Sales and Marketing

Accounting firms are getting more creative and innovative, and many see the value in receiving independent recognition for their efforts and publicizing that fact. The innovations help improve the firm’s bottom line, and the recognition and publicity aids in attracting and retaining top talent. It also substantially enhances the firm’s brand, as existing and prospective clients see increased value in being associated with an innovative firm.

Solutions to your problems are everywhere. Just look at all the products, services and companies that proudly proclaim their status as solutions.

A real estate investor from Brooklyn, N.Y., had the requisite skillz to win the $25,000 TaxRap contest sponsored by TurboTax.In a statement, the company said that the submission from Christian Pulfer, 28, stood out as one of the most individual and creative entries. Pulfer’s entry, “It’s Just a Breeze…G,” was selected by guest judge Vanilla Ice from more than 370 homemade rap videos.

Carbis Walker LLP, a firm specializing in public accounting and consulting, is offering manufacturers and distributors the opportunity to participate in a national benchmarking survey through a partnership with McGladrey & Pullen LLP.

Jayne V. Bates is in the home stretch of her one-year term as president of the Association for Accounting Marketing, which will end in July. Bates has served on the association’s board of directors since January 2001.Herself a CPA, Bates is currently the director of marketing for Carter, Belcourt & Atkinson PA CPAs, a firm based in Lakeland and Tampa, Fla. She has been with CBA for nearly 20 years, spending her first eight years with the firm as a professional staff accountant and serving in a marketing capacity during the rest of her tenure.

When Matt Camden, chief information officer at UHY Advisors in Chicago, faced an audit server outage in one of his New England offices over a February weekend, he was able to restore his data in a period of 11 hours."Two of our disks failed, which is a terrible thing to happen," Camden recalled. "All we had to do is put new server hardware in place, which is our responsibility, then we got the data back up, loaded it, and it worked like a charm." He credited his online data protection company, EVault, for the rapid restoration process.

In an annual ritual, many small businesses rush out after tax season to take their accountant's advice on the tax benefits of incorporation, and business software and services company Intuit has relaunched its online incorporation and document-filing services site to coincide with the rush.

Many board members and senior executives are still in the dark about the overall health of their organizations because they lack high-quality non-financial information.

As part of a new branding strategy, Thomson Tax & Accounting, said that it will formally adopt Thomson Tax & Accounting as its public name and use the Thomson Corp. starburst imprint as its primary logo.

The May cover story for Practical Accountant focuses on how a number of firms are using formalized testing to determinate if a potential hire is right for a job. It also explores how testing is extending to other aspects of firms’ operations.