Future Of Accounting Professionals Post Covid 19

What is the future of Accounting Professionals Post Covid 19?

Accounting professionals are successfully implementing cloud-based accounting during and post-COVID 19. Digital accounting has allowed virtual collaboration between the company and its clients.

The post-pandemic era made it compulsory for accounting professionals to go virtual. They are now expert at accepting this new normal and adapt to digital ways of efficient working.
The COVID pandemic introduced modern ways for the accounting profession. Some of those perks include

• building a reliant virtual team
• executing new technologies
• creative client onboarding
• virtual client engagement
• improve service offerings
• introduce the relevant skillset

The future of accounting professionals post COVID 19 depends on the safety and security of the staff members. The lockdown measures employed by the government made it mandatory for accounting firms to get used to the new working models.

Few innovations in the professional front include:

• work from home
• flexible working hours
• alternate shifts
• digital communication

Let’s look at some of the prospects of accounting post-pandemic era!

Digital Customer Onboarding

• The outbreak of COVID-19 provided accountants with the opportunity to adopt digital means of sharing documents and onboard clients.
• The future of the accounting profession comprises online marketing services which is now a key trend.
• Traditional accounting is now obsolete. Sending direct mails or hosting public events is replaced by valuable online services in 2020.
• The future accounting profession incorporates
  1. Inbound marketing
  2. Content marketing
  3. Using an online tool to gather leads
• As an alternative to accounting services, the future holds the inclusion of valuable prospective clients.
• Current accounting professionals create value to the system by:
  1. running webinars
  2. writing reports
  3. white paper
  4. create financing tools in excel
  5. create customer engagement by triggering conversation with users
  6. converting prospecting clients to leads

Cloud-Based Accounting

Cloud-based accounting is the future of the accounting industry.

• 62% of all accounting firms are currently implementing cloud-based technology.
• This is the time to get started with cloud-based accounting services which were previously side-lined by the Indian accounting industry
• Accountants of 2020 are using this opportunity to grow their business in the future.
• The evolution of cloud-computing implicates a drastic change in the working culture and mindset.
• There is a permanent shift in the way accounting professionals are working, becoming productive and introducing cost-cutting.

Cloud-based accounting solutions gave firms an opportunity to

• enhance the accountant-client relationship
• on-go client servicing anytime & anywhere
• permission-based documentation
• offering better control to the users
• time-bound manual data entry
• invest less time for client documentation
• delivering excellent data security
• reducing the chances of data misuse
• consistent backup of accounting data
• ensuring data restoration in case of data loss

During the pandemic, the biggest challenge faced by accounting firms was to introduce new technology to empower remote client interactions.

Successful accounting firms used their technology to

• advise their clients
• keeping clients informed about financial reporting
• update clients about economy changes

The post-COVID-19 era is bringing together more accounting firms to indulge in cloud-based accounting for a more strategic and advisory approach.

Virtual Communication and Partnership

Remote working is the new normal. This reshapes the ways of working for accounting professionals. New introductions include

• Accounting software and technology for customer management
• Customer marketing
• Customer invoicing.

Accounting professionals in 2020 are turning to technology to enable virtual staff communication and client acquisition. Benefits include

• streamlining workflows
• keep a track of the work progress
• collect internal feedback
• facilitating daily communications
• replacing physical meets with virtual client relationship
• conduct meetings and training through online tools
• assimilate a large number of people at one go digitally
• upload and share documents
• collaborate with multiple users
• work simultaneously for real-time documentation

Building Operative Remote Teams

In 2020, the working culture is all about social distancing. The future of the accounting profession post-COVID 19 is/will be through remote teams.

Now, the importance of building operative remote staff is more necessary than ever. It comprises of

• allocating staffs for proper communication
• strategizing
• maintaining loyalty for client retention
• providing clear instructions for targets, deliverables, frequency of communication
• ensuring provision of all necessary tools to the virtual team
• following best practices for productivity, collaboration, and workflow

Today, personal client visits are replaced by virtual meetings through technology and tools. Disseminating functional technical equipment (laptops, hard drive, accounting software) to the team is also part of the process.

In addition to this, there are other aspects of modern accounting such as:

• Instructing employees to manage and routine their work.
• Check-in with the colleagues at systematic intervals
• Ensure that the staffs can focus on work

Shifting Roles and Functions

The traditional structure of accounting firms included

• partners at the top level
• managers at the middle
• associates at the entry-level

But now, technological advances such as automation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, data analytics are permanently changing the work system. Modification includes:

• Online business undertaking and management
• Increased importance for online advisory
• Hiring specialists with industry experience, technical skills, oriented on accounting software (QuickBooks, Tally ERP 9 etc.)
• Compliant technology
• The changeover to online client onboarding
• Content-driven marketing

The future of accounting profession post-COVID 19 will require accountants to

• adjust in the organizational structure
• introduce new accounting services
• allotting specific functions
• generate new job roles and responsibilities
• online scaling up of the business

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