Last month more than 1,000 inspiring and future-focused practitioners and leaders convened at our annual Digital CPA conference to share insights and best practices on ways to drive transformation within firms and practice areas.
The timing of the event provides the ideal opportunity to reflect on the successes and challenges of the past year and identify new opportunities for the year ahead. New strategies. New business models. New technologies.
As you kick off 2023, I wanted to share three key takeaways from this year’s DCPA to consider:
- Top performers are leading the way: Client advisory services (CAS) offers enormous growth potential, with the right strategy. The AICPA and CPA.com’s newly released 2022 CAS Benchmark survey report again revealed continued double-digit (16%) year-over-year growth for CAS practices, but the gap between Top Performers and everyone else is widening. Top Performers saw an impressive 25% rise in median growth rate in net client fees per professional, compared to just 8% for All Respondents. Firms that want to lead in CAS must take an intentional approach to building and scaling their practice and consider adopting some of the key strategies of Top Performers related to pricing, staffing, capacity building and more.
- Next phase of digital transformation: Evolving tech ecosystem continues to create more opportunities to add value. Artificial intelligence, robotic process automation and digital networks are creating even more opportunities for accountants to access greater amounts of data, derive insights and deepen strategic partnerships with clients. In this LinkedIn Live from DCPA, BILL founder and CEO René Lacerte and I discussed the next phase of this digital transformation.
- Leading-edge culture and talent: DCPA community is creating an advantage. As the war for talent becomes increasingly challenging, cultivating the right mindsets, skills and culture is even more critical to enable transformation and maximize value for both staff and clients. Many DCPA leading-edge firms are taking an innovative, strategic and people-first approach to managing their practice, which is creating a competitive advantage that best positions them to attract and retain top talent. Firms are focused on upskilling staff to capitalize on new opportunities and creating the flexible, consultative working environments demanded by today’s professionals.
The Digital CPA community is paving the way forward for the accounting profession. We invite you to become a part of this innovative and energizing community in 2023. Best wishes for the year ahead.
