A Hot Date For The Advisory Accountant,
The opinion piece by COG Branding‘s Luke Sullivan is now live at the link below. Its purpose is to look at why creating new professional networks doesn’t have to be hard, specifically, entertaining what a branding agency and accountant relationship would look like.
If there was ever a moment for Accountants Professionals to consider how they’ll push into the advisory role – it was yesterday. The rate of change in the accounting profession is rapid and will continue to leave those reluctant to evolve in the vexing dust of 2020.
For Accountants Professionals to thrive beyond this year’s carnage will not only require a strong vision as to how Advisory Services will actually function for them, it will demand swift and assertive action to instigate this new approach, which should include a focus towards delivering a greater level of client advocacy and value that is served today.
As technology gouges through the Accountants Professionals service suite, trying to pinpoint what exactly the clients of tomorrow will pay them for will be harder to answer. One thing is clear, thinking differently will be paramount.
Narrowing down a brief for Accountants Professionals with a SME client base that addresses the push into Advisory services will include the premise that Accountants will need to be more than a just great tax advisor. Becoming intensely client-focused, delivering accuracy and relevance in services that are loaded with added value, and becoming agents of transformation while maintaining the positioning as a true small business champion will round out this brief.
Accountants Professionals can easily add these layers of value by broadening networks, creating new relationships and increasing capabilities to then pass on in the form of empowering information and solutions. With an identified need to increase relevance as a direct response to the ever present future threats of redundancy and irrelevancy, an evolutionary pathway forward here seems clear – become a hub of digital knowledge and get more connected.
Considering today that on the ASX200, Information Technology (eg: Xero) is larger in sector than Telecommunications (eg: Telstra) and Utilities (eg: AGL), it’s an appropriate snapshot to use in influencing Accountants Professionals that stepping into an Advisory role is actually to avoid more compliance work, and to acquire functional knowledge around areas like business strategy and transformation, IT, data, cybersecurity, and eCommerce.
