Two members of La. firm Postlethwaite & Netterville win CPA.com's 2016 'Innovative Practitioners' award

CPA.com announced this week that Caitlin Lacher and Rachael Higginbotham, both representing Louisiana accounting and business advisory firm Postlethwaite & Netterville, have been named winners of the Innovative Practitioners 2016 Award. The annual award looks to recognize innovations in process, services or technology implementation in public accounting firms.

Lacher and Higginbotham both developed Pounce, a new business development tool, this previous summer. Pounce allows CPA firms to more easily manage and match staff resumes, industry experience, and other firm materials, allowing marketing and sales teams to quickly respond to new business opportunities.

“Rachael and Caitlin had an innovative idea for a tool that could manage our professional bios and sales materials ensuring that materials are accurate, consistent and available 24/7,” said Bill Balhoff, managing director and CEO of Postlethwaite & Netterville, per a statement. “Pounce [is] an easy-to-use, web-based system designed not only for our firm, but also for all professional services firms.”

Lacher and Higginbotham will be recognized at the 2016 Digital CPA Conference, to be held Dec. 5-7, 2016, in Las Vegas. Both women have been invited as guests to the event.

“We’re seeing a lot of excitement and energy from the Digital CPA community as more firms embrace technology and a range of practice management innovations,” stated Erik Asgeirsson, president and CEO of CPA.com. “Our Innovative Practitioner Award is designed to give a human face to the best practices and breakthrough tools many firms are developing.”

Three other nominees were recognized for their submissions:

Runner up

• Charles Postal of Santos, Postal & Co., Rockville, Md. Adopted Yammer.com, Slack.com and OfficeVibe.com, among other services, to his firm to improve communication amongst staff.

Honorable Mention (tie)

• Kathy Ryan of RoseRyan, Newark, Calif. Kathy helped develop her firm’s own in-house application, the RoseRyan Dream Team System, to automate time tracking, recruiting, revenue forecasting and more.
• Dixie McCurley of Trusted CFO Solutions, Atlanta. Dixie helps lead CPA.com workshops on client accounting services in the cloud, but also walks the walk with her firm, developing customized accounting models for clients that deliver powerful data analytics for business decision-making.

For more on the 2016 Innovative Practitioners Award, head to CPA.com's site here.