Leveraging IT expertise: technology skills increasingly important to small business clients.

• Author: Lewis, Bob
• Position: Business Bytes

The current technology landscape presents both tremendous opportunities for growth and noteworthy challenges, especially for firms that serve small business clients.

**********

The demand by small businesses for services provided by small public accounting firms is on the rise, even though large firms and software companies are becoming more competitive and are making tax services a commodity.

This trend is accompanied by greater pressure for accounting practitioners to provide a comprehensive package of services at a set cost, such as value-based billing instead of an hourly rate.

Also, the profession is still adjusting to the higher levels of scrutiny and the demand for more transparent fiduciary practices required by Sarbanes-Oxley and other new federal regulations.

Amid these interesting challenges, clients still consider CPAs one of their most trusted business advisers. The small-business market has a strong demand for CPAs to deliver more specialized and in-depth financial consulting services. Meeting this demand will require accounting professionals and their clients to collaborate more closely and effectively.

Having fluid access to accounting information is critical for CPAs to successfully support their clients.

Also, many small businesses look to their CPAs as trusted advisers on technology consulting. This presents an interesting set of challenges--and opportunities--to expand the accounting practices' traditional base of services.

Adding the role of technology consultant requires CPAs to carve out time for new skill building on top of their ongoing efforts. But the benefits from implementing responsive financial management software on both sides of the CPA-client relationship can generate returns that more than justify the investment.

Collaboration

Accounting software integrated with other business systems and the Web is dramatically changing how CPAs interact with their clients. Financial documents that a client formerly had to assemble, print and send to the CPA by postal or courier service--which often had to be re-entered into the accounting firm's IT system--can now be exchanged, analyzed and updated electronically.

Instead of traveling to each other's offices monthly or quarterly to review documents and discuss issues, accounting professionals and small-business owners are instead connecting on the Internet more frequently and for shorter amounts of time. For example, they may set aside 15 minutes each week to share...