For one-third of my 30-year career, I have been a non-CPA partner in both large and small consulting and accounting partnerships, including a Big Four firm and large strategy as well as boutique firms, developing and running my own book of business with relative autonomy.
My partner colleagues and I welcomed the independence to drive new business and build our own practice areas. Sometimes that meant resisting signs of people looking over our shoulder to interfere with our network or questioning decisions about new business targets and fair investments of our time. After all, both accounting and consulting partners are generally invited by the broader firm to use their prowess — both expertise and battle-worn client wins — to build the business, reputation and fees of the firm, whether a partner is a specialist in audit, tax, transactions or strategic consulting. The culture of “pursue the clients and work that you like” was successful and rewarding, but it is a far cry from how things often work today.
With 20/20 hindsight, I offer three confessions of blind spots from my days as a partner that would diminish the success of partners and partnerships — and sometimes still do:
1. Partners may not have a clear sense of how efficiently they and their teams are spending their time, though they know time is literally money and timesheets are the currency in a professional services firm.
2. Partners often lack awareness of what other partners are doing, which can result in opportunity lost.
3. Partner autonomy increases risk for the firm.
These blind spots have become clear through years of experience, and with the development of technology solutions that make better firm management possible. Unfortunately, as technology was introduced, it often rubbed against the partners’ spirit of freedom, especially if the value of centralized time, relationship and risk management systems was not clearly defined. Partners were suspicious of a system that might increase monitoring and decrease their ability to invest in or accept the clients they wanted. Their need to build and own relationships did not often align with sharing information about each call, each meeting and time spent on each contact. In many firms, that cultural resistance still exists, and no partner enjoys spending time on what they may perceive to be administrivia or working with clunky, older-generation systems.
These days, I work collaboratively with many leading accounting and consulting firms that are taking advantage of better visibility into shared data across an organization to improve time investment, support collaborative performance and reduce risk, all to grow businesses and their market success. This progress softens the siloed culture of partnerships that once leaned toward little fiefdoms of decentralized information and systems.
Partners in every firm know that time management is important for each of their client teams. They rely on networks (increasingly global, regardless of firm size) to provide service to large and complex clients. And they are masters at delivering rich insights for their clients while managing risk. They have the knowledge and experience to appreciate the blind spots. While technology presents a solution to managing time, collaboration and risk, it must align with the organizational structure and generate confidence within the culture to be fully adopted.
Each of the lessons — now confessions — from days gone by can be avoided more easily today.
Address time value, not just time
Before tech-driven managed service offerings, billable time was the standard currency for accounting firms. This was particularly true in audit and tax where teams of staffers spent weeks locked in a boardroom. Whether in audit, tax, transactions or consulting, it was sometimes more important to record every 15 minutes for billing than to ensure the value of every 15 minutes.
The same was often true for partners themselves, avoiding too much administration and heuristically investing time where they wished. They did not have the tools to examine and balance the high-value time attributed to things like quality control and could not easily view their ROI on business development activities.
Partners I work with today want to avoid that pitfall. They value having visibility and control over their teams for quality, productivity and profitability and often review staffers’ hours for billing, diligence and efficiency on accounts — not to mention paying attention to teams that are overworked or spending time on lower value activities. They want to groom team members to develop their skills and careers. Unfortunately, standard timesheets do not provide an easy view into how time is spent by each person and if they each have assignments that could enhance their development.
Firms that have improved their time management systems easily enable partners to adjust the use of time and address the right issues with the right approach and the right staff. With the appropriate course corrections, partners can increase advisory time and the value they bring to each client relationship.
Keep networks fresh and accessible for reference
When partnerships first moved to the global stage and developed cross-service line businesses, many struggled to leverage their customer relationship management (CRM) system across geographies, services and target sectors. They did not fully leverage their vast internal network of experts throughout the organization. Some partners did not input their own stash of close contacts, for fear that some corporate marketing person might send unwanted materials, or another partner might encroach on their relationships — not to mention not wanting to spend their precious time to keep these systems up to date.
Over the years, firms have set guardrails on access and use of these systems, making it possible for partners to record their relationships and support account growth by sharing contacts across businesses and geographies. Networks expand exponentially when a system can capture information beyond client contacts to include other market relationships which can become influencers and references. Today, there are CRM systems purpose-built for the accounting industry that make all of this more manageable for firms large and small. Leveraging this capability would open new doors for partners to meet more prospective clients, involve more experts from within the firm and ultimately drive more business.
Manage risk like the pro you are
Accountants and consultants advise clients every day on risk and compliance management. They also understand the need for their highly regulated practices to identify key conflicts, risks and independence challenges in their own businesses. This is where siloed businesses and a culture of individualism works against them.
Most firms already see how cloud-based data across geographies, industries and influencers can generate more consistent reporting and save time, with risk teams evaluating clients for onboarding and uncovering independence issues and conflicts quickly. Many firms also integrate risk and CRM systems to uncover potential connections to client companies or leaders who may cause problems for the firm, quickly identifying the depth and type of relationships that might connect the firm to a “rogue” player or prohibited work. These systems help protect the firm’s reputation and the partners from personal risk — building partner confidence in managing current clients and taking on new business.
Take control with tech
Today, as I lead strategy for a technology provider to professional services firms, my conversations are often not about technology, but about the goals and challenges of the practice. We discuss things like driving firm and engagement profitability with better data, reducing risk while navigating increasing client complexity, and equipping partners and professionals with the tools and processes they need to reduce manual, administrative tasks and focus on higher value client work. These chats often include my own experience — and these confessions — as a former partner. But when the conversation inevitably turns toward the necessity of centralized systems and data, many clients confess something to me: that well-integrated technology has not forced them to relinquish control, but actually increased the insight and control to drive their business forward.
