From 80M to 300M Ambitions: How a Growing Accounting Firm Built the Foundation for Scalable Acquisitions with the Rightworks Platform
Scaling through acquisition is one of the fastest ways for professional services accounting firms to grow, but it comes with steep challenges. One fast-growing firm knows this better than most. With 45 offices, 500 employees, operations in 22 states, and nearly $80 million in revenue, their leadership team has their sights set on a bold target: scaling to $300 million by acquiring dozens of accounting firms over the next three years.
Their story is one of growth, ambition, and the critical role of unified technology in making it possible.
The Challenge: Ambition Meets Complexity
Brendan Welsh, Chief Operating Officer, reflects on the difficulty of balancing vision with execution: “We have ambitions to grow to 300 million in the short term. We’re looking to acquire 20 accounting firms this year, 30 next year, and the same the following year. It’s a pretty ambitious target.”
But managing that kind of acquisition strategy isn’t simple. Each incoming firm came with its own processes, platforms, and ways of working. What looked like opportunity on paper could quickly become chaos in practice without a plan to integrate systems, safeguard data, and scale operations.
“Acquiring all these little accounting firms is super difficult to manage,” Welsh explains. “We needed a model where we could add accounting firms quickly, without losing control of our data, our security, or our ability to execute.”
The Turning Point: The Need for a Scalable Foundation
The leadership team recognized that their existing infrastructure wasn’t built to handle the pace of their acquisition strategy. Each acquisition risked adding new layers of complexity and fragmentation. Without the right foundation, growth ambitions could be stalled by operational inefficiency.
That’s when they turned to Rightworks.
“One of the keys for us was getting one MSP in one day to hosting,” Welsh recalls. “That was critical to manage simple things like our data and our security, and to make sure we could do what we needed to do in a timely manner.”
The Solution: Rightworks Cloud Premier
Partnering with Rightworks provided exactly what they needed: a secure, scalable platform that could unify data, protect critical systems, and provide consistent access for employees across all offices.
“Rightworks gives us the foundation that enables us to bring all of the data from the accounting firms we’ve acquired into one environment,” Welsh explains.
Instead of dealing with fragmented processes and tools, new acquisitions could be onboarded onto a single platform. This eliminated the technology friction that had been slowing down integration efforts, freeing the leadership team to focus on strategy and growth.
The Impact: Acquisitions Made Seamless
The results of adopting Rightworks as their technology foundation are profound:
- Faster Firm Onboarding: Moving accounting firms to the Rightworks platform in a single day dramatically reduces the complexity of acquisitions.
- Secure Data Management: Rightworks ensures that sensitive client and firm data is managed with the highest levels of security.
- Scalability for Growth: With a consistent platform in place, the firm can focus on hitting its ambitious $300M growth target without worrying about technology slowing them down.
- Operational Consistency: Employees across 45 offices and 22 states now work with the same tools, processes, and protections.
The Bottom Line: Technology as Growth Infrastructure
Welsh summarizes it best: “Rightworks is instrumental for us. It gives us the foundation we need to keep growing and to keep adding accounting firms without losing control.”
This isn’t just about software. It’s about building the infrastructure that makes ambitious growth possible.
Key Takeaways for Other Firms
For accounting firms navigating similar growth challenges, this success story offers important lessons:
- Make technology foundational to your growth strategy. Don’t treat it as an afterthought; build it into your plan from the start.
- Prioritize security and consistency. As you scale, protecting data and ensuring consistent operations across offices becomes nonnegotiable.
- Choose platforms that can keep pace. Acquisitions move quickly—your technology must move faster.
- Think beyond today’s challenges. Select solutions that can support not only your current size but also your future ambitions.
Looking Ahead: A Future Built for Scale
With Rightworks as their technology foundation, this fast-growing firm is confident in their ability to scale aggressively while staying secure, unified, and efficient. The platform that enabled them to streamline acquisitions today will support the even larger ambitions of tomorrow.
For accounting firms with bold growth targets, the message is clear: Investing in the right platform isn’t just about solving today’s integration challenges—it’s about laying the groundwork for the future.