CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A CENTURY IN AUSTRALIA, A NEW GLOBAL NAME In the foreword to the 2012 publication, RSM Bird Cameron 1922 to 1912, the firm celebrated 90 years of history and the then National Chairman concluded “we don’t expect a nervous 90s period as our maiden century is just around the corner”. As it transpired there was little time and too much to do to be nervous. The firm continued its growth across the nation and expanded its international connection. Significant progress and development was achieved in the areas of technology and branding and new service lines complemented traditional service lines. Like the strategic plan document “Positioning RSM Bird Cameron” (November 2001) had been the blueprint for the first decade of the century, so too was the 2011 strategy of “Connecting for Success Towards 2016” and our 2016 - 2020 strategy of “Leveraging our Core and Innovating at the Edges” in steering towards the firm’s 100th anniversary. During 2012 there was a need to add depth to the Audit & Assurance parts of the business and this led to the recruitment of David Talbot from our UK counterpart RSM Tenon, relocating his young family to Sydney. The importance of, and commitment to, technology was a key area for the firm to address at this time. Pioneers of the firm related stories of accountants writing up manual cash books, of preparing financial statements via famous B10 / B11 manual worksheets and then posting files from country post offices to a centralised Perth typing pool for eventual lodging at the ATO and delivery to the clients, sometimes months after the first meeting. Compare these early days to each staff member having a laptop computer with specialist software, servers based in the cloud and documents being sent electronically in a matter of seconds. But such technology requires highly trained IT staff and planning and by 2012 the firm’s CIO Paul Joseph introduced independent consultants Gartner to assist with the firm’s next phase of planning. This saw the migration of Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange
(Outlook) in 2013. Another major initiative was the electronic document management system (EDMS) which was phased in over three modules and a number of years commencing in 2016. With such large investments it was also critical the risk issues were covered and a formal Disaster Recovery plan was prepared. Technology was not the only area hungry for resources as our people needed continuous development, not only in technical skills but in leadership, management and other areas sometimes referred to as “soft skills”. Various high level formal training programmes commenced under the guidance of National Training and Development Director Jennifer Brennan. Programmes included Principal Leadership, RSM Academy and the Leadership and Management Program (LAMP) all of which are important current day platforms. Often ignored in the training matrix were Partners and seniors (often because they believed they didn’t need it) but this was addressed under the planning. A number of Partners attended the Harvard Business School Program “Leading Professional Service Firms” with the first attendees in Jamie O’Rourke, James Komninos and Robert Miano who later were elected to the National Executive over the next three years as the baby boomers retired. Senior leaders continued to attend the Harvard course in person until 2019, when the firm decided to broaden the training to the full leadership group and Harvard Business School Professor Boris Groysberg was brought to Australia to run this program over two days in Sydney. The pioneering spirit of our WA regional areas continued with the opening of a Karratha office in June 2012 under Keiran Sullivan and Mark Sissoev’s practice added to Busselton in 2015. Satellite offices were opened in Collie in August (serviced one day a week from Bunbury) and Rockingham, originally serviced by Mandurah, but now with a full time staff, along with Jurien Bay in 2013. 100 Years of successful connections 119
