The IT infrastructure that got your firm here won’t support your growth plans. Leading firms are shifting their internal IT focus to data analytics and process optimization. Meanwhile, they’re partnering with specialists who provide unified infrastructure, security, and application management.
This approach is purpose-built to reduce risk and accelerate growth. It eliminates the traditional IT burden so your team can focus on what matters most.
Watch the full series to discover how to accelerate growth and scale with confidence.
Learn more about solutions for investor-backed and high-growth firms at https://www.rightworks.com/solutions/pe-backed-firms/
Speakers:
Derek Distin, VP of Community at Rightworks
Roman Kepczyk, CPA.CITP, CGMA, PAFM, Director of Firm Technology Strategy at Rightworks
Transcript
Derek: First of all, we talk about the staffing crisis.
Roman: We have had that my entire career. So even when I was a partner, CPA firm, so 40 years, that just goes into cycles. And part of it is our fault as CPAs and professionals that we tend to staff up to what we think we need as far as the minimum we need to carry to keep being successful in the future. And then for over the last decade or so, two decades, we started seeing outsourcing help fill the deadlines that, where the humps occur that’s out there. And the reality is, is when the economy’s good, we see a significant reduction. When economy’s bad, there’s accountants that come into the profession, we become more interesting. So I don’t anticipate that we’re going to be able to solve this staffing shortage just because the way the business model has traditionally worked.
Now, as private equity has come into the marketplace, they may be changing that practice model somewhat. But we’re seeing is they’re focusing on the high value items, for instance, the advisory services, the consulting, and what they’re counting on is automation for the traditional manual processes that many accounting firms do that is probably, like I said, not very profitable for firms. They’re counting on the automation, taking care of the low end and then having staffing available for those higher-level advisory and consulting opportunities for their clients.
Derek: Where does AI fit into a solution or a challenge?
Roman: AI fits into the challenge, but it’s not the way you think it is. When we hear about artificial intelligence, we think of agentic AI and this generative AI solutions that answer all the questions for you. But the reality is, I believe we’ll see our profession go through a transition, for instance, of using more of the application program interfaces, machine learning, robotic process automation. These are scripted intelligence to do things, for instance, like helping with document ingress, by having a script that will look at last year’s tax return, identify the things that the taxpayer needed to prepare the tax return, and then looking at new tax law, that agent or that machine learning, whatever you want to call it, will basically create a request list of those documents for the client, which helps with ingress.
Derek: So if IT staff in the future are going to be more involved in data analytics, change management, workflow processes, sort of the next evolution of what we might consider infrastructure or information technology, what does that do to the current needs that got your firm to where it is? What does that do with having to manage that IT stack?
Roman: What we see is that IT stack that is unique to accounting firms is being highly automated and basically built very strongly by vendors like Rightworks. Rightworks has basically optimized the updates, the maintenance, the support, the expansion of the SANs, the customization of the servers to run tax applications as quickly as possible and everything. And so what we see is that change is happening so rapidly that no internal, traditional IT people can keep up with that and optimize it for the accounting applications and the needs of the accounts.
Derek: Is it fair to say that the IT of the future for these large firms is going to be focused on the high value things, meaning the data analytics, the AI, the automations, and that the IT that got you to today is not as relevant? What should a firm do with their IT needs that got them to today?
Roman: Yep. Well, you hit the nail on the head that we see in the large firms, we’ve already seen it happening and in the private equity firms is that the new hires in the IT infrastructure are really focusing on that data analytics, the process optimization, the metrics that effectively manage the firm, which takes a completely different level of skill or different skillset than we see in the traditional network infrastructure environment that many firms have built today.
Derek: Regardless of whether your firm employs remote onshore or remote offshore employees, there’s a unique security challenge that they are facing. Talk to me a little bit about what those challenges are.
Roman: Well, what’s unique about our profession is not only do we have access to client data internally in our organization, but we have access to our client’s data. Think about the standard client accounting advisory practice where your CAS team has access to clients’ bank accounts, credit card statements, investment accounts, even their payroll to do weekly payroll processing. And so one of the unique needs we have to face is we have all their logins and passwords, and we have to manage that as securely as we manage our own logins and passwords that are out there. And so it’s particularly important if you’re using offshore employees to make sure that you don’t compromise your client’s data by using contractors externally, which you may not have total control over.
And so we’ve seen the adoption of tools specifically Rightworks, our Protect product, that basically allows remote workers to only access the client resources that they need to do to get their work done without exposing their passwords or access to those accounts.
Derek: So with Cloud Protect, whether I am onboarding an employee overseas or remotely or even in the office, talk to me about the onboarding process. How Cloud Protect makes it simple and easy to ensure that secure access to all of the client data.
Roman: Yes. In many firms CAS practices, there’s seriously a spreadsheet that has all the clients logins and passwords that are out there, and that exposes the firm as well as exposing the client that’s out there. By putting it into a product like Cloud Protect, what happens is beyond the administrator, the users of that packet do not have access to those passwords. So you can assign specific work to people to process a payroll, to do a monthly financial statement. And if that person decides to leave the organization or maybe go on vacation, go on family medical leave, basically that work can be assigned to someone else very easily, just like a new hire onboarding, where they’re assigned that work, they get authorized to go into those accounts, they do the work and they get out. And then afterwards, if they’re no longer working those clients, the administrator can take them off their list.