Elefant Training has invited Jeff Phillips, co-founder and CEO of recruitment platform Accountingfly, to join as an advisor and investor. Elefant Training is a technology and practice management training company that focuses on building modern accounting practices, and Phillips has been recruited to provide guidance and advice at Elefant on strategies to address the critical need in the marketplace for qualified accounting and bookkeeping staff with modern skill sets.
“At issue is that client accounting services and cloud is where many firms want to go, and Elefant trains these firms on how to modernize, and trains its staff on the cloud accounting tools they must know,” Phillips told Accounting Today. “I'm going to help Elefant roll out training products to equip accountants and bookkeepers to be ready for hire at cloud accounting firms, who are creating new jobs and facing a staffing shortage.”
“Access to qualified talent, whether that means hiring from outside or training from within, is one of the top problems for firms today, so we are thrilled to announce this new relationship with Jeff,” stated Amanda Aguillard, CPA, founder of Elefant Training. “In the two years since I founded Elefant, staffing has consistently been a sticking point as modern accounting firms are retooling their practices around cloud software and advisory services. The relationship between staffing and training is critical because the industry is changing so rapidly.”
According to a statement from the company, Elefant is looking to bridge the skills gap and help solve the hiring crisis facing firms. This new role for Phillips at Elefant Training is designed to bring more technology and practice management training to meet the growing demand for highly skilled accountants and bookkeepers who can advise clients and use online tools, creating more profitable team members.
Phillips sees Accountingfly as a recruitment partner to accounting firms that are increasingly looking to provide client accounting services, which requires hiring qualified staff.
“The skills gap in the market today sits between traditional services and the more modern needs of a firm to leverage today’s online tools and be excellent advisors to clients,” he said in a statement. “The talent in the market available today needs additional training to become profitable contributors to our clients’ firms. As well, traditional firms are looking to leverage technology to retool from compliance practices. They need guidance at the firm level on automation and cloud-based software. Because Amanda has done this in her own practice, Elefant is specially qualified to provide training to the firms making this jump.”
Phillips, a member of the CPA Consultants Alliance, has been one of Accounting Today’s Top 100 Influential People for three years, and is also the publisher of Going Concern, a news site targeted at millennial CPAs.
