Consultant and technology thought leader Seth Fineberg offers a guide to finding, choosing, implementing and assessing the software your firm needs.
Transcription:
Dan Hood (00:03):
Welcome to On the Air With Accounting. Today, I'm editor-in-chief Dan Hood. In a world where you can download and launch an app on your phone and a couple of clicks, it can be easy to forget that the software tools that are built for accountants and for other business users are just a smidge more complicated and they call for more advanced preparation, much more careful implementation and ongoing monitoring and critical assessment of how they're performing. Here to walk us through the best ways to identify, select, implement, and leverage new technology tools for your practice is Seth Feinberg. He's a well-known journalist, a consultant, a thought leader in the accounting profession. He's the founder of Accountants Forward. He's a former editorial chief at Accounting Web, and before that he was a technology editor here at Accounting Today. Seth, how's it going? Thank you for joining us.
Seth Fineberg (00:42):
It's going great, man. Thanks for having me on the pod. Always a pleasure to talk to you in any capacity, but also in areas that I'm pretty passionate about as you
Dan Hood (00:52):
Know. Excellent. We're glad to, I should say, we're glad to have you back. You've been on the podcast before and that's always good to talk with you particularly, and I know you'd think and write and talk a lot about this aspect of technology, how farms use it, how they should decide to use it, how they're thinking about it. You're going to be with us in our firm growth form later in May, talking about some of these issues with vendors and software solution providers, but today I want to start by asking, there's a lot of areas in an accounting firm that aren't problems necessarily, but where technology might offer a solution. You may not even be aware that there's a technology solution for that. How can firm go about and identifying those areas, areas where there's nothing broken, but you know what? If you use the technology, you might significantly improve it.
Seth Fineberg (01:37):
I would dare say that if you look for it, it's the old adage, but if you look for it, you're going to find it. You're going to see areas where it's not necessarily broken per se, or you might not even see it that way. Look at your own workflows, how you function on a day-to-day basis. You will see, even if you're a small firm of say 10 people or less, everyone has a job to do. Everyone has their processes and I'd be willing to bet if you were just like, you know what? Let's just try and exercise hand in. Just give me a one sheet on your process for this or even for your day, what does it look like? And I'd be willing to bet that you will find ways that that can be better. Very, very practical things that, again, there's a lot of firms I think that are particularly smaller firms who are used to functioning a certain way.
(02:39):
They're comfortable. As you know, it's hard for firms to break out of that comfort zone. It's like, well, we've been doing it this way and it might not be the best, but I don't know. If we were to try something new, I don't know how that would work. And then all of a sudden you're going to implement a piece of software or these days maybe consider AI or something with an AI backbone to it and put that to work. You don't really necessarily know what you're going to get, but in terms of identifying, I think that's a great way to do it. Start with your own processes for things,
Dan Hood (03:13):
Right, and there is, as you say, there's a tendency to say, well, this is our process. This is how we do it. This must be the right way to do it. But once you start looking, you start to realize, well, maybe there's other ways to do this. You
Seth Fineberg (03:23):
Got to just get honest
Dan Hood (03:26):
Even if it's not broken. Now let's take the flip side, which is maybe you've got a solution in place already or a process in place already. How can you identify one that isn't working? What are the warning signs that a solution that you're currently using isn't working isn't optimal or that maybe you're growing out of it?
Seth Fineberg (03:46):
It's a good question, and I do talk to firms about this a bit, and I do a fair bit of social listening to accountants extraordinarily. They do like to share, particularly when things aren't working crazy, so one of the things that they do like to share is when maybe what they have isn't doing exactly, and you don't always realize it right away that it's maybe not doing something or syncing with something that you would rather it do. It's like, oh wow, great. There's this integration and I signed on with this platform because of this touted integration, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, well, I'm actually doing a couple of extra steps here that I don't need to do that I don't need to do, and I thought that it would take care of it, and so it somewhat a discovery of, okay, similarly to identifying when you might need something, identifying problems that are in place with existing systems.
(05:04):
You do need to really level set particularly after maybe a few months or so of doing go, just kind of do a reassessment. I would say even maybe once a quarter just kind of go through and say, all right, is this doing everything that we need to do? Do we need an API? Do we need to add anything onto this? Do we need to talk to the vendor themselves? It is a partnership after all. I could go down a whole rabbit hole of why these partnerships are so important. It's partly even why I'm in business doing what I'm doing because I want to see these partnerships improve, but I'm at the stage of where you're just getting one part to talk to the other, and that's a whole other ball of wax.
Dan Hood (05:47):
Right. Well, it's certainly, as you say, one of those things, you mentioned APIs, that's definitely one area, right? That's clearly a red flag whenever you're like, I got to get the data from this to this and it's always a pain or
Seth Fineberg (05:58):
Now multiple screens here.
Dan Hood (06:00):
It's not always a clear sign. Something's going wrong. I do want to talk. We should talk a little bit about the relationship or maybe a new level to the relationship the purpose might want to bring when they're talking to their software, whether, because my next question was going to be asking about how do you find new solutions, whether in totally new areas or in terms of replacing tools that you're already using, and maybe before we dive into that, because I think this will help lead into that, let's talk a little bit about what your relationship with your vendor or with a potential vendor should be. How can you make it better than just, I buy your software and you provide it to me and then I complain because it's not uptime all the time?
Seth Fineberg (06:41):
Yeah, well, the thing is, look, issues are going to come up even in a good relationship, but getting there, you have to go into it knowing that it is a relationship on the vendor side and then on the people at the firm whose your job it is to maybe tend to that relationship, but it is a partnership at the end of the day and you should be able to have that open line of communication for when you do have a question. Customer service is so essential to that relationship, whether it's the middle, busy season or middle of summer and things are just, that's actually a really good time too, to kind of start taking a look at what's working, what's not, but you should be able to have your relationship at a point where you feel like they are supporting you and maybe they're even being proactive and reaching out to you too. It doesn't always happen. Hey, naturally speaking, if there's not a problem, then I'm not necessarily going to hear anything, but I still advocate for keeping in touch, so it's not like, oh, we need to get on the bat phone or we need to sound the alarm here because you're just going to know.
Dan Hood (08:07):
Well, I think particularly for smaller firms, they don't realize that a lot of stuff, not all, as you say, not all software vendors are open to that, but a lot of them, particularly in the accounting space, really are, and I think if they're particularly at a smaller firm, you think, well, I'm just having a relationship with the people who make my apps. When wordle, when I'm not too well at Wordle, I don't call the folks at Wordle and say, Hey, wait a minute, I'm not getting today's missing.
Seth Fineberg (08:28):
Critical things, the things that you want to work, you're paying for or not. I mean, in some cases you're getting an accountant version of things that you don't really pay for per se, but you still want it to work how you want it to work doesn't matter, and the free or not,
Dan Hood (08:43):
And the vendors are open to that. The vendors want that back and forth. They want to hear from you. They don't want to hear from you as much when you're complaining, but if they could build that relationship and make their tools better, a lot of them are open to that kind of input, right?
Seth Fineberg (08:57):
Yeah. Some of it's even built right into the platform itself. You can just right there, it's not about, oh, I got to send an email, I got to pick up the phone. It's like, no, you can actually do it right within, and there should be somebody, ostensibly somebody should be there. The other end, maybe it's an AI and AI don't knock AI assistance or even chat bots. They're built for these basic things. Now, if you're not getting what you want from just those prompts, then yeah, it should be like, okay, get in touch with customer service, get in touch, and you'll have a human there to see to your issue.
Dan Hood (09:43):
Right. Excellent. Alright, well let's go on to talk about how do you find a solution, right? Suppose it's an area where you don't have a vendor, there's nobody you were working with already on it. Where are places where cutting firms can go to look for solutions often to problems they didn't know they had? What's the best way to find those or are there more than one way to find them?
Seth Fineberg (10:06):
Yeah, there is, and that's actually a multifaceted answer Sometimes it just depends on the nature of the issue. It could be something that you'll find through a community, whether it's a community that you're serving in a particular niche like restaurants or construction or real estate, something like this. You might find something in a community forum or even outside of that social media itself. They might have some forums, people discussing these things pretty actively. Sometimes within your core software, they might have an app marketplace and there's discussion groups that happen around those as well. Outside of that, outside of social media, outside of app marketplaces and community boards, I got to say it just getting out into the world, anything social, sometimes vendors themselves will have these live community mixers or social events themselves, and then of course the conferences themselves allowing you to really live, kick the tires on anything or hear about platforms or how they're working in a live environment and also you get to talk to your colleagues, you get to talk to other firms about, yeah, I don't know. I feel like I'm ready to start looking into potentially an AI solution for this or maybe a software platform itself, something that might've been built that I didn't know was even out there. Even something as simple as engagement software. I want something that I don't want to have to think about. Custom building an engagement letter every time. Great, well, there's easily half a dozen platforms out there that integrate with payment solutions and possibly even your practice management, but you don't know because you don't know. You haven't gone and turned that rock over yet.
Dan Hood (12:20):
Right. Yeah, and there said there are a ton of places to get that information. You say Shameless plug here. I mentioned the firm growth forum before. There's a lot of opportunities to do that, but there are plenty of other conferences out there. Scaling New Heights is a great tech conference, basically has a lot of tech and there's a lot of similar stuff with, like I said, the A CPAs engaged conference or digital CPA A or Bridging the Gap, I know has some of it. There's a lot of state society meetings or forums on that, so a lot of opportunities, but as you say, it's just a matter of getting out there and one of the things we love about the accounting profession is how much they talk and are willing to share their experiences. If you find another firm,
Seth Fineberg (12:59):
Just
Dan Hood (12:59):
Say, Hey, what do you guys use? What do you do for this? Found that accounting
Seth Fineberg (13:04):
Firms run. Have you run into this?
Dan Hood (13:05):
Yeah, yeah. Accounting firms are more than happy to talk about their experiences and to share with one another, so just as simple as saying, Hey, across town, what are you using for? That can be a big help.
Seth Fineberg (13:17):
Yeah, stay connected. I mean obviously reading great industry publications that are out there is really could too, but physically getting out into the world, whether it's locally or regionally or just some bigger show put on by a state society or other institution, I just think it's a great opportunity. Even one a year, I think you'll come back with a wealth of information,
Dan Hood (13:46):
Right? Yeah. It'll take you a year to work through all the information you get. Exactly. And then you're ready for another one.
Seth Fineberg (13:52):
Exactly.
Dan Hood (13:53):
Excellent. Alright, well this is a topic where we are just on finding solutions. We could spend an hour or more, but I want to move on and talk a little bit about assuming you found a solution and you're ready to think about implementing it for your firm. I'm going to dive into that in a second, but first we're going to take a quick break and we're back. We're talking with Seth Feinberg about technology and finding technology solutions for your firm. The best way to do that, we talked a little bit about the best ways, one, to identify problems or gaps or areas of opportunity where software might help you to improve your processes to deal with pain points, and I think safe to say that one of the important points there is to look closely at what you're doing and realize that how you're doing it, even if it doesn't seem painless, there may be actually big room for improvement.
(14:45):
It's just a question of figuring out of looking critically at how you're doing things and keeping up with what's going on in the technology world to know that, oh, right, wait a minute this way, I do this now and it takes me three hours. There's a solution out there, let me do it in 10 minutes. It's just a matter of being aware of it, but I want to talk, now that we know, let's say we've identified the pain point we want to fix or the opportunity that we want to take advantage of, we've identified a solution. How do you start the process of implementation? Is there a first step? Is there a natural first step? Does it vary depending on what you're
Seth Fineberg (15:19):
Doing? Yeah, very much, and this is again based on I'm, I'm not a solution provider. I haven't sat in on an implementation per se. I've been given demos and watched what the process is, but realistically, it really depends. Say with, okay, something a real heavy lift, at least I see it that way. It's getting a new products management system, something that's very essential to just the lifeblood of what you do and so many other things kind of feed into it. It's like the head of the octopus, all the arms kind of go into that and out to the rest of the firm, so that has to be, but it's not like a matter of, alright, we got this great new practice management system, we're ready to go. It's like, man, much like AI in and of itself, it needs data, it needs information. You have to have processes like real world processes in place if you're going to get those workflows and your practice management system is going to work well for you.
(16:28):
So implementation is often a lot of questions. In some cases it's just you could be working, okay, great, we're moving from desktop to something AI enabled, which is a huge leap, but AI is kind of huge leaping the profession as we speak by the day. Why? Because it's not just software that's built to go if then or go from one point, take you from one point to another and then do what it's built to do. AI is learning from you, so the better your data is, the better your processes are and the more information that you give it, the better it's going to be for you, but it's still a big leap, so look into what kind of training is involved and how available. Again, back to the kind of customer service connection and the relationship with the vendor is there. I mean, they've got to be with you every step of the way and then even afterwards because things come up, so that's something you got to be prepared for is the time it could take and what's involved.
(17:47):
It's not just to set it and forget it, plug this new thing in and off we go. That believe it or not, as silly as that might sound, I've spoken to firms in case all the way back to case studies used to write about saying, well, yeah, we tried using this particular platform and man, we're still going through the implementation of it and we still haven't gotten it right. This is an extreme case, but still hearing that it's just, it puts a spotlight on managing expectations and really having an understanding of what's involved, so ask lots of questions,
Dan Hood (18:35):
Right? Well, and examine your processes, right? No, listen, okay, this is what we do now and there's always going to be
Seth Fineberg (18:41):
Know what you're solving for,
Dan Hood (18:42):
And there's always going to be a sort of back and forth between how much are we reproducing our current processes with a software solution, and how much are we rewriting our processes to fit the software solution? Do we have to change for the software? Does the software have to change for us? There's always a little bit of back and forth it seems just from listening to you talk about previous case studies, that always seems like that's a negotiation in many cases. Well, no, you have to do it this way. This is the way our software does it, or do you say, well, the software has to do it our way, our process, and then somewhere in the middle is probably the ideal, but it's got to be scoped out in advance so that you understand it. Yeah.
Seth Fineberg (19:18):
It's just driving a different car. It's like, oh, well, it does it this way. Now. I remember the first time getting in a car where I'm like, where do you put the keys? There's no the button, oh, I got to oh button now. Okay,
Dan Hood (19:35):
There button. There's a button, but you got to have the key fob within five feet of the button, so you can't forget it. You don't need it for anything, but you just have to have it with you all the time.
Seth Fineberg (19:42):
Got to be there. So it's true. There is going to be a bit of, whether it's software or ai, whatever technological solution that you are looking to, a thing that you're looking to solve for. Yeah, it's going to be a different way of doing things and ideally, as Dan said, it is going to work very much in the way that you work or want to work, but it's still going to be different. It's that new car, it's that new pair of shoes that just going to have, it's a period of adjustments. You're not going to think of any other way that you could have done this
Dan Hood (20:24):
And you have to adjust to get the value. If you're just trying to reproduce what you were doing before, then why change it all? But if you want to get that extra value, you're going to have to make those adjustments and make those changes to fully benefit from everything that the new software brings with the new solution.
Seth Fineberg (20:41):
The pain of or discomfort or any level they're in of doing new and different is going to really pale in comparison of the benefits you're going to get. I know that this has been the diatribe, but it's true. You have to just take that initial leap and go through that initial period of uncomfortability and newness to where it just becomes, this is now the way things are, and I can't really see ever going back to any other way.
Dan Hood (21:18):
Makes sense. Well, one of the things as you're talking about that made sense that one of the crucial ways to make sure the software was working for you that successful, that a new implementation works is to make sure that everyone's using it right. There is a tremendous tendency among not just accounting firms, but everywhere
Seth Fineberg (21:37):
For people to uptake
Dan Hood (21:40):
People to try to opt out. Particularly this happens with partners. I think we hear this as a thing that happens with, there's always a partner who says, man, I'm going to keep doing it the old way, the way I like it, and everyone's afraid to make them change, but how do you make sure that people are one, using the solution, whatever your new solution is, and two, using it correctly.
Seth Fineberg (21:59):
I mean, look, I think that gets back to the relationship with the vendor and some of the training that does happen. That's the process. If you're all a part of it. I mean, it could even speak to firm culture too. It gets way beyond or outside of any product or platform's going to do. It's like do you have a culture where it's like, yeah, when we do something new here, we're all in it together in order for this to work and the understanding has to be in order for this to work, we kind of all have to be sure, maybe there's some parts of it. It's like, yeah, I don't have to touch this. If you've got some new payroll system, does everyone have to be in on that? No. It's just the people who it's relevant to, but when it's something that does impact the whole firm, like say again, back to the practice management system idea, which again, probably one of the heaviest lifts and so many other things feed into it. Yeah, something like that where it's like, yeah, it has to be very clear from the partners on down that this is something that everyone has to be on board with, that there's any issues across the way. You got to speak up about 'em because it's not going to work if things are just kind of dropped or not used or misused.
Dan Hood (23:28):
You can't just quietly opt out of it.
Seth Fineberg (23:30):
It just depends on really what it is at the end of the day, Dan. But yeah, I think that's kind of the best way is just really communicating beforehand, this is what we're going to be going through. It's going to take roughly X amount of time, but this is why we're doing it, and it's just communication, and that's the part that gets back to the firm culture of how are we doing things. A lot of times if you're a big enough firm, it's departments and department heads, and in other cases it is the managing partner or the CEO or whatever structure you have. It's the head folks who are saying, okay, yep, this is pretty much how we're going to do things from now on folks, and everybody's got to be on board with
Dan Hood (24:16):
It. Well, mean communication goes back to even to the, we talked about one of the first steps is identifying your processes. That's a good place to bring people in, to get them enthusiastic about, Hey, we're making a change. We want to improve these processes for you. Just keep the energy high. We want your input on what's working and what's not working so we can make it better. Makes sense.
Seth Fineberg (24:36):
Yeah. You have the end game in mind.
Dan Hood (24:39):
Excellent. Alright, well, speaking of the end game, let's assume you've gone through, you've picked your solution, you've implemented, you've got everybody using it, finally trained. They're trained in how to use it to make the most of it, and let's assume they're using it properly and everyone in the firm is using it. How do you know if it was worth it? How can you measure the ROI of a new software tool, or again, knowing that every software tool is different, it may have different implications, so a practice management system that reaches across the whole firm is obviously you're going to measure that differently than a very simple API that you put in place for a very specific tiny portion of an individual practice's work, but generally speaking, how can you go about measuring ROI for this kind of thing?
Seth Fineberg (25:20):
Well, that's a good question, Dan, and I've heard a few different scenarios. Sometimes it depends on what the problem was to begin with, and then you can just tie it back to did it do this? Did. A lot of times we're talking about software or platforms or technology in general. It's time. It's tied to time. Did this save X amount of time, did spending this, or sometimes it's not just time in general, but it's time on a project. If you're running a cast team and you're used to projects taking X amount of time and you're like, well, this could be better, so you could look over time and see, okay, well, we've been using this for X amount of weeks, months, what have you. Are we finding that projects are getting completed sooner because every project's going to be different. It's not just, oh, well, a cast project's going to take three months and that's the time it takes. No, it really depends on what you're doing, and then there's different steps along the way too, but a lot of times it does tie back to time, so you measure that. In other cases, it's overall productivity and what have you,
Dan Hood (26:43):
Right? Well, I mean, CA is a great example, particularly if it's a recurring thing. If it's the bank rec that you do every month for all of your cast clients, you can measure that, you can get, and some of it
Seth Fineberg (26:53):
I know it takes X amount of time to do.
Dan Hood (26:55):
Right, and you can do that, and this is probably another way to help reinforce the value to your staff who no one's ever happy about changing software usually. That's a great way to go back and sort of get them enthusiastically and saying, how much time does it take you to do this? How much time does it take you to do it now? How much time did you save? And if they come back and say, Hey, we saved 45 minutes, you multiply that by all your team members and by your billable hour for all those team members, and you get a pretty good idea of what the value of the software was. As I said, CA is for certain, for a lot of ca tasks, that's easy to do because they're recurring. They happen every month or they happen every whatever period,
Seth Fineberg (27:33):
And a whole project might be taking you X amount of months to do. It's like, well, what if it's actually, this is done in a matter of weeks?
Dan Hood (27:45):
Right? Right. Very cool. Very cool. As I said, this is a topic we could talk at much, much, much greater length about. Unfortunately, we're a little bit out of time, but if you join us at our firm Growth Forum later on in May, usually around May 21st in lovely San Diego, you can learn a lot more about all this stuff. You see, Seth, he's going to be there talking with software vendors and accounting firm users of software solutions to talk about precisely this kind of thing, case studies in software use and adoption implementation and assessment, so we're looking forward to that. In the meantime, Seth, thanks for joining us.
Seth Fineberg (28:23):
Thank you so much for having me, man. And yeah, I mean, hopefully we'll see some of you at Firm Growth Forum. Those sessions are going to get real, and I love conferences like this that really give everyone a chance to talk with each other, meet from each other, meet with each other, learn from each other, and answer some of these kind of vexing questions that you might not even know to ask.
Dan Hood (28:47):
There you go. There you go. No, it's going to be great. You get a chance to see both of us there, or it's a big enough place that if you don't want to see us, you can avoid us and see all the other people there. There's of great speakers, a lot of great attendees. A lot of great firms going to be there, so we're looking forward to that. Again, Seth, thanks for joining us and thank you all for listening.
Seth Fineberg (29:07):
Thanks for having me, Dan.
Dan Hood (29:08):
This episode of On the Air was produced by Accounting Today with audio production by Adnan khan. Ready to review us on your favorite podcast platform and see the rest of our content on accounting today.com. Thanks again to our guest, and thank you for listening.