the firms that shift from billable hours to value outcomes will win. plus 10 key takeaways.
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the disruptors
with liz farr
alan whitman wants to break the mold of public accounting. he wants to end the billable hour and the siloed practices that characterize how many firms have operated for decades. as whitman says, “we’re here to serve clients, we’re here to deliver great value. but do we really need to do it the way we’ve been doing it since before my father was in the workforce?”
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while “most firms believe that billable hours are the holy grail,” whitman points out that “the client isn’t necessarily buying billable hours.” instead, clients buy the outcomes and “the intellectual capital you’re delivering to them.” he believes that “the firm that can shift from production, from billable hours to outcomes, is going to win.”
as ceo of baker tilly, he pushed through changes that tripled the firm’s size and increased collaboration. like law, medicine, and architecture, accounting is a technician-based profession, and “most of your identity is based on what you do,” which can lead to siloes within a practice. but whitman argues that to deliver the appropriate solutions, “your responsibility is to not only deliver what you can deliver, it’s also to deliver what other people in the organization can deliver,” so the client is “getting what they need to prosper.”