Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/116963
SUCCESSFUL SMALL BUSINESS CONSULTING By Doug Sleeter What Small Businesses Want from their Accounting Professional I n January 2013, Te Sleeter Group conducted some research of small and medium-sized business (SMB) owners across the US. Te goal of the research was to learn about what SMBs want from their outside accounting frm. We asked a series of questions that targeted the types of services currently provided by CPA frms, as well as the types of services that SMBs desired from an outside accountant. We also wanted to understand the SMB���s impressions of what services their accountant could provide compared with what they thought their accountant wanted to provide. We presented the results at the recent AICPA SaaS Executive Roundable. Te data might surprise some accountants as well as SMBs, because quite ofen, the diference between what SMBs want difers from what they think their CPA Mr. Sleeter is the founder of Te Sleeter Group, a national group of accounting sofware consultants who serve small and medium-sized businesses. He is the host of the Accounting Solutions Conference and the author of several books including the QuickBooks Consultant���s Reference Guide, and the leading market college textbooks ���QuickBooks Fundamentals and QuickBooks Complete.��� For more information, call 888-484-5484 or visit www.sleeter.com. Doug can also be reached at Doug.Sleeter@ CPAPracticeAdvisor.com. 18 wants to do for them, especially in the areas of technology consulting. When we combine the quantitative research of 160 respondents with our nearly 20 years of qualitative research and understanding of how accountants work with their clients, these fndings point to some signifcant opportunities for forward thinking accounting frms, who invest in technology skills and who build client services to leverage these skills. Te majority of respondents were service businesses, in business for between ten and ffeen years, average revenues of between $250,000 and $1,000,000, and under 5 employees. 54 percent of the respondents provide services to consumers (B2C), and 46 percent provide services to other businesses (B2B). Some examples of these typical CPA frm clients are: ��� B2C ��� Auto Service, Artists, Church, Construction, Hair Salons, Landscaping, Legal, Mfg ��� B2B ��� Advertising, Design, Information Tech, Internet, Legal, Mfg Reps, Consulting, Property Mgt, Wholesale Some surprises we found among the businesses who have employees: ��� 90 percent Have Internal Bookkeepers ��� 70 percent hire external bookkeepers (other than the CPA) ��� On average, they assign 1.26 employees to bookkeeping tasks and 0.71 contractors. When we asked these businesses about their current accounting system, it was no surprise to fnd out that overwhelmingly, they are QuickBooks Desktop users with an inhouse bookkeeper, about half of whom prepare their own payroll. Over 70 percent of them use QuickBooks on local hardware in their ofces. April 2013 ��� www.CPAPracticeA www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com In a nutshell, these businesses are living in the ���old world��� of desktop sofware, running within their own ofces, and they are only using cloud services if their desktop systems have add-ons that connect to the cloud. For example if they use merchant services, online banking, or Bill. com for managing AR/AP and cash management. We asked about how satisfed these SMBs were with their current accounting frm, and found the following: ��� Overall Satisfaction: SMBs are satisfed to highly satisfed with their ���external accounting frm��� ��� 50 percent have switched frms at some point, but we don���t think we can conclude that this means they were unhappy. Perhaps they just had new needs that were not served by their previous frm. ��� Accountant NetPromoter score is 26 ��� Tis is high-average compared with other service businesses as measured by SatMetrix.com. When we asked questions about who SMBs seek out for strategic advice, we sought to understand the expectations from SMBs about how much involvement they want from their CPA as far as ���stra- a signifcant opportunity for frms to diferentiate themselves in the market by providing technology related services, and to market themselves as being experts in technology. Most SMBs WANT their accountant to be proactive helping them plan and implement technology changes��� But nearly the same number say their CPA does NOT WANT to proactively help them. We also thought it was important to understand SMB���s opinion on how ���up to date��� their accountant is with regard to adoption of new technologies. We found that only 15 percent said their accountant is ahead of the curve as far as technology usage inside their frm, and 65 percent said their accountant is either behind or current in their technology use. Tis may help to explain the earlier results that indicate SMBs don���t think their accountant can or wants to provide technology planning advice. Since we ofen help sofware companies fgure out how to engage and partner with the accounting profession, we also asked about what SMBs want as far as recommendations about technology CONTINUED ONLINE AT www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com/10884471 tegic technology advice��� compared with ���strategic business planning advice.��� Te idea was to get the SMB to diferentiate between an obvious match (business and fnancial planning) as compared to the technology planning area. It was no surprise that when it comes to seeking strategic fnancial advice, accountants score at the top of the list. But more interesting to us was that we discovered SMBs have a desire for help with technology planning, but at the same time, they perceive their accountant as either not able, or not willing to provide technology related planning and consulting services. Tis leads us to conclude that there is solutions. In particular, we sought to understand how SMBs feel about the accountant being involved in the sale (i.e. commissions) when they make recommendations for technology solutions. What we found is that SMBs either do not want technology recommendations at all, or when they do want the recommendations, they don���t want their accountant to be involved in the sale. Tese results didn���t surprise us, but it may surprise many sofware companies. As logical as it may seem to turn accountants into resellers, SMBs would rather their accountant be ���solution agnostic��� when making recommendations.