A look inside what it takes to truly get the most out of your firm's technology, based on the results of our annual Best Firms for Technology list, and with insights from Roman Kepczyk of Rightworks.
Transcription:
Chris Gaetano (00:03):
Welcome to On the Air with Accounting Today. I'm Chris Gaetano, tech editor with Accounting Today. There's firms that happen to use technology. There's firms that happen to lean in to technology. There's firms that center themselves around technology and then there are the best firms for technology. Accounting Today in its annual quest to find these firms and understand what makes them different recently released its
(01:04):
How you doing, Roman?
Roman Kepczyk (01:05):
Doing awesome, Chris, and thank you so much for including me in this podcast.
Chris Gaetano (01:09):
Aw, thank you for coming. So to start to you then, what exactly does it mean when a firm is tech focused versus a firm that happens to have tech? And how do you see this in our latest best firms for technology list?
Roman Kepczyk (01:26):
Well, Chris, as you know, I spend most of my time in firms and so on average, I consult directly about 20 firms a year and I see an extremely wide gamut of tech adoptions, but it becomes obvious which of those are actually tech focused by the questions they ask, the processes they're pursuing, and the infrastructure they basically have in place. What I see is when a firm seeds its IT direction and decisions to an internal IT network person, that person's focus is on the network and stability, which is somewhat limiting. And oftentimes these have been devout loyal employees for many years and have really driven that direction in a traditional environment. This is different from today's tech focus firms where they're driven by more of a leadership team is what I'd say, that really understands that tech, particularly like AI enhanced tech, is completely transforming every process throughout the profession.
(02:25):
You also see, one of the questions you ask is on the AT list, where do we see that? And what I think is in those firms, leadership is taking the reins and actively pursuing solutions that they see are improving productivity, the things that are reducing manual interactions with the data and overall reducing the risk of human errors, which has sometimes been kind of the bottleneck in firms.
Chris Gaetano (02:49):
And so getting to a little bit more specific here, how have you seen technology play into firm strategy overall? So how does tech influence the strategic considerations in firm development, like what services it might offer, how it performs those services, approach to recruitment and retention, investment priorities, all sorts of stuff. And how is it different from firms that may not focus on tech as much?
Roman Kepczyk (03:16):
Well, when you think about IT strategy, the big four and super regionals, they've always been leaders in strategically integrating technology into every aspect of their practice. And then what we see in the firms is the group of 400 and the firms below that traditionally weighted before taking the lead and then the rest of us learned from that. And so I think one thing that's really changed in IT strategy is that private equity that's coming to profession and the discussions that they have with firms, it basically comes up that these groups are hyper-focused on technology solutions and delivering them part of their pitch. And so it's a native part of their strategy to improve production processes in those firms. And so this is making independent firms that are paying attention really perk up and take notice that the profession is changing at a super fast pace and we need to be cognizant of it and make sure that everyone in our firm, not just partners, but the managers, seniors and all the way down to the staff take notice and help us move forward.
(04:25):
On the recruiting side, you said that what we find out in the firms that we visit, if your firm has subpar technology, that information gets out and your firm will be at a competitive disadvantage because the reality today is everybody talks and these kids coming out of school today, they are digital natives. They've always worked with tools. They've had access to the latest generative and even agentic tools. And they know if they're in a solid upcoming firm or one of those, what do they call them? Okay boomer firms because the information just gets out there.
Chris Gaetano (05:04):
And so when it comes to recruitment going a little bit further onto that, does it also affect who firms choose to recruit the kinds of talent that they look for, the kinds of skills that they need? Back in the day you would need to know how to use a 10 key calculator or something like that. You would have people with much more, I guess, what we call traditional skillsets or something like that. How has it changed what firms look for? How has it helped changed what sort of talents they need?
Roman Kepczyk (05:34):
When we talk about talent, I think from the accounting profession, the pipeline continues to be pretty consistent coming in. They're looking for more people with experience, but we've always looked for that. So I think what's going to happen is we're going to have to change how we train those people to use these tools. Where I am seeing probably the biggest differences in the questions I'm getting on who we should hire is actually in the IT department. Do we really need a network infrastructure person or do we need someone who's going to help us evolve and change? And what we see is with more and more applications going to the cloud and security having to be outsourced to third party providers that are enterprise class, that traditional network infrastructure skill isn't quite as needed, particularly in firms that are 200 members or less where they're used to managing their OT and now they're pushing it up to those cloud providers.
(06:31):
But I think what I really get a lot of questions on where firms can take advantage is finding these people who are data analysts. I don't want to say data scientists, but it could be even people inside of your firm who are a little bit more tech nerdy and really enjoy this and understand not only how the firm's information moves around, but also how these AI tools can be utilized to help manipulate that and reduce human input. And so I think we're looking to hire more, I'll say, data savvy people to be on top of the group because that's what the private equity firms are delivering to these firms. And then also I think I predict there's going to be a comeback of what we call the training coordinators or learning officers, people that can help firms with change management because we're in a situation where the change of pace is only going to accelerate and increase and our ability to absorb this information and use it effectively is going to be a lot tougher going ahead.
Chris Gaetano (07:35):
So this kind of mean that every prospective CPA, everyone who wants to eventually join an advanced firm, do they have to all be a coder? Do they have to all become IT experts on top of being tax experts, audit experts, things like that? Or are we looking at two different paths here?
Roman Kepczyk (07:51):
We're looking at different paths completely. When we talk about the technicians of last generation and the generation before that, they were using tools like Idea and ACL and what ended up happening is we thought we could train all the people, but we found only a few people could be that tech nerdy to get it done out there. Now with the latest generation of these Agentic tools and particularly what came out with Cowork from Claude, which Microsoft will adopt to at the end of the day, but all of a sudden normal people like this that understand accounting processes and what needs to be done to service our clients, we can use these tools as effectively as the coders did in the past. And so while we will need some, I'll call them tech nerdy people to handle the governance components, making sure that we have the guardrails in place before we release the tools out to all the staff, but they'll make sure they're secure, that data from our clients can't be exposed.
(08:52):
And so like I said, I think that IT position's going to change in firms.
Chris Gaetano (08:57):
So when you talk about how regular non-technical folks are being able to use these tools at a level that say before coders may have needed before, can you go into a little bit more specifics as to how these tools are being used? What capacities do these non-technical folks like us have that maybe they didn't have before that they're using regularly?
Roman Kepczyk (09:19):
Okay. Well, what I see is right now because it's kind of the wild, wild west, and if you look at cowork, it's still in research mode. We do not recommend they use that in the firms today. We think they should play with it outside of the firm to understand what is coming in, but the tools they should be adopting, evaluating are those tools that are provided by their existing vendors that natively integrate AI. And if your vendor is not rolling those tools out, you should look at to see who the leaders are out there. So a great example of that is in the area of practice management. And what we see is the traditional providers have bolted on and added on features and they say they're going to do it, but
(10:05):
In reality, you have groups like Firm360 like Carbon on the bigger firms, Canopy and Taxton at the smaller firms, they're integrating a lot of these AI capabilities that allow natural integration between applications. They have much more robust workflow, almost like ERP systems that manage the workflow. So you touch data and it natively moves to the next place without having to force a action of some kind. And so back in the day we used to have, like a long time ago, we used to implement APIs that in the cash practice would go out and collect data to do a bank rec. These new agents, even those coming from Intuit, for instance, will actually allow the user to invoke the secure agent with guardrails and everything. So it'll go out to the website for a bank, login, collect the data, bring in, and that agent will reconcile that information.
(11:06):
And so I think those are the tools we should be really trying to promote today in our firms. Anything that eliminates manual human entry that does pre-accounting, as Deb Defer calls it, to collect the data, input it into the system. And then if there's any anomalies, then we as the human in the loop step in and correct that. And we're going to see that in data ingress for tax returns, we're going to see it for CAS ingress, even the audit teams will see it.
Chris Gaetano (11:37):
So when you tell me about all these different ways that processes might be able to be changed through AI, things like that, I think often of how a lot of organizations seem to struggle to get measurable ROI from a lot of these tools. And from what I hear from folks is that a lot of it comes down to mindset. A lot of it comes down to also changing around your, not just changing the tools that you use, but changing the processes through which you use the tools, changing the mindset that you approach the actual work that involves these tools. I wonder if you could maybe elaborate a little bit more on what actually that means on the ground level for a firm. What does it mean to actually not just change your tools but change your mindset regarding these tools?
Roman Kepczyk (12:24):
Okay. It all depends on what your base foundation is and where you're at in there. And so I think it's mission critical for firms to all have a good solid base foundation of what these generative tools can do first and a clear understanding that these large language models, when they improve processes, basically they're text-based models that you can talk to and it can respond to you in the way you want to. But the second generation of these tools, the generative AI going to Agentic actually allows that conversation to invoke processes. And I went to a session earlier this year at CES with Deloitte and they said 70% of this agentic stuff that's going in and happening is using the old robotic process automation, machine learning, APIs that were the technery people had to do because the rest of us couldn't understand it. But now with large language models, we can invoke it.
(13:27):
So we got to have a good foundation of understanding what these tools do, how they interact with data, and then push it through. And then of course, as part of any of this training, the foundation needs to include specific guidelines that you remind people every time you do training.
(13:46):
Again, if it's not in your own private GPT, you should never put any client data in a public environment whatsoever. That shouldn't happen at all because it's easy to do. Always have a human in the loop to verify that they're checking, that any kind of math is calculated, any links have been verified. That includes link to financial statements and documents just to eliminate the hallucinations because these tools just want to please you is what
Chris Gaetano (14:15):
It
Roman Kepczyk (14:15):
Is. And then really making sure that they're secure. We all saw the story last month where the nine second, someone rolled out a, I think it was an open claw prompt that had them organize their desktop and it ended up erasing not only their desktop but the entire production network for that company as well as their data backups and all that. And so that's the reality of these tools. So it's important we have a good foundation of understanding. And actually in my firms, what I recommend in each department that you assign a specific subject matter expert and this should be someone who's actively doing the work, not a partner in charge of that department, but have them basically analyze where they're having bottlenecks, then listen to webinars, do research with their peers about what tools are working and then do what we call Fastpilot, go through, try it out in a specific example in your firm.
(15:21):
And if we can standardize and roll it forward, then we adopt it. But the mindset needs to be as this change is happening, we all need to understand the core of it and we need to pursue solutions that improve our overall functionality.
Chris Gaetano (15:40):
As you were talking about different roles that people wind up having, I was just thinking about again, how it's not necessarily a matter of just buying an expensive software package. It's not necessarily a matter of getting a really fancy device or things like that. This sort of technological change in order to get the most out of it, I think does require more of an organizational sort of change as well. So I was wondering if maybe you could elaborate a little bit about how when you have these technical sort of advancements, how a firm really should be organizing itself, I guess around them in order to make the best use of them. We think a lot about just buying the product itself, but how exactly should we be organizing in order to, I guess, get the best bang for our buck here?
Roman Kepczyk (16:23):
Okay. Well, again, I think the key is what I do the way when I evaluate a firm or
(16:30):
Where we're at right now, I'd recommend that after every busy season they do a solid tax debrief. And what I mean by that is debrief the past busy season because you have to really understand all of the firm's processes and that allows you by walking through and having everyone involved, you can identify places where there are manual human processes that take time. Often what they see is the bottlenecks route there. And so in firms, we let them discuss where those bottlenecks are. And it's real easy. There's always on the creation of engagement letters, requesting tax audit documents, capturing information from whatever format the client has into a usable digital format into the firm and then delivering the engagements to getting paid. When I do consulting, those are all the places we look at bottlenecks. And then you have that subject matter expert who's working in that area.
(17:24):
Again, explore those solutions, find them, roll them out there and they're the ones that are going to sell it to the rest of the firm. And basically what they'll do is they'll find it past ... Again, I have a process, we're not a process. We all have a process where we fast pilot it and if it's a good process and works for there, we educate the rest of the firm what that actual solution is, standardize it and roll it out.
Chris Gaetano (17:52):
So moving on, how does your average firm become, I guess, a tech forward firm? The term technology is extremely broad. It encompasses everything. You have your devices, your cloud platforms, your workflow automation and more. So what exactly firms, what should firms looking to TechUp prioritize and what could they maybe afford to put off?
Roman Kepczyk (18:15):
Okay. Well, I think prioritizing those things that have manual human input that are subject to a human making and error in some place, those kinds of things. And so overall, I look for those specific solutions. And so again, they seem to be more point solutions. When we talk about things you should put off, I think some of the old assumptions no longer apply. And what I mean by that is when we talk about Suite Solutions concept, I think it applies well to the Microsoft 365 integration. What I mean by that is we've all grown up and transitioned into the Microsoft suite, Word Excel, PowerPoint, now we're adding Teams, we're seeing SharePoint come into play for document management, this kind of stuff. So it applies there, but where it does not apply is we've
(19:14):
Counted on the major accounting vendors being able to respond quickly enough in today's environment out there. And so when we talk about the assumptions that those vendors are going to give us solutions for the long term, we're seeing that not play out inside of our firms. And what I see is a lot of best of breed applications coming in and really streamlining examples of like SuraLink on the audit side, SafeSend on the delivery side there, Anchor Noula on engagement letters or Practice Ignition. So we're seeing these tools really improve productivity efficiency, which breaks from that suite concept that we've been sold for the last or told to adopt the last two years. And again, while Microsoft 365 integration has made it work, we really need to look at what's the best for our firm. And again, this has opened the door. Probably most of the questions I get today have to do with my workflow practice management, which a lot of these new tools include document management, they include portals, they include the ingress, the components that we're looking for those point solutions.
Chris Gaetano (20:23):
So it hurts me to ask, we talk a lot and we hear a lot about your average firm in a tech forward firm, the differences between those. You've observed tons and tons of firms in your time. What do you think differentiates, let's say, a firm that's good with tech and a firm that is great with tech? Imagine you have a firm that is already a pretty good performer. What do you think would make them a great performer? What generally tends to differentiate the good firms from the great firms?
Roman Kepczyk (20:57):
I think it actually comes down to the leadership, comes from the top down. They seem to be the ones ... I read through all of the accounting today, top 100. And what you see is consistently there's a leadership group that is excited about adopting technology as part of the strategy. It's integrated in everything and they understand it. They make sure that their people have the tools they need to move forward or at least evaluate it and decide that. And so
(21:27):
I think the big difference is the leadership out there being excited. A lot of the firms I go to, and when I look at the difference between a tech Ford firm and not, if the tax or assurance partner who created the processes 20 years ago is still in charge for making IT decisions for that department, they tend to be the ones that are more reactive. And honestly, they're the ones that tend to be ... They say they're pro technology, but when you see the number of questions they ask for the additional budget information, the additional references, the additional proof of concept, it's a delaying tactic we see and that can happen in firms where it delays them for a long time and they become kind of, like I said, the reactive tech behind firm.
Chris Gaetano (22:16):
So what are some of the right questions then that people should be asking about their tech?
Roman Kepczyk (22:22):
Well, I think the things we discussed before is where do we have problems with really pleasing our customers? Where are the things that are not working well? What were the things that our customers are asking for us that we cannot deliver immediately? And like I said, I actually have a debrief question listing of when I do a debrief for a firm that follows a SWOT analysis, what are we doing well? What can we improve up? What are we not doing well? What can we improve upon? What are the opportunities out there? And you have the people identify those core things again as part of the debrief and then having management follow up on those solutions, assigning the right people to solve those issues or address them, find solutions, and then following through by giving them the time, budget and resources to make it work.
Chris Gaetano (23:19):
So when a firm really wants to up their tech game, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see them making?
Roman Kepczyk (23:29):
I think biggest mistakes I brought it up, letting the partner in charge of tax or assurance lead the discussion
(23:37):
Is a problem because so many times their mindset is blindsided by how they created the process 20 years ago and they still think they work that way. And so oftentimes, like I said, those resistive blinded directors delay any decision being made. They're, like I said, always asking for verification of features, references, proposing other cheaper solutions. So I think what happens is you need to have a person accountable underneath that who's doing the work, put the package together, do the ROI, the testing and everything, and then have the team propose how well it's doing to adopt it as opposed to having that partner direct a solution. Okay,
Chris Gaetano (24:18):
Great. And so right now, let's just take a really quick break for commercial, but we will be back with more accounting tech talk after this. All right, and we're back with Roman Kepczyk talking about our best firms for tech and just generally about what it means to be a very tech-forward firm. And so moving on from what you have observed, we've talked a little bit about some of these things, but overall, how has the technology game changed for firms? Can you go a little bit more in detail about the old assumptions that no longer apply the new assumptions firms need to take into account? I guess to use a gaming term, what's the current technology meta for accounting firms?
Roman Kepczyk (25:07):
Well, I think the accelerator change driven by generative, and in particular with this new agentic AI stuff is happening so much faster than most firms have had to traditionally absorb. And so we can't take unlimited time anymore to really understand all the nuances of everything that's happening. So today firms have to, like I said, have a structured process to, in each instance, explore the solutions
(25:34):
By talking to peers and all that, identify the options out there that are actually working in firms today. The term I use is to test it's called Fastpilot. Some people call it fast fail, but we want to see what's working with not, and then standardize and roll out the solutions. And we have to be able to do that pretty much on a much shorter timescale than traditionally has happened. And sometimes that's got to be just before busy season, even though right now during the summer is the best time in there. As I said, regarding the assumptions that no longer apply out there, we really want to focus on picking specific solutions and validating it with our peers and not so much with the salespeople from the vendors out there.
Chris Gaetano (26:22):
All right then. And so getting a little bit more ... Again, we've talked about this a little bit when it comes to recruiting, but I want to get a little bit deeper into staffing. So from what you've observed over the last few years, how has technology affected firm staffing models so far and how do you think it's going to change in the future?
Roman Kepczyk (26:40):
Okay. Like I said, all my firms, when we talk about general staffing, they seem to have more ... The reality is more of us have work that is coming through the door than we can possibly handle. And so like I said, from the professional staffing perspective, we basically see the same numbers or more coming into our firms. From an administrative perspective, some of these people are being retooled to do other processes and CPA firms traditionally have been lean on admin staff, but what we're seeing is a lot of the rote work that some of the professionals used to do, we push down to administrative people who can invoke these processes, run the questions and those kind of things that the staff used to do at a much lower cost and much more consistent consistency in responding to those questions. And so the place where we are seeing that change though is again, what is the right IT mix that's out there in our organizations?
(27:48):
And so we see the importance of having people who understand digital solutions out there. And then the point that I want to hit home that firms made a mistake 30 years ago, 20 years ago and 10 years ago is that we're dealing with change fatigue, firms have change management as an critical important part of the overall firm strategy is helping firm your people adopt and changes and implement them successfully.
Chris Gaetano (28:22):
Do you see technology affecting, I guess, headcount at all? Not even necessarily people losing jobs, but maybe firms deciding they may not need to hire as many people as they used to because now they can be more efficient or do you think it's more just who they are hiring, who they are recruiting? Overall, do you think that just staffing budgets are being affected by this?
Roman Kepczyk (28:43):
Well, if you look at the big four and even the Fortune 100 companies out there, you see these headlines of all these big layoffs. I think in those industries, you had a lot of middle management and knowledge workers that were being replaced by AI
(29:04):
Until we have accounting applications that replace not only accounting applications, but also tax applications and insurance applications that can do the whole process. I think we're going to hold steady on our staffing just because I think we're dealing from an environment of a backlog. Our firms, we've tried to fill in with remote people, a lot of our firms, particularly the private equity groups, have offshoring capabilities that fills in a lot of those needs. And so I think for the short term, we're going to be fine, the accounting profession's going to be fine. In the long term, we have to wait and see if the applications can do an entire tax return and people don't need accountants or they don't need bookkeepers. It is interesting. We're watching products like Basis and Digit doing some Incredibly cool things. But at the same time, we host over 200,000 QuickBooks desktop users that don't want to change.
(30:10):
And so you got to balance those Q2 things as at what point will it take over and actually start displacing accountants? I think accountants, at least for the next five to 10 years, 15 years, we have always been able to up our game to use the technology tools that are there to become more effective at helping our clients run their businesses and we'll run the aspects that they may not be as comfortable with and we become more of a partner advisor to our clients. But I wouldn't bet my whole firm on doing 1040 only returns.
Chris Gaetano (30:48):
It occurs to me that we can also look at this from the other direction because I mean, we've been hearing about the pipeline crisis for so long. And as you had said, we are starting from an assumption of a backlog. There is more work than we really have enough people to do. In that respect, do you think that technology has kind of reduced the urgency that people have had that we need to get people in as soon as possible to cover all of this? Do you think now it's like, well, we don't need to get as many people as we used to?
Roman Kepczyk (31:19):
I think that would be kind of like a, I would say that's a general statement. Yeah, not many are coming in. But I think with so many retirements happening, I think it's going to come back to haunt us unless in some way AI can really, really replace what people are doing. But from what I'm seeing in the next three to five years, I think we will all be busy changing the application we are using in our firms and the processes and we'll adapt to doing those kind of things to be more integrated with our clients, with their financial data, with their tax data, that kind of stuff. So I'm still bull on the profession of accounting out there and I think it will just evolve like we always have.
Chris Gaetano (32:11):
Okay. So I kind of want to get into another topic again similar and I was wondering what your thoughts were regarding how technology is affecting billing models so far and how you think it might wind up changing in the future.
Roman Kepczyk (32:26):
Okay. Yeah. Again, we're seeing firms watching this. They're not changing much yet. And I'll defer to Jen Wilson from Convergence Coaching on this and she's making it a point to educate firms on the awareness of how AI and technology is reducing the hours it takes to do jobs and to not make the mistake of reducing your fees accordingly. We all heard about the Grant Thornton KPMG story, which that was crazy to us that you're still doing the work. And the reality is we have to retrain our people with this technology that's going to be even more expensive.
(33:04):
I have that little discussion and I give Gen credit for that, but I give my clients all the same advice to watch your hours and look at it, but to actually increase your fees next year to be able to make sure you're maintaining your margins as well as having the money to adopt this technology because it's going to be expensive for firms not only to buy the tools, but the downtime to train and convert and do all that. And so I think it was Alan Colton who said that you should take a look at all your standard 1040s or your processes, whatever it is. So if you're doing a return for a thousand this year, increase it not by 10%, by 20% next year and focus on helping those clients that really benefit from it.
Chris Gaetano (33:56):
So one thing I hear I've been hearing a lot is essentially that the whole concept of the billable hour, we kind of touched on this, it's not really suited for survival in the long term. Is that something you would really resonate with? And then what do you think about the possibilities of the things that might replace it? People talk about also value billing, results billing, things like that.
Roman Kepczyk (34:20):
I think the value billing will definitely move to the front end and that firms will become more packaged, a combination of doing the return with advisory and certain other services there for audit protection, those kind of things. Ours are definitely not going to coincide because we're already seeing, I'll say, some very efficient pockets of firms. I think you mentioned a few of those in the accounting today's special report, but I was in a firm recently
(34:49):
That was one of the very tech focused, very tech centric. They had automated processes across the board that reduced the accountant's time everywhere in different administrative aspects. And they basically said, we're seeing we are more efficient here, but their whole team realized that we want to keep these clients and move forward and we want to be able to drop the clients that no longer fit our model. And so they've increased their bills and they do that to track basically their inventory of ours and the people to reward it, but they are not billing that way at all. It's based on what they see as the market opportunity where they're at and the success of their clients is also their success too.
Chris Gaetano (35:40):
Curious, so among the different firms that you've seen, where do you see a lot of real innovation right now happening in billing models? What have been some of the really cool models that you've seen in firms?
Roman Kepczyk (35:53):
Well, I'd say anything that helps eliminate receivables on the backend. And I would say firms are going more to billing a higher percentage at the front end. And so a lot of the firms I've seen is say like, "You know what? Your return is going to be $1,200 coming up this year based on everything else being the same as previous years. If you would like us to do your return, please return this engagement letter with a deposit for the half to hold your slot that's in there." And I remember even Sam Allred, who used to be with Anderson's Ramo and Upstream Academy years ago saying one of the most innovative firms he ever did, the partner in charge had figured out what the value bill and concept was for the client for the whole year and they would literally bill it in December and basically say, "For your services based on what we did for you this year, it's going to cost X amount of dollars next year.
(36:55):
And if we do work outside of that, pretty much we'll do that by discussing it to you beforehand." But they would literally get collections 100% by January 15th or you're not a client anymore. And so I think what's going to happen is we're going to have some firms create a billing mindset where you have to pay to play and that means either 12 monthly installments, quarterly installments, or in the best case, get the whole year upfront and do the work. And just think about how much time you save by not having to do with billing and collection questions and issues and all of that. So I think we'll start to see more and more of that, which follows along that value billing pricing concept.
Chris Gaetano (37:40):
Okay. So we are coming up a little bit close to time. So let's close out with something open-ended here. Just from what you've seen, how should firms be approaching their technology today? Words of advice just generally from Roman Kepczyk.
Roman Kepczyk (37:55):
I think the most effective thing we've seen firms do is that they create, I don't want to call it a technology committee because we tend to get into infrastructure and security and all those things and that is already in place. But to have a innovation team, a process improvement team and to pick people who are naturally excited about technology, what it can do and how it's working and everything and give those people a budget of hours, time, whatever it takes to work in your firm to individually explore solutions for their department to talk with their people, but also outside talk with their peers, going to, again, conferences, listening to webinars, those kind of things and then having that group actually meet at least weekly and each of those SMEs, the subject matter experts in their departments, having a discussion of what they're seeing, what's out there, because that's where we really learned on how to use it from each other and we'll see more adoption and then maybe do a state of the firm meeting once a month about what that group learn, what's doing and what we're going to be implementing just so that it becomes part of the firm's strategy to basically say is we are innovating and so this is what our innovation team came up with this year out there.
(39:26):
One thing that's helped me a lot is that I sit in on a lot of communities, they're having discussions, whether it's CPFMA, Rightworks, going to the video conferences and sitting in those communities, that's where you learn the really cool innovation that's happening out there. And then you say, "Wow, I can apply that into my own firm."
Chris Gaetano (39:46):
Okay. And so that is all the time we've got for today, but I want to thank our guest, Roman, for all of his time, all of his insights, as well as you, our audience. This episode of On The Air was produced by Accounting Today with audio production by Adnan Khan. Rate or review us on your favorite podcast platform and see the rest of our content on accountingtoday.com. I'm Chris Gaetano, technology editor with accounting today, signing off. Thanks a lot.
