As an industry, professional services firms used to be narrowly defined by area of expertise: accounting, advertising, public relations, law, design, engineering, architecture, software development, etc.
That's all changing.
A couple of headlines jumped out recently to illustrate that point:
It's not that advertising's traditional domains (creative and media buying) don't matter to clients, it's that other services matter more.
As Alice Hatch, head of Deloitte Digital points out "The role of the chief marketing officer is changing. The CMO is playing a completely different role in the C-suite and in the boardroom now." To serve those expanded needs means "you need a much broader base of capabilities and understanding of business and technology strategy, understanding of depth, data and analytics — that is not what the agency model was built on originally."
What's bad news for agencies is good news for CPAs.
Sound strange?
Not if you consider the way overlapping and complimentary client needs influence the way professional services firms are structured.
While nobody is suggesting a you hire your CPA to design your next logo (though many of the bigger accounting firms have expanded to offer those kinds of capabilities), there is so much data flowing in and out of marketing departments (data that also touches finance, operations and HR), it makes sense to turn to somebody who not only gets what all those numbers mean, but can put them in a broader business context and suggest changes that could improve them.
"Over 70% of CMOs now own balance sheets, which is a huge difference from the days of being marketing as a cost center. So they have to wear a business hat and think very differently about how they are orchestrating all of their activities," says Ms. Hatch.
If that's the "new need," smart accounting firms will seize the opportunity to serve it.
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