It was a Very Good Year(s)

This week my wife and I celebrated our 26^th anniversary, a feat notable not only for its longevity among current marriages in the U.S. but for the fact that my spouse has, for some unknown reason, not been nominated for sainthood in at least five churches.

All self-congratulations aside, it’s time to move on to the topic de jour – change management or perhaps more correctly, managing change, something that historically has not been among the strengths of the CPA profession.

I got to thinking about all that has happened to the profession since we each said “I do,” back in 1988, but trying to recount it all would take far more space and time than I have allotted here.

When you look at it from 30,000 feet, just the advancements in technology alone have radically changed the structure and dynamics of the profession, even since I first began covering it some 14 years ago.

For those of us lucky (and wealthy) enough to have had a mobile phone back in 1988, you may remember it was roughly the size of a rugby ball and sometimes came in a hard case. Just as an FYI- today’s smart phones have roughly 100 times more capacity than the NASA computers that sent a man to the moon in 1969, or the Cray super computer circa 1975. Today, it’s estimated that more than 90 percent of CPAs use smartphones and personally I think that figure may be conservative. Try attending a conference where everyone in the audience is not checking their phones at least once every 10 minutes. Or even a restaurant for that matter.

Hosted or cloud applications which originally went under the acronym ASPs – or application service providers – were more of a curiosity and reserved mostly for IT geeks who actually understood how they worked.

Those who remember lugging those bulky overstuffed suitcases filled with audit work papers now come to a client armed with only a tablet, no doubt saving countless visits to the chiropractor. Where one computer screen was sufficient 25 years ago, now it’s rare to see less than two screens per desk.

In 1988 there were less than 4 million remote workers across all lines of business. Now more than 30 million telecommute at least once a week including many CPAs. That change in demographics, coupled with the onslaught of the above-mentioned hosted applications, has given rise to the birth of “virtual firms” – practices that exist solely online.

According to the AICPA, some 8-10 percent of start-up firms are virtual.

And I could go on. However I suddenly remembered I forgot to buy an anniversary card and unless I want to celebrate it by sleeping in the car or chance not making it to 27, I’d better be going.

But just keep that between us.