TechTimes CPAConnections News From Your Association Leaders
August 2018
An interview with the 2018 CPAConnect chair:
Celebrating our:
Erin Anker of Phillips Anker, PC, leads the 2018 advisory committee Erin Anker is the 2018 CPAConnect Advisory Board Committee chair. She believes in helping small businesses by standing as an advocate against fraud for her firm’s clients. In addition to being a CPA, Anker has also earned designations as a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), Certified in Financial Forensics (CFF), and Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA). She Erin Anker is also the managing partner and , shareholder with located in Austin, Texas, and recently spoke to us about her time as chair. We started by asking about the
changeover to advisory committee chair. Anker said, “I had volunteered for the advisory committee after one of the [CPAConnect] Roundtable events and I thoroughly enjoyed the planning calls and loved participating. I believe that advocating for our membership is one of the most important roles for the chair. I am hopeful that this year will be a very fruitful one. For the transition piece, it was quite smooth, transitioning from Craig Franklin (what a smart guy!). This is a great team and we do whatever we can do to best help our membership.”
relationships and it provides the ability to reach out when information is critical; sometimes we may need to refer an engagement out and it is important that we have credible and reliable firms that we refer our clients to. If we have built this relationship with them via CPAConnect, then we are going to be comfortable referring our clients to them if they need something. We have done this (multiple times), and likewise, have had clients referred back to us.
When asked what she likes about being a part of CPAConnect, Anker said, “The collaboration with the other firms. Our sharing of information is invaluable. It has led to great business
Business always poses challenges and we asked Anker what is at the top of her list. She said, “I would say adapting to the impact of technology to our business of public accounting. Ten
Read Erin Anker, continued on page 2
Tech Corner with Randy Johnston
Look to the Future - Protect Your Firm by Being Proactive on AI and Automation We will need to take our firms through a technology transition in the next five years that is unlike anything that has come before. While you may believe that the transition from DOS to Windows, the arrival of the Internet, or the use of cloud technology were big things, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and other emerging technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA) will deeply change the practice of public accounting. How can you help keep your firm on the right track? It certainly won’t be done by doing the same old thing, but the risk won’t be mitigated by jumping to new technology too early either. CPAmerica has been managing Innovative Technology calls
to investigate emerging technology options as a group. This group leverages the expertise of many for the good of all. However, we each have different technologies we discover, we have different client needs and we have different strategies for our firms. Remember that you are still well-served having a strategic plan and tactical objectives for the firm which are then incorporated into a technology strategic and tactical plan. We still must get day-to-day work done in tax, audit and other core services. Some firms have added a focus in Client Accounting Services, Wealth Management or other high growth areas. Each niche has an opportunity to leverage emerging technology and you should watch for tools that help each practice area.
What Are the Top AI and Automation Opportunities?
Wherever there are a lot of transactions or data, there is an opportunity to automate. You have already seen the opportunity to reduce the amount of effort needed to use bank or credit card feeds to capture transactional data if you use online accounting software. Some of you are using expense management software to capture transactions and reduce the effort to manage expense reporting. These simple examples leverage the benefits of centralized cloud computing. Over time, computing power has gone from centralized to distributed back to centralized and is preparing to shift back to more distributed capabilities. The new wave of distributed computing is a result of widespread use of mobile computing power and from the reduced cost of graphics processors which can accelerate ML and AI.
See AI and Automation, continued on page 3