Voices

What does the firm of the future look like?

[IMGCAP(1)]Where do we start?

Where does the knowledge worker fit in?

How do we make our firms more efficient with cloud-based solutions?

Should we get rid of the billable hour and value price?

These were just a few of the topics covered at this year’s Sage Summit. I’m mentally exhausted after listening to Ron Baker and Darren Root talk about the Firm of the Future. There was so much good information to process and great interactive discussion with the audience. What I learned from other summit presenters was very much in line with my own presentation, which I co-hosted with Jason Blumer, CPA, CITP.

The morning of our presentation, Jason and I were up early, ready to facilitate our session, “Had the Idea, Had the Guts”—offering a hard-hitting account of our own journey to transition “our fathers’ firms” into Firms of the Future.

Nontraditional is the best word to describe our presentation—where we not only talked about the new waves of innovation, but we also played with toilet paper and binkies! Jason and I took attendees through the history of accounting from the 1970s to 2011 and beyond. We discussed what firms can expect—coming waves of innovation—and the necessity to keep up with these waves of change.

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We also took attendees through the details of what makes up the infrastructure of Firms of the Future. For more information on the “Had the Idea, Had the Guts" presentation, view the video at thriveal.com.

No doubt that there was a lot to take in. But, if there is one message that firms needed to take away from the Sage Summit, it was: learn to swim through the waves…or drowning will occur.

 

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