the disruptors: training can triumph over textbooks in the talent wars.
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the disruptors
with liz farr for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间
mike whitmire wants to transform the role of accountants in industry from mere counting beans (though that’s not a bad skill to have) to an operational role that leverages accountant’s knowledge of company finances and operations to drive efficiency throughout an entire organization.
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whitmire, ceo, and co-founder of accounting software company floqast, inc., knows a thing or two about talent acquisition and development. before founding floqast, he managed the accounting team at cornerstone ondemand, a saas company in los angeles.
taking on that operational role requires the implementation and integration of modern accounting technologies that enable accounting teams to escape the drudge work of endless reconciliations and play a bigger role. it also raises the profile of accounting as an interesting and exciting profession.
adding to that, whitmire said over the long term, we need to elevate accounting as a profession, not just a job, which means resetting the stereotype of accounting as a boring tax job when there are so many more options for exciting careers. he added that the profession needs to remove the stigma–largely created by audit firms–against working in industry.
more takeaways from mike whitmire:
- better, more efficient audits would result if we could flip the usual career path from starting in audit at a cpa firm and moving to industry after a few years. people who move from industry to audit can be dangerous auditors. they know where to hide the skeletons, they know how the transactions work, they know the erp really well. doing the work makes it much easier to audit the work.
- much of the fear of technology comes from working with old clunky, cumbersome software that forced a new workflow on accountants and was difficult to implement. today, it’s easier for accountants to build software that solves their pain points and works the way that accountants do their jobs to make the whole team better.
- operational accounting will be the future for accountants in industry. controllers are already responsible for many operating workflows and for driving efficiency throughout their organizations. instead of just “counting beans” (which isn’t a bad skill to have), forward-thinking accountants are already taking an active role in how organizations operate.
- instead of complaining about the workload, auditors should take personal responsibility and take advantage of the opportunity to learn as much as possible.
- automation and improving the integration between applications will be key to enabling accountants to move out of ticking and tying and taking a more operational role in their companies.
about mike whitmire
michael whitmire is co-founder and chief executive officer at los angeles-based floqast, inc., a developer of accounting close-management software, built by and for accountants. the company works closely with various organizations of varying scope and size, helping them close their books more quickly, efficiently and accurately. reach him at floqast.com.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
liz farr: welcome to accounting disruptor conversations. i’m your host, liz farr from 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. my guest today is mike whitmire, ceo and co-founder of floqast. how are you doing today, mike?
mike whitmire: i’m doing very well, liz. how are you doing?
liz: i’m doing great. now, most of my guests on this podcast have been from public accounting. we tend to ignore the concerns of accountants in industry. the reason i invited mike is because he’s got a very interesting history. he started at ey and then moved to a tech startup, and now he’s running a tech company that serves accountants in industry with workflow management software, which i think is totally cool.
full disclosure, floqast is one of the companies that i write content for. it was in working with you, mike, and your team, that i learned about a lot of the concerns of accountants in industry. i learned that accountants in industry have a lot of the same challenges that accountants in public accounting have, but they’re just a little bit different, and so that’s why i wanted to bring you on board.
mike: awesome. i forgot to mention, thank you for having me. i’m really excited to be here.
liz: that’s great. i’m glad you could carve out the time from your busy schedule to be here.
mike: of course.
liz: now, one of the concerns that accountants all over the world have is talent. in the us and all round the world, talent has been scarce for years. the great resignation and covid made it worse. now, what are some things that you can think of to make it better, and what have you seen organizations do successfully?
mike: in the short term, it’s a challenging problem to solve. yes. it’s there. it’s not getting any better. you do just see capitalism coming into play here, salaries are going up to recruit people into your finance and accounting function. i think a lot of executives are used to not spending a ton of money on g&a, and, “oh, an accountant shouldn’t cost a ton of money,” but when there’s a supply and demand issue, the way to increase demand for your company is to raise salaries and pay more, and that’s what a lot of people are doing so accountants are just making more money to go to different places which makes new opportunities really interesting to them.
a common thing that happens within the workforce is if you start a new career at a company, you get those minimal raises along the way that do not keep up with a fair market. you hear of a lot of accountants, who are– maybe a senior accountant, they’re like, “oh. someone offered me a 30% raise.” it’s like, “yes. that’s where the market is now.” things have changed that quickly. a lot of companies have huge profits that they’re turning right now, coming out of covid. if you’re in the saas, or if you’re in the technology world, there’s so much venture funding going out there that these companies can afford to pay a little bit more, and so that’s what’s happening– to attract talent to your company.
the other thing is, using a lot of technology to automate a ton of the more mundane work so that you can do more with less people. that’s just sort of the other switch that you can make to help make that possible. the other one is start to take risks on people from outside of accounting.
can i train someone to do billing? can i train someone to be an ap clerk? those kind of baseline roles, can’t we just simply train people into those positions? in the short term, those are the fixes. in the longer run, we need to do a lot of things to help the profession. fewer people are majoring in accounting than ever, really, before. we need to figure out a way to elevate the profession– spotlight it a little bit more. really highlight it as a profession, not a job. there are a lot of things that go into being an accountant. i think it can just be perceived as a boring tax job. the reality is, there are a lot of options within there, so resetting the stereotype. also, making it easier to get educated in this field and actually get into the world of accounting.
today, the general career path that 99% of people go through is you go to school, you major in accounting, you go to audit, you get your cpa exam, and then you either move up to partner or you attrition out and you move over into industry. then there’s this weird stigma of industry wrapped around all of that. that stigma, to be totally blunt, is created by the audit firms. it’s not in their best interest to have people graduate school and go straight into industry. they need them to come into the audit firm, work for a few years, hold that cpa carrot over them to force people to work before they can move off into industry.
i think if we could rethink, hey, if you major in accounting, it’s okay to do accounting. after that, perhaps that could be a good shift for– in terms of the industry being able to recruit people into staff accountant roles. that’s a role that’s shockingly difficult to hire for because there’s so few people who have zero to one years of experience who will take a staff account role, they’ve all been in audit for a few years, and so they want to be at least a senior accountant, if not an accounting manager.
i think education needs to change. i think the way we teach students to do this can be way easier. you don’t need a four-year degree. you don’t need to spend 200 grand to go get this degree just so you could become a cpa, when the reality is, most people who work in audit ultimately move over to industry are corporate accountants, not auditors or tax preparers. i don’t know. a big change in mentality is how we got to solve the problem going forward. it’s going to take some time, but hey, at floqast we’re also trying to help with a lot of those areas.
liz: yes. i agree with everything you’re saying. i’ve talked to auditors who think that one way to staff up some of the ticking and tying positions is to bring in people who are ap and ar clerks, who maybe don’t have a whole lot of experience other than just doing that, and who like doing that kind of work. letting them do that work instead of bringing in a four-year college degree cpa to do the really boring stuff that nobody wants to do.
mike: i would much rather have a former ap clerk auditing accounts payable than someone who just graduated college.
liz: absolutely.
mike: no– like, not even close. that was the big epiphany that i had when i moved from audit into corporate accounting, is i’m like, this is so backwards. this is so backwards. how is an auditor prepared to tell a professional that they’re doing their job incorrectly when they’ve never done that job before? that was the crux of what just began to really frustrate me, is all of a sudden, i was actually doing the accounting and i had these– for lack of a better word, i had these kids who had never done this crap before, asking me all these really dumb questions about my job. it just killed me. later in my time at that company, it was funny, the partner for the audit firm tried to recruit me to go be an auditor.
i had this thought. “oh, what if i did go back to audit? i would be a dangerous auditor right now.” i know where people can hide the skeletons. i know how these transactions work. i know what reconciliations look like. i know the erp really well now. i would just be so much more dangerous actually having practical experience, rather than going to school, learning theoretical stuff for the cpa exam, and being trained on the job. just doing the work makes it way easier to audit the work afterwards. i think we need to flip that approach to the industry which is a big statement to make. i think that would result in better audits in a better industry overall.
liz: absolutely. i’ve heard other people talk about making it more of a revolving door between audit and industry so that it’s not such a stigma. you gain so much by being on the other side. you really do.
mike: that’s a really interesting point. audit is up-or-out mentality. that’s how it works in an audit firm. the reality is, it’s that way because there are very few partner opportunities available, and people get burned out because of all the hours that they have to work, so perhaps if an audit firm could pay a more meaningful compensation package to a manager and have better work-life balance for that manager, maybe some people from industry would be interested in boomeranging back into audit. the reality is, once you get out of that life, you go to industry, it’s a little bit easier, you’re not working quite as many hours as the auditors, it is not appealing at all to go be an audit manager and see it, when you know how much they grind it when you’re at the firm.
liz: absolutely. one guy i’ve talked to suggests that during summer, some of the audit firms send their staff members out to some of their clients to just work in the accounting office for a couple of months and just learn the business. just do it for free even and just learn how it works.
mike: this also goes back to the talent shortage issue. thinking back to my audit days, there’s so much time spent training people, explaining things to people, ramping them up, and it’s because there’s not an understanding of why we are doing the work we’re doing, it’s just, like, “what do i have to do? tell me how to do it.” you just follow instructions. that means when you go to every new engagement, you’re just there to follow instructions. “let me look at the work papers from last year. i’m going to roll it for it. i’m going to do all this stuff.” the reality is, a lot of things have happened in the last 12 months since that last work paper was completed. you need to have a bit more of an objective mentality to really be good at this job.
imagine if everybody knew the why behind the audit work that they were doing. all of a sudden, i’m a staff but i’ve done accounting for three years, i get this stuff, i don’t have to bother my senior about why am i looking at this, what transactions do i pick, why do i look at this? because you know, “oh. i should probably be focusing on the larger transactions, that’s what’s material. then i’ll do a random sampling, and see if they punched all this stuff in. here’s what i know to look for because when i was doing this job, this was the hard stuff, blah, blah.” so i think it would add a ton of efficiency, just soft efficiencies with a lack of training needed, quicker ramp periods or crossed engagements. that right there might be something that just helps with the talent shortage because auditors will be better at their job.
liz: absolutely. another thing that’s a big challenge in accounting these days is technology. it’s changing the way accountants do their work. it’s changing how teams are structured. what are some of the changes that you’re seeing in the companies that you work with?
mike: liz, this is a new thing i’ve been talking about. i think it’s unfair to just say technology, like, blanket-use the term technology, because there’s good technology and there’s bad technology. there’s poor user experience, there’s good user experience. there are solutions that say, “hey, you’ve been doing this the complete wrong way your entire life. that’s horrible. you have to do it our way.” there are other companies like floqast where we lean into the workflows that are done today, and we understand how people work. we just insert software that makes everything more efficient for you.
i really think the notion of technology being scary, a lot of that’s driven by old software that quite frankly is just clunky to use and isn’t good. it’s cumbersome. i think with a lot of the newer applications that are coming out, that’s starting to fade away because there’s very much a focus on how is the job getting done today, what is the user actually doing every single day, and how do i build software that solves that problem of the user? if you’re solving the pain point of the user, they’re going to use your software because they enjoy it because it’s making their life easier, and that’s going to make your team more efficient. if i think about the old guard of technology companies, sap, oracle, you know, that generation, it’s a bunch of just founders who are not accountants, they’re business development people, they’re database people, and they said, “i want to make something for accountants,” and they’re thinking like technologists, not like accountants. in the more modern world of technology, someone like myself who’s just an accountant, can go out and start to build a company because software’s much easier to build now. since i actually did the job, i’m going to be thinking about myself and how do i build software that would help my actual pain point, and then what that means is, it actually gets adopted. i think old technology can be a very scary thing because it’s difficult implementations, high risk, moderate reward, and maybe not the most user-friendly, but newer technology, as long as it’s built right, i view it as a very low-risk, very high-reward proposition that will make the whole team better. it just depends on which software you’re looking at.
liz: yes. a lot of the other people i’ve talked to have emphasized the importance of process, that you’ve got to nail down your process first before you figure out what software tool to use that will fit in there best.
mike: we talk about this a lot at floqast, the classic people, process, technology. it’s a trope for a reason because it’s very true. you can’t just hire a controller, and not write anything down, and then layer software on top of that to make it better, that’s not how it’s going to work.
liz: no.
mike: we oftentimes work with some of our earlier stage clients, sort of, “hey, let’s get a month-end close checklist documented,” you know, everything’s in your head right now, “let’s get this on paper. let’s– here’s a stock checklist. we start with– let’s get everything written down.” once it’s written down and you’ve operated in that environment for a few months or a couple of quarters, you can make revisions to your process. once you feel like it’s pretty solid, then you can put it into something like a floqast. then it’s really up to us to build software that’s easy to administer, is flexible enough to scale with that client. the reality is, processes are changing. every year, hopefully, your business is growing, hopefully, your business is changing, and so new processes are going to be added or revised or whatnot, and you need a solution that’s adaptable for that environment.
liz: speaking of companies growing. as they scale and grow, their accounting needs change also. what can controllers and cfos put in place from day one to make it easier down the road?
mike: well, i don’t want to selfishly plug floqast, but i will say, we help companies scale in a big way. we start to make sense at around five or six people. the phases of accounting, i would say is, zero to five is– obviously, make sure you have quickbooks or zero or something in place you’re using as a gl. then start to look at solutions that can automate a lot of those bespoke workflows that are really complicated. at that stage, i would start to look at something like a bill.com to help with that process. it’s a job that one person’s doing, you can help automate it. another one would be on the sales tax side. there are quite a few vendors. the biggest one is avalara. sales tax is a high-risk thing that you have to deal with and it’s very, very, very complicated, and there’s a great piece of software that can help with all of that. that’s one where, when we first hired our controller, he came in and was like, “what are we doing with taxes?” i said, “i’m burying my head in the sand on taxes. let’s go do some voluntary disclosures in all these various states.” he implemented avalara, and we went out and did that, and it was really impactful for us.
then, when you hit around five or six, all of a sudden you’re really focused on closing the books, you probably have some reporting requirements, you’re probably being audited at that point. you have to collaborate around the close, and it’s like a all-hands-on-deck type situation, and that’s where something like floqast starts to become important. it documents your workflow. it keeps your team on the same page. you have that peace of mind that all the reconciliations have been completed. it puts you in a position to then scale as you add more process, procedure, control, and whatnot as you bring on more people. then you get that pre-ipo phase, call it 15 to 30 accountants in the team, and all of a sudden you’re thinking, “okay, how do we close fast enough now to get reporting out the door on time to make sure that we are in compliance with our audit, and make sure all of our controls are in place and being properly tracked?” it just becomes more complex. you’re still in that, “oh. crap. we got to get stuff done,” all-hands-on-deck mentality because you’re understaffed still and heading into an ipo. then you go public. you start to scale, the board gives you more resources, you can really codify things and standardize it and people start to specialize in it, you can continue to refine your processes and scale. at that point, that’s really where you’ll have all your point solutions. you’ve probably upgraded erps. maybe you went intacct or netsuite at some point, and then switched over to an oracle, an sap, a workday or whatever, but that into the range though. to plug floqast, we scaled that whole way. we felt too many companies scaled through their multiple erp transitions at this point. it does become process, workflow, collaboration, and those bigger erp systems is what’s most important at the later stage.
liz: i agree with the need to get workflow in there. now i was helping out as– i guess they were calling me a virtual or outsourced cfo for some company, but i didn’t know what the heck i was really doing. they didn’t have any processes. they didn’t really have anybody. it was just a mess. if they had just had somebody sit down and figure out their processes, then i might have been able to actually do something. instead, they had me out there, they were paying our firm to have me out there about 30 hours a week to just do– why? i don’t know why i was out there. i was out there doing nonsense work.
mike: like baseline bookkeeping-type stuff?
liz: not really bookkeeping, but a lot of what they had me do was, work on this gigantic spreadsheet that was their budget and their projections for the future.
mike: okay.
liz: that was what i spent a lot of my time on, and trying to collect information from people in the company to make estimates.
mike: it seems like a poor use of your skills, but okay. [laughs]
liz: i would second that. i would agree with that there. now, speaking of skills, what skills do accountants need to be successful today and in the future?
mike: i’ll go with the classic, getting up to speed on technology and making sure you’re open to that and embracing it. i will say the cool change that we’re seeing, and i don’t know if it’s a new skill that accounts have to learn, i think it’s more of an acknowledgment that we have this skill and this knowledge already and we should be applying it to something different, that’s really– what i want to chat about is, we’ve noticed that with a lot of our clients at floqast, we started with the month-end close. we know this, so we help with the month-end close, close management software is what we started as. then we realized that about 30% of our clients were responsible for tracking workflows outside of the close process. this included things like payroll, scc reporting, pbc collection, just random workflows that occur. when you start to dig through all of this stuff that was set up in floqast, you’re like, “oh. wow. the controller’s responsible for a lot of workflow, and sort of, the operational cadence of the entire office of the cfo.” we started interviewing our clients and talking to them more about this. it became very apparent that when you get to that controller level, the numbers matter for sure, but really it’s about, how do i drive efficiency for the entire office of the cfo? that comes at looking at processes, procedures, policies, and figuring out where we can improve, where we can get better tracking people, allowing them to collaborate, making sure stuff’s done by the appropriate date every single month so we’re operating in cadence.
i’m thinking about it, and it’s, like, accountants have the stereotype of bean counters which for starters, let me just say, in what world is being a bean counter a bad thing? isn’t it good that i can count my beans and you can’t? i don’t understand why that’s an insult, but whatever, i’ll table that. the reality is, when you think about accounting, what we’re good at is understanding rules and regulations and guidance. we know the art of accounting, and the science, and the puzzle, and how all of that comes together. one of my favorite quotes is warren buffet who said, “accounting is the language of business,” and it’s so true because when you know the numbers, and the guidance, and regulation and policy, and everything, you really do get how the entire business operates.
if we’re talking about operations and how we’re already seeing controllers do this, and the skill set and knowledge set that accountants already have, you can think of operations as– it’s like the playbook for how to run your business. it’s this playbook of everything that’s written down. the question i have is, shouldn’t the playbook be written by somebody who understands the language of business?
liz: right.
mike: with that, i believe the current state of forward-thinking accounting departments and the future of all accounting departments is much more operational than what we’re doing today. it’s getting out of reconciliations, it’s– who cares about a $4 difference? technology will probably find that for you, will automate a lot of that mundane work. allow accountants to elevate, and more think about the processes and procedures around the company, the operations, the cadence, and looking for ways to improve how the business is run. really, that’s where i think we’re going. we’re seeing it already. we are pushing that agenda in a big way and our software is there to support that transition along the way.
liz: one thing that i’ve heard from a lot of people is just the need to understand businesses better. that’s something that people in public accounting don’t really take the time to do enough of is to understand how their client’s businesses operate. from what you’re saying, it sounds like the accountants on the industry side could also benefit from understanding how their own companies operate in getting a bigger-picture view of how things work and trying to optimize what operations are going on.
mike: that statement very much surprises me.
liz: does it?
mike: in my opinion, at ey the most valuable thing i got was learning how businesses operate
liz: really?
mike: by far. like, not even close. yes. i had a main rotation of four audit clients. i audited, got good exposure to maybe like 20 different audits. the first mandate was before you show up on-site, learn about the company, learn about what they do. that’s great. then the second is when you get there, you start walking through there. you start reviewing walkthroughs, narratives, controls, processes, procedures, and that’s how the business operates. then when you’re looking at the numbers behind the scenes, you’re auditing all of this, you can follow transactions, you see how payroll works, you see how– i was in the entertainment world so i got to see how they funded various filming investments. oh, you set up a separate entity when you want to record a new film. you’re going to do it in nevada or georgia or canada because you get tax benefits. you learn all about how a business operates from behind the scenes. that to me almost feels like it’s an auditor who perhaps did not take advantage of the opportunity that was put in front of them to learn as much as they could have learned. that’s super concerning to me because the best thing about audit is how much you can learn as an auditor. i learned so much doing audit, maybe i just tried to learn out of it, but that’s incredibly disappointing that someone says that they don’t feel as though they’re prepared to help with operations coming out of audit. i’m going to put out that person.
liz: yes. this comes from a lot of conversations i’ve had with al anderson, who said that he has three questions that he asks auditors when he goes in to train them. the first is what was the bottom line on your last audit, what was their net income? almost no one knows that. the second one is how many pages in your disclosure checklist? everyone knows that. the third question is how did that company make money? a surprising number of people will say things like, “well, that wasn’t my audit area, so i didn’t have to know that.” you were fortunate that you had exposure to managers and partners who emphasized that.
mike: do you know what i think the difference might be? okay, so i was a pain in the employee. i will fully acknowledge that. i would get bored auditing the same account twice. i would literally ask to do something else. i did cash once. i was like, “i get it.” have someone else do that. can i do film capitalization? can i do stock comp expense? can i do payroll? can i do something different? i also ended up on mid-market companies. i was able to look at the entire business holistically and understand everything that was going on. one of my projects was going in an entertainment company, converting them from cash to gaap accounting. to do that, i had to go back in time three or five years and restate everything, and when you’re rebuilding a balance sheet, i’m learning a whole lot about how this company audits, you’re doing walkthroughs, preparing narratives and everything. i’m learning about the operations. i wouldn’t say the question of what was their net income last year is the reflection of operations. i think that’s more of a reflection around a lot of people are put on jobs where they don’t have exposure to many accounts, their tunnel vision solid on, “i got to get through the ap audit. that’s my only job here on the general electric audit.” you can be put on these huge clients and just be siloed into a very small area and not learn a lot as a result of that. if you’re able to get into more of a mid-market sized company, go up and down the balance sheet, get exposure to multiple companies and try to learn about business through that, i think it’s an amazing opportunity.
liz: yes. i think what you’re saying is that it takes initiative to want to explore different areas, and it also takes management and supervisors who are willing to give you that.
mike: i think it’s very much on the individual to decide how they want to approach their time in audit. you can be one of the people who’s negative about it, you gripe about it, you complain about the hours, “oh this job is stupid, blah, blah, blah,” and you can hate your life and not get anything out of it. you can certainly take that approach if you want, or you can flip that around and say, “yes, i’m working a lot, but i’m learning a lot. i’m getting exposure to a lot of different things. i’m taking the access that i have to extremely sensitive financial information and learning as much as i can about how businesses run and decisions they make and why they make these different decisions.” if you do that, what ultimately happens, is you work more hours, if you’re trying to learn, you learn more which means that over the course of a three or four-year timeframe inside of audit, i was working probably 3,000 hours a year. i got 12,000 hours of experience over a four-year period. that’s a lot. i got over 10,000 hours and i was very focused on learning. that put me in a great position heading into industry from there. a manager can only do so much. they can’t create a person’s personality, they can’t “rah, rah,” you into actually caring about what you’re doing and wanting to get what’s best for you out of the position. i’m going to throw it on the individual, they have to understand the opportunity that’s in front of them more, as long as they have the right attitude and approach it the right way.
liz: what i’m hearing from you is that a skill that will help people be more successful is just curiosity.
mike: totally.
liz: it’s just that simple.
mike: there’s the saying of curiosity killed a cat. my grandma always used to say that to me. she’s one of the most influential people in my entire life. that’s a saying i completely disagree with. to wrap curiosity around a negative thing is totally incorrect. i think it’s a huge and important part of life. if you’re genuinely curious about this account that you’re auditing, you’re just going to get the job done better, you’re going to learn more, you’re going to know what’s going on. you’re not just going to be copy, pasting, tick marks from the prior year. where does this bold red tick mark a go within this work paper? it’s really more entertaining.
liz: i agree with you there that it would’ve been much more entertaining to me if i had had managers who really wanted me to do that, rather than just saying, “well, here’s last year’s work papers. follow that.”
mike: yes. for a lot of managers that is the easier way to train, right, is to just say, “do it the same as last year,” is so common that it’s an acronym, you have the sally acronym going all around audit. i completely agree. i’ll say it, looking back on my experience, the moment that changed for me was when i went to an audit job where there were no prior year work papers, first-year audit. that could probably be a very good learning experience for a lot of people if they had no prior year work papers to leverage to do their audit this year because you do have to figure out, why am i doing this, how do i do it, and what’s the output of all of it?
liz: what is the reason for doing this procedure, and is there an easier way to get to it that i can think of, maybe using technology? is there an analytic? can i use ai? can i do something else?
mike: yes. all kinds of opportunity. accountants are very good at finding efficiencies, i’ve found.
liz: they are. now, what do you think accountants should stop doing immediately?
mike: i’ve hammered out a bit of the “woe is me” mentality within the audit world. “i’m going to go back to that one.” like, yes, there is a bit of a personal responsibility in looking at the opportunity that you have and trying to make the most of it rather than complaining about it and being a negative nancy around the office. i’m going to say stop being negative and complaining about stuff. focus on the opportunity that’s in front of you. try to learn as much as possible. when you feel like you’ve learned enough, then figure out what you want to do with your career next. whether you now enjoy audit and you want to stay in that field, do that, or if you think you’re ready to go to industry and want to really be part of one company where you’re part of a team, you’re building something, you’re trying to get better, then go take that opportunity.
liz: yes. or the final path is to follow in your footsteps, mike and found a company.
mike: you could do that. it’s funny because i credit a lot of my ability to do this back to my time in audit because of how much i learned about how a business is run.
liz: yes. just this morning on tax twitter, a professor said that he took an informal poll of the students in his accounting principles 101 course, and 75% of them said that they wanted to start their own business.
mike: there you go.
liz: that’s a big change from when i was taking classes and from when you were taking classes probably.
mike: yes. entrepreneurship is strong with this generation and it is easier than ever to start a business, so that makes all the sense in the world to me.
liz: yes. now accountants tend to be a little bit slow to change. it’s probably more so over on the public side than in industry, but what are the main barriers to keeping accountants from changing and trying new things?
mike: it’s an area i’m coming to disagree with. i don’t think it’s the accountants, i think it’s actually more about the technology vendors and security requirements. i would argue good technology has not been available to them for a very long period of time. i think about 10 years ago, is when good solutions for various problems started to present themselves. people are open to change if there’s a good way to solve my problem. the other thing holding us back is budgets. cfos and the cios not opening up a budget to give to the back office. there’s always room for another sales tool, there isn’t necessarily room for something for the accounting department. as it budgets continue to expand, there’s only so much stuff the go-to-market team can buy. ultimately, some of that trickles down into the back office and we see a lot of companies deploying more of that capital that’s available to them.
then the other side is on security. it’s been a while getting people comfortable with the cloud. accounting and finance are the last group to get comfortable with the cloud. we feel as though we’re finally there at, like, mass acceptance. it’s very rare that we talk to a company that has a zero cloud policy. i don’t think it’s the accounts, i think it’s the industry. it’s the technology being available, the budget being available, and the comfortableness with the cloud, that’s really all caught up. now we’re seeing accountants adopt new technology really quickly. i don’t see us on many demos where people are like, “oh. i’ve always done it this way. i just want to keep doing it this way.” there’s a talent shortage. people are looking to do things better. they want to do more with less people, and they’re turning to technology to do it.
liz: that is probably spot on. from my time in public accounting, i would agree that the technology was really pretty lame. the tax software was still the same ugly gray screens, and black print, and hard to read, hard to use, not very user-friendly. once you figured out how to use this really clunky piece of software, and if you saw that every other piece of tax or audit software was equally clunky and ugly, it was really hard to get people to change. i think you’re right that the technologies that are available now, the good technologies, to go back to what you said before, those are really helping people to bridge the gap and to make the changes that they need to.
mike: i’ll also harken back to when technology and software first started to become available to business in general. it was like spreadsheets, [laugh] and erps became available. those were the first two things that came out that really businesses adopted in mass. the function that adopted both of those in the biggest way possible, the first ones to bring technology into business were the finance and accounting functions. they’re the ones who use excel for everything. they’re the ones who own the erp and use it for the most part. things like hr software, marketing automation, crms, and sales automation, and all that stuff, that came later. accounts were the first ones to pick up technology.
liz: that’s true. that’s very true. now speaking of technology, we’ve been talking about things changing and getting better, what do you think is the next big thing in accounting technology? what’s the next big thing on the horizon?
mike: i think the next big thing is rethinking a lot of the transactional work that’s being done and how data’s ingested, how it is then reconciled through the entire process to ensure that all these various systems that we’re using, that there’s good data integrity across it– integration points. technology’s great, but that integration point is where things can go right or go wrong. you need this ability to validate all that data and make sure it’s accurate and you’re getting what you need out of the technology. i think that automating of the super manual tedious, like back and forth, ticking and tying work, that needs to go away so that the industry can follow this operational path that i truly believe that we are already on, but we want to continue because that’s a more fun part of the job.
i’d rather be working with our sales ops team to learn about how we can optimize the commission preparation process across our teams. how can we get this done faster, and more accurately? how can we make sure sales is happy? how do we structure the plans such that the business gets what they need out of these and the sales reps are going to be motivated? how do we go back and forth on these things? i’d rather do that than rip through a bank account and go transaction by transaction and start to reconcile it. i think that sort of automating of the manual, allotting teams to elevate and do– the word strategy is used, but i really think it’s operational work. i think that’s where we’re best suited, is to help on the operations side.