april2021 - 7

FROM THE TRENCHES
But one of the most significant
breakthroughs came with Microsoft's
Azure cloud. It took the vision of Bill
Gates in 2005 to assign Ray Ozzie (who
helped create Groove and Lotus Notes),
along with Amitabh Srivastava and
Dave Cutler, to invent a cloud operating system for Microsoft. Microsoft
Azure was released on February 1,
2010, after being announced in 2008.
Our K2 team was one of the first businesses installed on Microsoft's original
email hosting platform called Business
Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) in
2008. Today's Azure cloud and the
Groove-like synchronization of data
provide the collaborative capability to
a whole new generation of products.
This low-level data synchronization is
more than just the hosting you can get
from competitors like Amazon Web
Services.
As noted in my March column,
collaboration with meeting technologies erupted in 2020 with Microsoft
Teams in particular. Teams' popularity was not an overnight success
after the March 2017 release. Still,
Microsoft went from 0 to 115 million
users in the same time Slack grew
to 12.5 million users before being
acquired by Salesforce for $27.7
billion on December 1, 2020. Based
on the various meeting technologies
required to effectively work together
from anywhere, including Google
Hangouts, Google Meet, GoToMeeting,
WebEx, Zoho Meeting, and Zoom, the
popularity of collaborative meetings
during the pandemic was no surprise.
You can learn to manage collaboration culturally among your team in
the new book from Bart Barthelemy
entitled Collaborative Innovation.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO
COLLABORATE?
■ Share account ing software or
financials
■ Cooperate on Business Development
and CRM to nurture relationships
■ Coordinate workflow between team
members

■ Share documents internally and
with clients
■ Co-authoring so multiple people
can work on data at the same time
■ Meet virtually online
■ Work any time, any place, any
device
■ A nd do all t hese t h ing s w it h
appropriate security
Why all this history? It has been
only 10, 15, or 20 years that we have
collaborated with productivity tools.
However, I was lucky to help start the
path of collaboration in Financials,
Relationships, and Workflow in the
1980s and 1990s, now between 30
to 40 years ago, depending on the
technology.
As I reflected on each tool where
I was fortunate enough to help the
designers, developers, marketers, and
executive management team, we have
been building collaboration for a new
digital world. While assisting designers of QuickBooks Online, Xero, Zoho
Books, Sage Intacct, NetSuite, and SAP
Business by Design in financials, I
promoted the idea of collaboration
in financials. It also happened with
ACT, Goldmine, and other contact
managers before CRM became a focus
area with Siebel and the predecessor
products of Dynamics CRM and Sage
CRM in relationships.
The evolution of products that
assisted in the workflow in public
practice firms evolved with XCM,
FirmFlow, Jetpack Workflow, and others. Each of these products developed
in silos, and now they are starting
to connect effectively. You'll see
more announcements in 2021 about
technical connection improvements.

WHAT ARE WE TRYING
TO ACCOMPLISH USING
COLLABORATION WITH
CLIENTS?
There should be a purpose for collaboration within your team and
with your clients. Together, we can
do more. I was recently reminded
of how we can accomplish things

that we can't do by ourselves with
the Mars Perseverance rover landing
when a team has a common goal.
Note that Financials could contain Time and Billing as well as AP
and AR. If you consider what a CRM
solution can do for your Relationship
Management and business success,
a system to manage this is key to
your success. Business Development
is a four-letter word for many firms.
Still, there are many excellent CRM
products for firms, including FibreCRM, Symphony with Client Sense,
and many more. When I perform
CPA firm consulting, I'm typically
selecting from at least ten different
solutions, but rarely do I recommend
Salesforce, which does not culturally
fit most professional firms.
Business development sounds like
a good topic for another day. We have
written about and promoted workflow
since the 1990s as a critical element
for success, and several consultants
have delivered Six Sigma training
for tax and to optimize processes.
Business process management
(BPM) and document flow have a
relationship illustrated in my March
column (www.cpapracticeadvisor.
com/21210414) on portals and document exchange.
Technolog y products like
Liscio, Suralink, Karbon, Canopy,
Clarity Practice Management, and
SmartVault all aid in the portals,
document exchange, and workflow.
Rarely is there enough capability in
a Practice Management system to
handle Financials, Relationships, and
Workflow. Additionally, these three
areas support our communications,
billing, and time management.
Clients were much more patient
before the collaborative Digital Revolution because it was apparent to all
concerned that delivering the basics
of accounting, tax, and audit, took a
lot of time and personal expertise,
and education. The accounting
profession's uniqueness in compliance simply doesn't apply as much

APRIL 2021 ■

today, where software can now do
most things that were once solely an
accountant's domain. Clients today
are tech-savvy and understand
much more than they used to about
financial management and even tax.
It's a different world!
Let's further reflect and remind
ourselves of the critical ingredients
of the business model of accounting
firms. These were, or in many cases,
still are:
■ Primarily a client 'needs' driven
model - with a provision of services
that clients need because they have
only one choice: which accountant?
■ An efficiency model - people costs
against recovered chargeable hours
equals profitability
■ A traditional services model - tax
returns, audit, and accounting
services, delivered to the market
as compulsory purchases
These three scenarios represent
what was traditionally delivered by
professional accountants: accounting,
tax, and auditing. But the previously
listed tasks can be truly advisory
or consulting services rather than
compliance delivery services. It's
subtle but will become a powerful
shift in client perspectives if your
firm handles Advisory services
correctly. Digital solutions will
merely place extra emphasis on
these needs and clients' wants for
Advisory positioned services. Unlike
the demise of accountants predicted
in the past, computer software can't
wholly replace people, and let's hope
it never will.
As most of us know, the business
model of accountants for decades was
supported by clients' need for the
financial expertise that accountants
bring to the table. The key strategic
questions for an accounting firm
were often:
■ " How big do we want to grow, and
how many partners do we want? "
■ " How hard do we want to work? "
■ " How efficient can we be? "
Continued On Page 10

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