Doubling down on tech: What’s in store at Digital CPA in Vegas

The 2023 Digital CPA Conference, Dec. 3–6 in Las Vegas, will be the event’s 12th year. To explore the trends that drive this year’s agenda – and to look back on the conference’s weather-delayed start – Michael Cerami joins the JofA podcast. Cerami is executive vice president of strategic alliances, business development, and communications at CPA.com, the AICPA’s business and technology subsidiary.

Cerami discusses generative AI, previews some of the Digital CPA sessions, and explains how business model transformation is a key topic for future-focused CPA firms and practitioners.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• More from CPA.com’s Michael Cerami on the recently released AI toolkit.
• Cerami’s preview of some of the keynote speakers’ topics.
• Why the initial Digital CPA event was delayed about six weeks.
• Why business model transformation is top of mind for the profession.
• How Digital CPA has led the discussion over the years on the topic of client advisory services, or CAS.

Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:

To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato at Neil.Amato@aicpa-cima.com.

Neil Amato: Welcome back to the Journal of Accountancy podcast. This is Neil Amato with the JofA. In a few weeks, the Digital CPA Conference will kick off its 12th year. The conference this year is at Aria in Las Vegas, and, of course, it also has a virtual attendance option. The conference is one that helps CPAs stay on top of the trends most effecting the profession. As the name implies, it focuses on technology trends in particular. Joining me to talk about Digital CPA is Michael Cerami, executive vice president of strategic alliances, business development, and communications at CPA.com. Michael, welcome to the JofA podcast. We’re glad to have you.

Michael Cerami: Neil, thank you for having me.

Amato: First, you can’t talk technology in accounting or really any business without mentioning generative AI. I am guessing there’s probably some focus on Gen AI at Digital CPA this year.

Cerami: That would be a very good guess, Neil. You’re absolutely right. Digital CPA was really founded on the concept of really helping demystify emerging technologies for practitioners. As you said, it launched 12 years ago and really the onset at the time, it was really about the cloud and the transformational capabilities that the cloud had for many practice areas. Fast-forward to today, and you’re right, you really can’t talk technology without bringing up generative AI. They say, if you’re getting a haircut and your barber starts talking to you about something, it’s most likely reached mainstream. It’s very similar to the case here. But we’re really excited.

Just a little bit of background and help folks understand. Early last year, we kicked off an initiative to really help demystify generative AI for the accounting profession. That really starts with a very basic explanation and understanding of it, and then begin to drill down on specific use cases for practitioners. We just recently launched an AI toolkit that does just that, and that was just recently released. It’s available on the CPA.com website for download, for free that anyone wants to go ahead and download it. But we’re really going to do at Digital will be to unpack that toolkit and those use cases for the audience. We have a special keynote specifically on generative AI on Monday afternoon, which is the official kick-off of the event. Then we’re going to have a number of roundtable discussions specifically related to the use cases. It’s not just about putting it out there in theory. We’re going to begin to talk about how is this technology taking root in firms.

Amato: As you said, the official kick-off on Monday. The event is Dec. 3–6. We’ll include the agenda and registration page in the show notes for this episode. Beyond generative AI, which obviously, justifiably is a popular topic, what other trends are you seeing out there that are going to be addressed in the conference and that you think are having the biggest effect on the profession right now?

Cerami: Sure, Neil. When you zoom out and just see what’s happening across the accounting firm landscape. Clearly business model transformation is a very key topic that’s being discussed — firms really rethinking, whether it’d be the audit practice, the tax practice, accounting services. You’re seeing this significant push into high-level advisory services and so firms rethinking how they deliver service in that context. Automate as much of the inputs as possible and really focus on client value at the end of the day. Clearly, we’ll have a lot of topics specifically geared toward that discussion.

We’re going to talk about data-driven decision-making, doing that at scale, and we’re very excited about our keynote speaker, who is Cassie Kozyrkov, who is the chief decision scientist at Google. She’ll be keynoting one of our main stage events. We’re very excited to have her come in and talk about that. Then just creating capacity. Capacity is really looking at how firms can continue to do more when we know we have limited pipeline of resources and people.

That means, how can you automate more? How can you recruit human resources into the firm? We’re really excited to have Dr. James Johnson as our closing keynote. Dr. Johnson is professor at UNC Chapel Hill, who happens to be an expert on the changing demographics, particularly in the U.S., but really globally, and how that’s impacting firms and how they need to think about how they’re going to create capacity into the future. We think we’ve got just a really good overview on all these key trends that are impacting firms today and bringing some solutions to our audience.

Amato: Thank you for mentioning a few of those keynotes, those do sound interesting and I had looked at those, and those are a couple of names that stood out to me. One other one I want to ask you about is one I think people will find fascinating. He’s been a guest twice on the JofA podcast, so I’m biased, but his name is Pascal Finette. I assume you’ve heard him speak and you’re familiar with his work. What would you say for people out there who are maybe just learning about Pascal Finette?

Cerami: Pascal is a force of nature. So we go way back with Pascal. We probably began working with him about five or six years ago. He actually spoke at one of our executive roundtables where we bring in the C-suite of the top accounting technology companies part of the accounting firm ecosystem, and just talk about where he saw things going and helping create strategies and solutions around that. We very quickly formed a close working relationship with Pascal, and have been working closely with him ever since. He’s put out toolkits for us in collaboration with our team.

Ironically, just as COVID was breaking, we had worked with him to create a distribution by design toolkit, which was all about how to manage remote workforces and how prescient did that prove to become. To be honest, we didn’t know just how prescient it was at the time. But Pascal is just wonderful. He’s high-energy. There’s a clear entertainment value in hearing him speak, but he’s just also incredibly knowledgeable and stays very close to the trends.

I think what’s most important from our perspective, Neil, and kind of a hallmark of Digital CPA is with our keynotes, we’re not looking to bring people in to just give their out-of-the-box presentations. We really dig in and work closely with folks so they can tailor their thinking, tailor their comments specifically around the accounting profession. Pascal has been a wonderful partner, leaning in and really understanding the trends happening across the accounting profession landscape and then building a keynote, building a conversation around that.

He’ll be the one keynoting our generative AI. He worked closely with us in building out our toolkit, and so he’s going to unpack that for the audience in both a keynote discussion, but also he’s a wonderful facilitator and he will be leading a conference-wide roundtable with regard to the specific use cases that we uncovered. You could probably hear it in my voice. I’m a big fan of Pascal’s. Like I said, he’s spoken at Digital in the past, and people really do appreciate how he shows up and what he has to say.

Amato: Agreed. Now, this conference, it started in 2012. It’s been through the times of where you could only have virtual events. Now it’s back to having virtual and in-person in Las Vegas. Can you tell me a little about how it’s grown over the years?

Cerami: Certainly, Neil, we’re very proud of Digital, really. Like you said, little story, maybe you didn’t know, Digital was formed back in 2012 and it was originally slated to happen on the weekend of Oct. 29, but a little thing called Hurricane Sandy happened and uprooted the entire event. We wound up moving it to the first week in December, where it has been ever since. It started out as a very small conference. I think we maybe had 100 people at the first event back in 2012, and it had its roots in client accounting services. At the time, CPA.com was really out front talking about cloud technology and the transformational impact it was having on outsourced finance and accounting services.

Again, fast-forward to today, it’s one of the fastest-growing practice areas in many firms. The community is really built on that. The intention of Digital CPA has always been to bring together progressive thinkers, highly collaborative, who really are willing to share and just let the room grow from there. We always say that the smartest people in the room is the room. Digital has been a really wonderful example of that. This community is really built in the past decade. It really is the go-to event for client accounting services in particular. But one of the really exciting points I’d like to highlight for you this year is we’re expanding into other practice areas. We’ve had an initiative underway at the AICPA and CPA.com called the Dynamic Audit Solution. It’s all about the transformation of the audit.

We are bringing in a track this year specifically around audit and audit transformation. The way DAS was built and developed was under the AICPA’s oversight with many of [Major Firms Group] firms, leading firms who were really part of the development of that tool. A lot of those architects will be available at the event, as well as practitioners specifically who have worked in the tool. They’ll be able to share their experiences about really the evolution of audit and where they see audit going. We’re really excited to add that track this year. Then just final point, again, I told you when we started we were just about 100. We’ll probably have close to 1,200 or 1,300 people onsite at this year’s event. The growth has been pretty dramatic. Another couple of hundred will be coming in virtually on top of that. We’re really excited as we lead into December.

Amato: Yeah. I did not remember that that was the event that Hurricane Sandy delayed. I was actually in my first few months at the Journal of Accountancy that year when it happened. I was at a different conference, but that’s crazy to think about how it’s grown, and I guess it’s found a home in the first week of December since then.

Cerami: It’s settled in nicely. There’s never a good time. People are just so busy throughout the year, and we were very hesitant about scheduling it for that first week in December, but it’s actually worked out quite well. I think people view it as a really nice way to end the year before maybe going out on holiday break. It’s served us well.

Amato: Yeah, exactly. Between CAS, client advisory services, DAS, Dynamic Audit Solution, and then all the other topics that we’ve already addressed, there’s plenty that Digital CPA has led the way in educating the finance profession over the years. So, good to hear. Anything else you’d like to add in closing, Michael?

Cerami: Just like you said, it’s 40-plus sessions, 19-plus CPE credits. Come early. The event technically starts, I think, officially kicks off Monday at 2 p.m. But a lot of folks are there on site by Sunday. We have a wonderful opening reception Sunday evening. We have a number of preconference workshops on everything from remote and hybrid work to designing a practice that are available on Sunday and Monday.

Then the keynotes have always been incredibly well received and we’ve got some of the best: Barry Melancon and Erik Asgeirsson, the CEO of the AICPA and CPA.com, respectively, will be talking about more broadly what’s happening across the profession. It’s always a wonderful opportunity to get just an update from that perspective, and people can still sign up. Whether it’d be at DigitalCPA.com or just go to the CPA.com website. Again, if you can’t make it there, because it’s a little late in the game to make travel arrangements or whatnot, virtual is a wonderful alternative. It’s really grown for us. If you’ve been before, we’d love to have you back. If you’ve not been before, we’d love for you to give it a try. We think it sells itself. We’d welcome having you.

Amato: Michael Cerami, thank you very much.

Cerami: Thank you, Neil. Appreciate it.