Accounting firms over-indulge in ‘navel-gazing’ says mid-tier

Accountants Daily spoke with William Buck managing director Nikolas Hatzistergos about the rise of technology and what it means for accounting firms.

“I think that there are a bunch of firms that are doing a lot of navel-gazing,” Mr Hatzistergos said.

“They're doing a lot of introspective work rather than looking out.”

Mr Hatzistergos said that while embracing technology and being innovative is important, it should always come second to servicing clients.

“Technology is a lever of the business, it is a tool to be used to gain efficiencies and also to redefine processes,” he said.

“But at the end of the day we feel that value proposition is around using judgement and influence and insight.”

Technology should be used to create efficiencies but not take over the accountant-client relationship according to Mr Hatzistergos.

“We want to be efficient with it but we don’t want that to be our definer or our value proposition to the client,” he said.

“We would rather that the client sees us as a trusted advisor and part of that is taking care of those other things and we need to be efficient in dealing with those things but it's not the thing that we would lead with.”