Aprio is uniting its Aprio Firm Alliance with the Professional Services+ Alliance it inherited from RSM US earlier this year to create a combined Aprio Alliance, starting next January.
This spring,
"Aprio has invested in building strategic partnerships, giving back to the industry for a number of years," said Dean Sengstock, partner and leader of the Aprio Alliance, who joined Aprio from RSM US, where he was leading the PS+ practice.
The Aprio Firm Alliance program has roughly 40 member firms, and around 60 independently owned firms in the old RSM US Alliance made the transition when Aprio acquired RSM's PS+ practice. Approximately 90 firms are expected to be part of the combined alliance in January.
"With the acquisition of our practice May 1 from RSM, we brought over the PS+ community," said Sengstock. "The Aprio Alliance is really a convergence of those two communities together to create a greater community of firms that are collaborating together in a strategic partnership with Aprio, a Top 25 firm that's on the move, tech enabled, but also take advantage of the synergies and the scale and the different things that firms are working on to help improve their client experience and talent experience. There's no shortage of new opportunities or things that are going on within our profession today."
Aprio received a
This combination of the two alliances will advance Atlanta-based Aprio's goal of building a connected, growth-focused community of accounting firms, uniting accounting leaders around shared learning, progress and business performance. The Aprio Alliance will give members greater support and opportunities to engage across every level, connecting partners, practice leaders, client service professionals, and functional teams to drive firmwide collaboration and growth. The community includes an expanded member services team, access to more than 30 vendor partnerships, a full curriculum of technical and non-technical CPE and leadership training available through the Aprio Learning Platform, and exclusive benchmarking and coaching resources.
"The creation of Aprio Alliance represents the next evolution of how we support firms," said Aprio CEO Richard Kopelman in a statement Wednesday. "By bringing together two complementary communities, we are giving members more ways to learn from each other, grow their teams, and deliver even greater value to clients."Sengstock spent nearly 29 years at RSM before joining Aprio in May, along with 37 other team members. They combined with four team members that Aprio had in the practice.
"Aprio really values the meaningful relationships and has benefited a lot from the collaboration in this profession," said Sengstock. "Our acquisition really represents an opportunity to elevate the capabilities of the member firms by helping provide advice, learning and access to technology and data — some of the things that Aprio was doing on that front — and then utilizing our team that has years and years of experience in terms of how to help the member firms maximize that investment In the relationship with Aprio."
Aprio has been operating its own firm alliance since 2021, collaborating with independently owned firms around the country, before buying the PS+ practice from RSM and its nearly four-decade-old alliance.
"They were making an investment in the operational excellence of our team in managing for almost 40 years the professional alliance that RSM had, but more important was the relationships, being able to give back to these firms through a strategic partnership with Aprio," said Sengstock. "There's no shortage of things that are going on in terms of technology investment and data investment and additional learning that we're doing."
The firms in the alliance range in size from a few million dollars in revenue to the largest member firm with over $120 million in revenue and 300 to 400 people. The alliance includes Heard, McElroy & Vestal in Shreveport, Louisiana; Harding, Shymanski & Co. in Evansville, Indiana, and PBMares in Newport News, Virginia.
"It's really exciting to have the opportunity to collaborate with them and help them differentiate their client experience, help them with the changes that are going on in the profession, better equipping their talent with learning opportunities, leadership skills, those types of things," said Sengstock. "It definitely takes a village to evolve our practices. Aprio believes strongly in strategic partnerships."
