kind of self-generated pressure can be an important driver of change.
Competitive pressure
Imitating your competitors is not always a winning strategy (“Tax returns for a fiver” anyone?) but neither is ignoring genuine competitive pressure. How will you respond if another accountancy practice offers something that you don’t, or can’t? These days, technology is often the key to unlocking new markets and opportunities and getting back your competitive edge.
Technology
As soon as any new technology becomes available, someone somewhere will exploit it to their advantage to do new things, or to do existing things better, more quickly, more cheaply or some combination of the three. The most radical technologies reshape the way we see the world – the iPad, for example, grew from a desirable consumer novelty to become a valuable business tool. What paradigm-shifting technologies await accountants in the near future?
Growing your practice
Even if you don’t want your practice to get any bigger, you need to continually take on new clients just to replace those you lose. To expand, you’ll need to take on even more, perhaps by employing more staff or by working more efficiently. To increase fee revenue, you’ll need to charge existing clients more for the work you already do, or get them to buy additional services from you. Better software can help you pursue these growth strategies.
For tax and accounting professionals, change is a constant fact of life. At some point – for any one of the reasons described above or a combination of many – the pressure for change in your accountancy practice will become irresistible. Your best chance of success in periods of rapid transition is to find a technology partner who shares your vision of future success.
