If you are pitching to Accounting Firms, then spare a minute to read this post. It talks about the top IT challenges faced by accounting firms. Be sure to address these specific pain-points when talking to prospects from accounting firms…

Speed, transparency, communication and collaboration

With multiple offices and multiple teams, your prospects struggle to maintain transparency among their different workforce. Some accounting firms even have staff working from home. Much of their business depends on the unobstructed transfer of knowledge between their different locations. This calls for an IT infrastructure that allows for clear data transmission across all their offices–no matter how widely dispersed.

Accessibility to older data & documents

Accounting firms often have the need to go back to older files and documents, such as older tax returns and financial statements. Also, there are government as well as professional governing bodies that regulate document retention. As a result, access to data and safe data storage becomes critical.

IT Security

Data security is of utmost important to CPAs. In order to keep up with the latest security requirements, these entities invest in multiple control systems such as CCTV cameras, biometric access controls, encryption, etc. Merging all of these together and managing them from a single point is a technological challenge.

Scaling up and down to suit business requirements

CPA firms see a lot of business when it’s time to file tax returns. As a result, their IT requirements are variable–changing with seasonal demand and shifting staff volumes. However, scaling their investment in IT hardware and staff to suit seasonal changes is not practical.

Other factors you should talk about when pitching to accounting firms

Most accounting firms don’t have the skill-set necessary to build and maintain a great IT infrastructure all by themselves and often find that maintaining IT in-house can be an expensive affair.

It has been noticed that even if they do invest in creating an IT support team in-house, they struggle to sustain it and find it overwhelming to support application upgrades and maintenance for multiple software programs, perform timely backups, keep the document management systems up-to date and ensure the hardware is performing to its maximum capabilities.