Brian Tankersley, CPA, and Randy Johnston continue their travels to the largest conference for accounting professionals, and provide a recap of the 2024 Intuit Connect user conference.
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Transcript (Note: There may be typos due to automated transcription errors.)
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 00:00
Welcome to the accounting Technology Lab sponsored by CPA practice advisor, with your host, Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley, welcome
Randy Johnston 00:11
to the technology lab this Randy Johnston, I’m with my colleague Brian Tankersley, he is such a good co host to have along, and today we will continue with our conference tour for this season, and in particularly, we want to discuss Intuit connect that happened in October, a three day conference, october 28, through 30th at the aria in Las Vegas. Now, the ARIA is a great comfort conference hotel, and into it pretty well. Filled it up. They had 140 sessions with 127 speakers with six session tracks. I’ve had the pleasure of watching Magic Johnson prevent present before, and he did a fireside chat for this event. Now, it turns out the conference programming. The initial agenda included six main tracks, one on business intelligence, including financial planning for mid market and large clients. They had a firm growth as Intuit was trying to encourage people to go into client acquisition and advisory services. They had practice fundamentals for trying to improve firm performance. They also were worried about accounting and tax workflows. They had workflow sessions of various types. They had technology sessions, including practice management and other tech solutions. And they did a fair bit with leadership and soft skills in this event, they were also pretty driven on, driving home their AI messaging, driving home, their networking and learning opportunities and trying to help people understand what was in the QuickBooks platform. Now in in the prior versions of Intuit connect, there was an awful lot of sales activity, was my rule of thumb. And I attended most of them for some years. But as it turns out, this particular event maybe changed a little bit. And one of the things that they changed was the name. And, you know, there was a question about that, why Intuit connect? And, you know, for Intuit connect, it was about transitioning this from more transactional client accounting services, bookkeeping, if you will, trying to get over from Bookkeeping and Tax to advisory and trying to, you know, raise up the firm a little bit. So, you know, in terms of the programming content. Brian, you know, we’ve talked a little bit about the the breakout programming there, but what other areas and things were there for people to consider?
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 03:01
As you know, Randy, the, you know, Intuit and QuickBooks is a this, this product is used pretty extensively in client bookkeeping, and so they had a lot of CAS services, things. But then they’re also trying to help, help folks move up into advisory to do more fractional CFO financial planning analysis, again, for for bigger clients. Yeah.
Randy Johnston 03:24
And you know, Brian on that, I think it’s a good to remind our listeners of your cast breakouts, the three levels that I think you dreamed up 10 years ago or more. But it’s probably good to call those out.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 03:39
Yeah. So there’s, basically the bookkeeping, then there’s the controller for hire, then there’s the CFO for hire. And so the CFO for hires is more of a business advisor, and is is helping get financing and actively selling the organization. And it’s something that is, you know, again, you talk about some of the CFO for hire things, and it is very different skill than public accounting, even though you’re still selling, it’s a, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s just a, it’s a different skill. And so it’s, it’s, it’s going to be interest, you know, again, so I see people that have been middle management and senior management at small, mid sized companies are probably going to step out and take some of that business where, you know, again, the the the tradition, the folks that have been doing traditional bookkeeping for 20 years may not be quite ready for that, because they may not have been. They may not have been exposed to a lot of the operational areas. Yeah.
Randy Johnston 04:36
And so, it turns out, I want you to hear those from Brian, because bookkeeping and controllership, we think are leverageable, but we have not found very many approaches that make CFO services leverageable. Now, it’s a great practice, great business to be in, but it’s pretty hard to leverage. Is really the idea. And I thought it was interesting that Intuit was trying to drive people into the fractional CFO place as part of their. Approaches. So they also,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 05:01
well, they’re, remember, they’re also, they’re also pushing the live services, you know, QuickBooks live, you know, quick you know, TurboTax live, and the other things where, where they want to step into that bookkeeping role and, and, you know, you take that in full service, payroll and, and again, Turbo Tax live. And, you know, there’s not a lot left of the traditional, traditional service stack for the for the accounting professionals. So they got to go somewhere. Yeah,
Randy Johnston 05:30
exactly. So were there other things in the, you know, breakout programming that were of note to you? Brian,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 05:37
well, they talked about firm growth and marketing. And again, how to how to grow, how to grow your firm sales. They talked quite a bit about how to use their products to solve common workflow problems and to serve clients. They also talked about some innovative technologies out there that you can use, and leadership and soft skills. And again, I think this leadership and soft skills pieces is probably the most important, one of the most important here, because I’ve often thought that at managing people from tax and bookkeeping over to advisory, is a it’s, it’s a pretty heavy lift on the soft skill side. So it’s going to take a little while, and folks are going to have to, you know, get comfortable with things that aren’t certain. And so it’s a, you know, again, it’s, it’s something that’s going to take a while to culturally get there, and then it’s going to take a while for the firms to reshape their own firms culture to fit with those service lines. Yeah,
Randy Johnston 06:36
and you and I are both fans of advisory, but it is a, as you say, a heavy lift. And as I’ve tried to teach firms to do advisory services there, there’s still a lot of confusion about consulting versus advisory, proactive versus reactive and so forth. That’s kind of a big deal. But you know, one of the things that happened at the event was the CEO actually saying, you know, maybe we haven’t done the best we could. And you know, I’m going to take a first cut at this Brian to let you, you know, have some thought on it as well. But during the conference, the CEO says on godarsey basically issued an apology for accountants for their controversial tax breakup ad campaign. Now I gotta tell you, when I first saw the ad on TV, it’s like what this is like, the classic faux pas of the past of Intuit, you know, where they said, fire your accountant. You don’t need them. Okay?
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 07:36
That was 2002 and we still hear about accountants that that saw that ad, and they will not forget it ever, as long as they live.
Randy Johnston 07:44
I can’t forget the 2002 ad, and I gotta tell you, I can’t forget this ad either, but it encouraged taxpayers to switch from their accounts to Turbo Tax live, and it sparked a lot of controversy the National Association of tax professionals and ATP, you know, had much concern on that, but you know, good Darzi basically acknowledged the mistake, and he announced the ads withdrawal by the end of October. Remember that the event was happening october 28 through 30 so they probably had some ad placements out there. But he then went on to say, look, we’ve got a big commitment to supporting account accountants, including a billion dollar investment in AI and automated, repetitive tasks, and allowing accounts to focus on higher value advisory roles. Now Brian and I just set that up for you, because advisory is quite different than you know, CAS client, accounting services, bookkeeping and controllership. And despite these assurances from Sasan gadarzi, basically, accountants remain pretty skeptical about the genuine impact of those alternatives.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 09:00
And I have to tell you that it absolutely rings hollow to me, because the the billion dollar investment in AI strikes me as something that really is designed to further the live services that are directly competitive with accounting firms, you know, and and again, I I want to believe what we have here, and I want to, I want to give everybody the benefit of the doubt here. But I, you know, I saw another person said that accountants are number one with into it. And you know, given the number of people that you know, the the Dave bergsteins, the you know, the you know, all the folks that have worked there for years and years and years that are that are gone, that used to support the programs, even the disbanding of the rider Trainer Network. You know that that kind of rings hollow to me. I, I it feels like it feels like into it is quite interested in all the data that’s in. Year, and they are, you know, they’re starting to to get their sea legs for going their own way. So, you know, again, if I was put it this way, if Intuit was dating somebody that was a friend of mine, that was, you know, my wife became an accountant and decided she was going to start her own firm, and I was advising her firm, I would probably tell her that, I’m not sure that Intuit is marriage material right now, because there’s too much conflict with the live services between that and traditional services that accounting firms have
Randy Johnston 10:31
provided. Yeah. So, you know, when Chief Commercial Officer Greg Johnson was, you know, going back and forth, and we’ve seen a lot of these, you know, chats. We’ve seen it, but you know, the CCH conference and the Thompson writers conferences, so most conferences do this executive exposure now, but you know, the CEO basically said, you know, we’re committed to accounts as essential partners to power prosperity and and so forth. And again, that’s that’s good, but the new AI driven tools could absolutely intervene, and they’re designed to actually provide some level of advice to users. Now, Brian, you and I both know the advice might be good, it might be bad, and you know the We are concerned that CAS practices are too transactional already and not relationship driven enough, and the AI advancements could shift too much of the client relationship management away from the accountants. So, you know, we’re going to have to wait and see what happens from this. You know, I’ll call it from an accountability perspective. But it certainly was one of those, I guess I’ll call it highlights. Now, speaking
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 11:49
well, it appears, you know, it appears here, honestly, that Intuit is kind of struggling with how it partners with other people in the current age. And, you know, again, you look at, you look at what we talked about in our last podcast about the Intuit enterprise suite and and again, I don’t know if that’s going to appear before after this podcast, but one of the things that really strikes me about that is that they’ve not really released the program yet for the for the partners that have been Selling QuickBooks Enterprise yet, and so I think they’re trying to figure out what partnering looks like in this new world that we’re in. And I don’t know what it is.
Randy Johnston 12:30
Yeah, that kind of makes sense to me in terms of the general background. Now you and I both know many, many people that attended the event and wrote about it afterwards, Zane Stevens being one of those. And, you know, basically, as he was summarized in the event, you know, he talked about having a networking focus and talking about the major trends of AI and mid market globalization. Yet Intuit enterprise is focused on us, market and adapt. I’ll get it out adaptability and innovation, upskilling and staying attuned to emerging trends and the human element. And after he basically highlighted that, and we will step through a few of these sessions, he called out three specific sessions that were good, Randy crabtrees beyond the numbers building a people first culture and a panel discussion with Amy Walker, Ben Curtis and Roman Billard, hire them, develop and retain them, and then Corey cornea and Dan Luthy, automation strategies, four ways to elevate your firm. And of course, Dan and others have some of the Intuit training, you know, contracts for December and beyond, and then basically the ability to see the things on the show floor. And frankly, I always thought that the Intuit show floor was very valuable at this event. You got to talk to, you know, a lot of the partners and understand what they were trying to do. So, you know, as we think through then Brian, you know, some of the other items that happened, you know, we’ve, we’ve already really talked about the automation strategies. What are some other sessions? You know, again, we had a lot of sessions here, 140 sessions, and we’ve only got a short time with you. But what are some other sessions that you thought were worth mentioning? Well,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 14:29
some of the ones that were identified by other folks included concierge client experience, integrating AI to elevate service, by Keilah Hill Trawick, from Little Fish accounting, lessons learned from a growing affirm from one to 50 employees in five years by Tasha Anderson from the charity CFO. Where are the women understanding the gender disparity in in accounting? And yet again, I’m I will just say that, having taught CPA review for. Were, you know, again, I don’t teach it now, but I did, starting in 1997 I can tell you that when I stopped teaching live CPA review about 2013 we were at two thirds female, 1/3 male, in the, you know, in the in the courses. So I, I, I guess there’s some disparity in accounting I just, I don’t see it. I see I see women well represented from where I’m seeing, but again, I’m probably not looking at the right places, HR, best practices for accounting firms, again, trying to get more employee engagement, if generative, AI, what is the question? I think it’s an interesting, an interesting topic. I think, I think that’s a that’s a that’s a good one role of private equity in today’s accounting environment. Then some automation tools. Blake Oliver talked about harnessing ai zapa and some workflow software, some brand identity stuff, you know, again, building client confidence through practical security safeguards. Hybrid team roadmap blue ocean, where, again, this is a panel that was talking about advisory led discovery calls beyond the numbers, building a people first culture for sustainable growth, of course, with Randy Crabtree from trimerit, how to get no right. Lessons from hospitality, guest experiences, prioritizing you, how to create a mental health plan and trend. And there was another panel that was transforming your group, your firm, with AI from indicee trends to implementation,
Randy Johnston 16:35
yeah. So you know, as these sessions continued, it also then rolled over into the four ways to build your ideal advisory tech stack, which with Carla Caldwell, which we’ve both known for a long time, and Liz stout, as well as pricing virtual CFO services with a subscription based model, and Jody grunden has taught that concept for quite some time being intentionally authentic, curious and empathetic. Again, a soft skills course from Chris, Chris lazuri, and then closing up, then with the Magic Johnson piece. So you know, when you consider all of the various sessions that were there when you attend these type of events, we recommend that you schedule time so you can be on the show floors, and that you actually take multiple people to cover multiple sessions, and that you use it as somewhat of a business retreat type of approach. Well Intuit Connect, you know, is a big event for a lot of people, any closing thoughts here on the this year’s event? Brian, well,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 17:47
I think I’m, I’m glad to see them move to Vegas out of San Jose. Vegas is a much easier city to get to, and the meeting facilities are significantly better. I’m, you know, again, I’m, glad to see them addressing some of these major topics. I I think the there’s still a need in the in the non CPA market, for some kind of, some kind of association or organization to kind of bind those folks together. I think that, I think a lot of the practices in that area are kind of fragmented. You know, where the state CPA societies have, have AICPA and the state boards and the state state accounting, state accounting groups to help them with that. I think, you know, generally getting the I think it’s important for folks to get together and talk to each other and figure out how best to how best for everybody to succeed. And I think that’s a, I think, you know, again, there’s probably a lot of success created out of this event.
Randy Johnston 18:50
Yeah, one other observation that I’ll just make, because, you know, we’re kind of in the same mold on this one, and that may not be as good a service to our listeners as at other times, but there are clearly other organizations that have built into it, and small business accounting strategies, you know, Joe Woodard has certainly done that. Hector Garcia has been doing that. You saw a little of that with, you know, Ed, basically building his
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 19:21
ed class, yeah, and his at his meta consultant Academy, yeah,
Randy Johnston 19:26
exactly. And so we’re actually seeing fragmentation here of these events. And what we have been concerned about with many of these vendor events is that they were sales events in the past, and some still continue to be. We did see that trend reversed this year with both Walters Kluwer and Thomson Reuters. So we’re actually pleased to see that turn, but we are very sensitive to paying good money to. Go to an event to get sold to. So, you know, I’m just going to ask you to be real thoughtful about how you spend your learning dollars in the future on events. Because, again, some of these are very well orchestrated, very well put together, and you can always learn something everywhere. You know, that’s my rule of thumb, Brian, you’ve heard me say it more than once. I learn something new every day and from everything I attend, and I’m really trying to pick up one or two or three things per per hour. And you know, on our podcast here, we’re hoping that you’re picking up one or two ideas that you just hadn’t thought about it quite like that. That’s what makes it worthwhile to have you in as a listener. So in any case, it’s always a pleasure to have you sitting in with us here on the accounting Technology Lab. We appreciate your listen, and we hope to see you in another lab in the very near future.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 20:55 Thank you for sharing your time with us. We’ll be back next Saturday with a new episode of the technology lab from CPA practice advisor. Have a great week.
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Tags: Accounting, Technology