News from Your Accounting Association
CPAmerica Advantage 2018 – Looking Back on a Year of Achievement and Improvement C PA m e r i c a ’s st rapl i ne for 2018 (our 40th as an association) was “L e a d e r s A c h i e v i n g Cha nge” a nd the association has ta ken t he necessary steps to both strengthen our existing programs and to bring prestige to our members by enhancing member experience. 2018 saw a variety of new changes happening within and throughout the association. Here is an overview as a sampling of the different type of developments our association and our members experienced this year. New and continuing programs such as our Visitation Improvement Program (VIP); CPAmerica’s re-brand; new offerings such as the Outsourced Accounting Group and the New Partner Group; new member firms; transition to new managing partners; mergers & acquisitions; and the continued profitability of our firms all made up the big
December 2018 In memory of J. Robert Shine P. 2
picture of 2018.
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The beginning of 2018 saw the President's Corner - Alan Deichler P. 4 annual leadership transition of our board of directors from the immediate past chair, J. Brad Steward of Pulakos CPAs, PC, to Brian Malthouse of VonLehman & Company, Inc. During his tenure as chair, Malthouse continued to provide oversight and guidance to the president and staff of CPAmerica. In 2018, CPAmerica celebrated its 40th anniversary as an association and also went through a brand refresh and also a Crowe Global rebrand. Our Visitation Improvement Program, or VIP, a dues-driven service dedicated to encouraging continuous improvement through peer-to-peer consultation July 15, 2010 - What's so by partners on firms’ most pressing special about this issue of the See 2018, continued on page 2
Brainstorming newsletter? Why, it's the first one published in full color.
In an Instant, Everything Changes: How HPG's disaster recovery plan helped them adapt to change after a fire This is part 2 of 2 of the Disaster Recovery article from the Nov. 2018 Advantage issue. To read part 1, go to: https://tinyurl.com/y93p8zp3 to give them an alert. In addition, as we have had to remodel the office due to the fire, having a list of previously used vendors that the business team is aware of, [is on my update] list. I would recommend for any firm that does not have an actual disaster recovery plan, to create at least just a model of one – one having at a minimum, employees’ contact information. We provide everyone with a copy of our plan so they know what it looks like and are familiar with it.” Pittman said, “In terms of what we did right, we had a disaster recovery plan and we followed it – kudos to Nikita; she drafted it several years ago. The second thing we did right was, some years back, we moved all of our computer network infrastructure out of the building and into secure facilities that are protected from fire and power loss. We had no network equipment inside the building; our computer systems were not impacted whatsoever.
We were completely operational at all times. I would say the same thing for our phone system. The system is entirely within the computer network and offsite, so it never missed a beat and didn’t affect our ability to communicate with our clients. We also were in the process of converting to a virtual desktop infrastructure, meaning any employee could use any computer to access our system and have the same experience had they been sitting in the office. This has been tremendously valuable to us. It has made a huge difference in our ability to function at speed and not lose productivity. Another thing that has gone well is that we have a great business team here. They have moved heaven and earth to keep things working and deal with all the infrastructure problems we alluded to earlier and to make it a seamless experience for everyone.” We asked Pittman if dealing with the fire changed the firm.
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