PwC
Noel Bowers, PwC U.S. trust solutions partner, brought up the idea of an investment from the firm as NABA was revisiting its mission statement. Involved in NABA since she was a student, Bowers is the chair of the organization governance committee and has served as its national secretary and director since 2019. She suggested the organization host a pro bono summit to display its strategic plan and what it needed to achieve its goals, and that's when PwC offered to assist with new technology improvements.
"We're committed to continuing to build a culture of belonging, both within our firm as well as within the broader communities that we serve," said Bowers. "And as a part of this commitment, we understand that collaborating with other responsible business leaders and organizations striving for similar goals helps to benefit society as a whole while giving us an opportunity to drive change at scale."
With this investment, PwC aims to support NABA in the development of a technology infrastructure, supported by a pro bono team of technology professionals. The initiative will also gather data analytics and insights to help NABA serve over 6,300 professional and student members in accounting, business, finance and entrepreneurship.
Through digital transformation, NABA anticipates its membership will grow from 6,000 to 100,000 members in five years, with 36% growth in the number of professional chapters and a 74% increase in transparency, with a unified engagement platform that is accessible to all chapters. According to NABA CEO Guylaine Saint Juste, the organization noticed for a long time that its outdated technology was a problem for staff and members and limited its efficiency.
"The trend for our business is that people want to be able to connect locally, but what they really want is a global network," said Saint Juste. "And having a technology for people to know who other members are and access their LinkedIn page with one click of a button is something we're really excited to build."
She believes that the development of an effective communication system or project management software would improve communication across the network. It would also reduce the risks of racist attacks, which NABA regional president Crystal Martin experienced while hosting an event online. There were so many racist comments below the link that the organization had to terminate it, and Saint Juste believes the right guardrails on an updated platform would prevent this from happening again.
According to Bowers, the goal is to find new ways to engage with current and prospective members by bridging the gap between present and future objectives with an enhanced communication platform. Doing this would allow NABA to evaluate the data analytics that come along with that standardized communication and to understand where to scale it back, depending on the success of its communication strategy.
"I believe that communication for any organization is critical," said Bowers. "But having the ability to understand how marketing strategies work to reach out to your members is also really important, because you need to be able to analyze what's working and what's not, and this tool allows them to do that."
As a result, PwC offered support in designing a digital transformation roadmap to identify gaps in the organization's digital maturity, as well as its customer and member engagement. The roadmap identified areas of improvement in fields such as data driven decision making and data accumulation, and how they can be applied to NABA's customer relationship system, accounting, enterprise resource planning and training modules.
Among other issues, Saint Juste said that members are always forced to use a computer to renew their membership because NABA doesn't have an app, and the process can sometimes take up to 45 minutes. The organization's lack of a library of content also considerably slows down the delivery of services, because it makes it more difficult for Black professionals in finance or accounting to follow trends in the industry or to be found by employers. Additionally, a more sophisticated accounting system would allow the organization to put all chapters' budgets and expenses under one umbrella Master Agreement.
"We believe that accounting is the language of business, money and wealth, but if it's not equipped with the right technology, we cannot possibly reach out and serve business leaders," said Saint Juste. "So if we are able to have beautiful technology, it will really bring our vision of being an organization that thinks globally, but acts locally to fruition. The goal is to get our technology where we're going, not where we are."
Professional services company Accenture also committed $1 million over three years. Combined with
While some people may not understand the relationship between digital transformation and Black representation, Saint Juste said that technology should be an integral part of the accounting pipeline diversification efforts. In a field where less than 2% of professionals are Black and where
"We're very serious about becoming a leader and we're thankful to PwC for taking the lead, like our other corporate partners CLA, Crunchbase and Accenture," said Saint Juste. "Those are all the companies that are early believers and understood the importance of building a Black institution, because we don't make progress without one."
The importance of collaboration between advocacy groups and firms, especially in the field of communication and technology, can sometimes be overlooked as a suitable solution for a diverse workforce. Instead, many corporations concentrate their efforts on educational initiatives. However, Saint Juste said that DEI-led internships or scholarships are not always helpful when they don't consider that a significant number of Black students work while pursuing a degree, which can sometimes greatly undermine their academic success.
While acknowledging that NABA may not have all the answers, she said that its ability to understand the Black experience in college allows it to create innovative solutions that a busy firm might not be interested in doing. As seen with PwC's investment, Saint Juste explained that more firms realize that Black-led organizations are part of the solution and for them to participate, there needs to be the right level of investments.
"I just think leadership matters, and so does representation," said Saint Juste. "You can have great vision, great mission, but without means, nothing can happen. Firms need to understand that if they keep trying to do everything on their own without including Black institutions, they will never fully understand the problem."
