Training, Training, Training

This past week, I spoke at the AICPA National Tax Conference in D.C. and the AICPA Sophisticated Tax Conference in Boston. In each session, I had discussed aspects related to helping firms maximize their IT investments – focusing on the move to the paperless office.

I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people interested in these topics, especially since both conferences were heavily focused on technical tax areas. To me, it signaled that at all levels firm leadership is actively engaged in learning how to make their compliance processes more efficient and productive.

One of the topics I touched upon was training in the profession. I have always maintained that we as accountants do not focus enough internally on professional development as we should. That is a broad stroke comment and I’m sure there are some firms that have invested heavily in this area.

In fact, the Bay Street Group study found that high performing firms are far more likely to invest in their people  through education and training – with 49% of employees reporting that they get thorough and continuous technology training, while no low performers claimed that (read the Seven Habits of HighlySuccessful Firms white paper, based on the study).

However, the vast majority of firms – including the four I’ve worked with in my 35 year career as a practitioner - focus few resources on developing a top-notch training program. Though we know that our talent is our greatest asset, we tend to behave as though staff will simply learn through osmosis. New staff members are hired out of college often with the expectation that they will simply know how to prepare tax returns. This expectation is simply not realistic, and ultimately hurts our business and contributes to talent loss.

We owe it to our employees and to ourselves as owners and partners to allocate time and energy to training our staff. This is particularly true when it comes to ensuring that everyone knows how and when to use the tools at our disposal – training not just on how to use software, for example, but how to use it within the business processes set up throughout the firm. 

Baby Steps Slow Real Progress

This past week, I spoke with a few firms at the CCH User Conference about how they implement technology initiatives within their firms. I also spoke at the National Tax Conference in D.C. on a related topic – 7 Key Steps toMaximizing Your IT Investments. The people I talked to expressed the need to take baby steps on IT implementations. They were concerned about overwhelming their staff with too much change at one time, as opposed to just simply jumping in with two feet and rolling out the initiative at once.

I think though their concerns have merit, their overall approach reveals a conservative attitude toward technology adoption and, as such, it may hinder their long-term competitiveness. A recent study by the Bay Street Group found that high performing firms not only embrace positive change, but create a culture of curiosity in which staff are encouraged to innovate. In fact, they're 11 times more likely than low performing firms to encourage employees to explore new technologies and better ways of doing things (read the Seven Habits of HighlySuccessful Firms white paper, based on the study).

In addition to underestimating the competition, these firms may also be underestimating their staff and its ability to embrace positive change. Communicated properly, a change worth making for the better of the whole will ultimately benefit the individual, so why would anyone favor waiting? Make no mistake; clearly communicating the goals - for the organization and the individual - is an essential element of the project plan.

Sometimes that baby step approach means that the people involved in the project have either not fully thought out how the firm is going to use the new technology or are unsure how the new technology is going to work out in their firm. Either way, it will not lead to as successful an implementation as it could be.

In my 35 years in the accounting profession, I have been involved in some pretty significant IT initiatives within my firm of 60 or so people. In 1999, my firm implemented a full blown document management system, ePace (the forerunner to ProSystem fx Engagement), Microsoft Exchange, and introduced something called the Internet to every desktop in the firm. This project took about six months beginning to end. The scope was broad, but was it technology overload? Of course not. Change came swiftly and, at times was protested loudly, but it became intrinsic to our every day work processes and in the end everyone wondered, “how did we ever work before?”

There is no question that change can be painful. Accounting firms have historically been creatures of habit; we did it this way last year, so it should be okay to do it the same way this year  - without questioning whether or not it makes sense.  Having people step out of their comfort zone is a difficult thing. I know - I am an accountant and I still have that problem. But we know through what we say to our clients that the full adoption of technology initiatives to make our businesses more efficient, productive and profitable is the right thing to embrace within our firms. Taking baby steps often only prolongs the pain of change and hinders real progress.