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Frustrated by a lack of appetite for innovation, hungry accountants are going out on their own, says Shaye Thyer.
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Tech-savvy operators deserting dinosaur practices
11 July 2022
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Savvy operators hungry for change are abandoning larger firms in favour of smaller practices or setting up on their own, said the head of accounting at Intuit QuickBooks, Shaye Thyer.
Speaking on this week’s Accountants Daily podcast Ms Thyer – a finalist for Thought Leader of the Year in the recent Australian Accounting Awards – said decision-making in traditional firms was too hidebound to embrace the latest technology.
“The accounting industry moves so slowly in terms of innovation and agility and change,” she said.
“There’s absolutely no doubt that the single ledger has brought the efficiency that the accounting industry has needed to make sure that we can add value to our clients in those relationships – not just putting numbers in a box and ticking and bashing. The clients do not see value in that anymore.”
But she said digital natives were increasingly frustrated by the pace of change in larger practices and deserting in droves.
“Something that I see nearly every single day is really savvy operators leave larger firms and start their own firm or join a smaller firm where they can be agile … where they can have an input into process and technology, and they can put the clients first and put their teams first in the way the firm’s run,” she said.
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“That’s not a luxury that you have in a larger firm, because there’s too many cooks in the kitchen.
“It doesn’t matter if we call these things corporates or we technically structure as a corporate – none of them are run like corporates, they’re still partnerships. And they still all have to agree.”
The processes in place to invest and upgrade were failing those firms, she said.
“The mechanisms around decision making just get in the way of great stuff happening. It takes so long,” she said.
“And it’s not normally about funding – although sometimes it is. Accounting partners like to take a lot of money out of their businesses – that’s what they’ve worked hard to have the right to do.
“But in terms of reinvesting into the business of the accounting firm – into the accounting business – there’s also a missed opportunity there, I think.
“And perhaps that’s why we still see large firms working on big clunky old server-based practice management tools, just tolerating it ‘because change is hard and actually we can’t decide, and there’s six people and some of them like it this way’.
“Every shareholder in an accounting firm expects a say in how the firm is run.”
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