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.
