About a month ago Accountants in practice held their annual half day practitioner’s
forum organized by the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Uganda
(ICPAU).The forum is ideally an event where practicing accountants are supposed
to share their experiences and challenges in the various aspects of the
practice and try to address identified bottlenecks while forging a way forward on
how they can grow the industry by serving the market/ clients better.
With signals from the market
showing a continuous decline in growth of the Ugandan accounting industry with
close to 80% of local accounting practices on survival mode, figures from Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) showing only 20% of tax agents servicing 75% percent of the 1.4 million tax
payers and the high number of unemployed Certified Public Accountants
(CPAs)coupled with the recent statements by the president of Uganda which a
council member reechoed during the meeting in which he questioned the value of accountants; practitioners
surely had quite a mouth full to discuss during the forum which unfortunately
didn’t turned out not to be the case.
The event which is on its 7th year
running has a lot to improve on in terms of methodology, quality and relevance
of topics discussed.
The challenges faced by accountants
in practice and employment are much more than what it appears I.C.P.A.U has
capability to manage given its limited mandate which is basically to regulate the
profession by, offering guidelines and ensure adherence to standards of
practice and code of ethics.
Experts have placed the
accounting profession as one of the top five professions whose industry is
rapidly being transformed by technology. Accountants all over the world are doggedly
pre occupied with searching better ways to adapt and remain relevant in
practice and in employment. The race to upgrade individual skills to move away
from routine tasks and accounting firms formulating strategies and testing
business modules with better services to bridge the gaps is at its all-time
high. These are issues that should have dominated the forum.
Practitioners appear to believe
that their profitability is being undermined by quacks in the market and the
solution to this was to push for more regulations. The best way would have been
for the practitioners to first understand who these quacks are?, and why the
market deliberately prefers their services over the legally recognized
accountants. This knowledge would have guided the exchange of ideas around this
issue on how to counter this by offering superior value in their services
rather than opting for coercive means of greater regulations and enforcement
measures as this is just ignoring the real problem and is counterproductive.
The hush business environment facing accountants in practice has seen many
practitioners especially the Small and Medium Practice (SMP) tiers threatening
to throw in the towel and exit the trade an action that will negatively affect
the economy. The profession world over and Uganda not being an exception is
under serious threat from technological advancement; which is enabling quick
implementation of cost cutting management innovations seen in the growing trend
by entities moving towards thinning accounting departments and employing fewer
accountants. These issues should have taken center stage with mitigation
measures being solicited to minimize its negative impact to the profession,
Practice and others.
Gauging the discussions on the floor it was evident that practitioners
did not have a good grasp of the business aspect of their practice and as thus were
heading in the wrong direction in as far as how to improve the economic
performance of accounting firms. This lack of clarity curtailed their ability
to visualize the business dynamics of the trade. Practitioners need to
appreciate that a practice is a business whose services will have to compete
against substitute services as evident that more
and more enterprises and organizations
are spending less on services of accounting firms; reallocating the resources
to engage monitoring and evaluation experts and business analysts for their
annual management reviews and limiting audit services to simple checks to
comply with regulations.
Untapped Opportunity for SMPs in the private sector.
There is huge untapped business
potential for Small and Medium Practices (SMP) in the private sector. But to
monetize this market accountants need to a turn away from making those fussy claims of service benefits and invest
in; creating more real value, repackage and tailor services that suits this
market. They will also need to acquire real skills on effective customer
acquisition and retention for a practice based on persuasion on value and how
to rump up service innovations.
They need to talk to and listen
more to the market/consumers than to themselves through well structure dialogue
sessions but most importantly strive to change the negative consumer mindset by
crafting new and fresh massages when advertising these services through an
infomercial kind of advertising. Infomercial advertising is where the consumer
is educated more on how to identify and use a service/product to solve his
problem. Developing this market is an uphill task so to champion this cause;
they will require active leaders who know what to do and would NOT just hold positions to build CVs or
engage in sterile adoration PR. Leaders who will be rated by result seen in
real value addition to the industry defined as happy clients who want more service, more money in the hands of
practitioners and more employment created for others NOT on perception.
They will also have to create
well thought relationships with other associations for strategic synergies e.g Private sector foundation, KACITA,
Uganda Manufacturers Association, Uganda Investment Authority etc.. for
leverage to build the consumptive end of the trade by advancing skills such as
the auditee audit enhancing skills, Management and cost accounting for
non-accountants, and integrated
reporting skills on sustainability issues.
Organizers should endeavor to
furnish members with enough quantitative data indicating the potential value
and size of the market, broken down into possible annual revenues that the
different tiers of practice could ideally generate.
The future of accountants in both
employment and practice is grime with the light at the end of the tunnel coming
from a heavy full speed train loaded with tech and biz innovation heading
towards them. Accountants cannot afford to continue burying their heads in the
sand; they need to fold up their sleeves tone down on pride and academic posturing
filed with over rated claims of value in their services and begin to acquire
new skills, stop fearing each other but corporate and interact more to exchange
information and ideas to better understand the consumer and grow their industry.
The
writer is the C.E.O, Founder and Principal consultant with
OMONY
CONSULTING Co. LTD
Tweeter
@ p_omony
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