Why the future of accountants is threatened

By Patrick M. Omony

About a month ago accountants in practice held their annual half-day practitioner's forum organised by the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Uganda (ICPAU). A forum is ideally an event where practising 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 URA showing only 20% of tax agents servicing 75% of the 1.4 million taxpayers 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 turn out not to be the case.

The event which is on its seventh year running has a lot to improve on in terms of methodology, quality and relevance of topics discussed.

The problems faced by accountants in practice and employment are much more than what it appears ICPAU has the 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 preoccupied 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 centre stage with mitigation measures being solicited to minimize its negative impact on 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 monetise 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.

Organisers should endeavour 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 overrated 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 CEO, founder and principal consultant with Omony Consulting Co. Ltd