What Does the Future Hold for Public Accounting?

In today’s era of innovation and industry disruption, CPAs have become wise to the fact that their future careers will look a lot different than how they do today.

By: Phil Griffiths, SVP, Enterprise Innovation, and Digital Commercial Banking & Wealth Management at CIBC. KBR special.

Public accounting and the tax profession are undergoing a seismic change, and accounting firms across the country are increasingly worried about what the future of their profession will look like.

In an effort to spark a conversation about this important topic, CIBC and Luminari, a career management platform for CPAs and other professional accountants, hosted an open forum for 35 of the country's top accounting firm-partners.

Our goal was to find out what issues are most concerning for firms, what role technology is playing in their day-to-day operations, and what they believe the future of the profession looks like.

When attendees were asked about the biggest challenges their firm faces, the emergence and impact of new technologies was one of the main concerns at 31 per cent, beat only by staffing (49%). There was discussion during the evening around technologies such as Blockchain, AI and machine learning, and whether CPA firms were considering bringing these solutions to their clients. Ultimately, top firm partners in Canada still aren't seeing the practicality of Blockchain and Big Data as useful tools for their clients.

The technologies in particular, that firms felt would transform their practice were cloud services, such as QuickBooks Online and Xero , which topped the list with just over half of respondents (51%) followed closely by AI (46%) - together capturing virtually all of the responses.

These results point to the applicability of software solutions that are currently in-market, that make an immediate impact on the day-to-day lives of public accountants and tax professionals. They have countless features to improve efficiency and tools to help service clients better. They are the gateway to a more efficient accounting ecosystem that leverages tools like artificial intelligence in a clear and beneficial way.

The same can’t be said of Big Data or Blockchain. While CPAs are more educated on these new technologies than ever before, they are still not seeing the applicability of how it can impact their day-to-day business. It’s going to take an innovative technology company to leverage Big Data and Blockchain to figure out a way of seamlessly integrating it into the cloud accounting ecosystem for more widespread adoption.

Ultimately, the conversation boils down to what technologies will hold an important role for the future of accounting. And how artificial intelligence will be leveraged to create efficiencies at a firm’s practice and/or how they service their clients.

Now, more than ever, it’s imperative to decide who at your firm is going to be responsible for taking the lead on new software developments, technologies and updates, and then making sure you have the right infrastructure in place to support their continuous development of that pursuit.

CIBC is working on its own innovation, connected to what CPAs do at their practices and with their clients. CIBC has partnered with leading accounting and payroll companies to deliver innovation that improves cash flow for your small business clients, allowing them to be better informed about finances and improve their productivity. CIBC SmartBanking^TM for Business is a digital solution with two-way integration between CIBC’s cash management platform and top cloud-accounting and payroll partners QuickBooks® Online , Xero and Ceridian Powerpay Plus.

To learn more about CIBC SmartBanking for Business and Luminari’s findings, read the white paper, The Future of Public Accounting.

Additional educational resources: CIBC presented SmartBanking™ for Business at the CE Summits this past spring. Learn more about the CE Summits and the next event, the Fall CE Summits . Be sure to register at early bird rates by October 15. The tour takes place this November in Winnipeg, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver.

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