JofA roundtable: Why 2024 is shaping up as a big year for ‘people tech’

Bring together three of the top experts in the accounting technology space, and you’re bound to learn something (often, many things) new. That’s been the premise of the JofA Accounting Technology Roundtable since 2011. It held true again in 2024.

After discussing artificial intelligence and automation in Part 1 of the roundtable, published Wednesday, the three panelists — Automata Practice Development’s Wesley Hartman, IntrapriseTechKnowlogies’ Donny Shimamoto, CPA/CITP, CGMA, and Boomer Consulting’s Amanda Wilkie — turned their attention to several other topics, including one that is new to the roundtable — people tech.

What is people tech and why does Shimamoto think it’s going to be a big deal for accounting firms and finance departments this year and beyond? Find out in this episode.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• What “people tech” is and why “HR tech” is not an adequate description
• Ways accounting firms and finance departments can use the technology “for good”
• Why AI can’t solve all problems, especially within people tech.
• Why CPAs should be paying more attention to digital assets than blockchain.
• The type of cybersecurity plan now required for many firms.
• Where Web 3.0 stands and why it may be a little behind schedule.
• A simple reminder about taking small steps when implementing technology.

Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:

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

Transcript

Neil Amato: Hey, this is Neil Amato with the Journal of Accountancy. Welcome to a special edition of the JofA podcast. This episode is Part 2 of the JofA‘s annual Accounting Technology Roundtable. Your host is Jeff Drew, editor-in-chief of the JofA and the instigator of the roundtable 13 years ago. Here’s Jeff.

Jeff Drew: Welcome to Part 2 of the JofA Accounting Technology Roundtable. We are here with Donny Shimamoto of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies, Wesley Hartman of Automata Practice Development, and Amanda Wilkie of Boomer Consulting. If you missed Part 1, go to the JofA page on Libsyn, or you can go to Apple Podcasts or wherever you get the podcast to go listen to Part 1, which is focused a lot on generative AI and also some talk of automation.

But as I mentioned the end of that episode, there are other technologies besides AI. We’re going to jump into that in today’s episode. We will start with the person who’s probably the most veteran of these roundtables, besides me, is Donny Shimamoto. Of course, Donny and the rest of our guests today actually know what they’re talking about. I just got to ask questions. Donny, you believe 2024 will be a big year for people tech. Can you explain what you mean by people tech, and why you expect to see a lot of adoption of it?

Donny Shimamoto: Sure. The big concerns that we’re hearing now is really this whole lack of staffing, which automation can help address, I think, a lot of that. We covered that in the last one. The other thing that we’re hearing a lot of right now is, I’m going to call them people problems, which is really now that we’re doing hybrid work or remote work, how do we start to onboard people better?

How do we extend our culture from our firm that we are used to doing in-office to engage these virtual or part-time or remote workers? How do I stay abreast of my teams and what’s going on? That’s where I think this people tech piece comes in. I’m purposely not calling it HR tech because when a lot of people think HR, they go, “That’s benefits and payroll.” And the people tech space is so much broader than that.

These are technologies that are helping to facilitate things like weekly check-ins. They’re doing agenda tracking for one-on-ones or even just for regular, better meetings so that you have an automated agenda. You can identify action items and all things come up. All of these things are surfaced as part of a system.

They’re using it for performance reviews and providing feedback, then even simple things which actually tie back to culture like the showing of appreciation. We’ve seen a bunch of apps come up in that space. This is, I think, the new frontier. But it’s very much something that we as accountants need to pay attention to because it’s part of the way that our own firms are having to adjust. Or even just within the finance department, we’re having to better engage our teams and ensure that everyone doesn’t leave.

It helps with retention, and then new staff coming in are looking for [organizations where] we’re all using the latest and greatest tech, and this is some of the latest and greatest tech. It’s an emerging field, but I think it’s come out of the bleeding edge. Now we’re seeing some leaders come in, and it’s more leading edge and their established practices.

Amanda Wilkie: Yeah, Donny. I think now it’s more of a necessity, like you’re saying, there’s more of an opportunity to bring people together and to build some of that capacity that everyone’s looking for. A simple example that we’re seeing is now we talked about AI tools in the last episode.

But things like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, having AI tools that will summarize meetings. It’s not a big deal when it’s like the four of us sitting here talking. But if you have tens or hundreds of people on a meeting or a webinar type of thing, and you really need to summarize or you need to track due-outs and things like that, these tools can help you do that. It automates those tasks. It can help educate and just makes it a lot easier. It doesn’t seem like, wow, this is so cumbersome and this is so much more work now that we’re in a virtual environment.

Wesley Hartman: I would also like to think that, with some of the implementation of people tech and all, that can really combat burnout. Because we all know CPAs and accountants have been under stress for years and years as the industry has shrunk essentially. But I think one of the areas where people are leaving is not just because they’re retiring, because there are not enough accountants, but just it’s burnout. It’s so much work getting done instead of a staff member burning out and deciding, you know what? Forget it, I’m just going to go and open up a food truck and drive around the city. Creating more connectivity with your staff, for lack of a better word, show that you care about them, as opposed to just being a face on a screen that you look at every once in a while. I think that is really beneficial and that sort of thing.

Shimamoto: You’re completely right, Wes. It’s been years, now, decades maybe even, that technology hasn’t been accused a lot of disintermediation. It’s separating us. We all talk about the new generations that just want to be on their phones. Well, this is one of those ways where we can use the technology for good, because it allows us to do simple things like show appreciation. “Hey, Wes, thanks for doing this.”

Some of them even let me send you a buck for it. And so people go, “Well, it’s just a dollar. What does it matter?” It’s not the dollar that matters, it’s that showing of appreciation, which then lets that staff member or team member that you’re working with feel also like they’re not alone. Like, someone noticed what I was doing, someone appreciated that.

Then as a partner-level person, for me, I actually look at all the appreciation that gets sent because we actually have it posted out to Teams. So we’re able to able to see who thanked who for what. Sometimes I’ll see stuff where I’m like, “Wow, I didn’t know they were working on that” or “That’s cool that this happened.”

It actually surfaces a lot of what, again, we kind of saw in the office, or you might have overheard in the office, but it brings it into the digital workspace, where a lot of us went through these digital workspace conversions is because of the pandemic, but we haven’t actually refined and I think that’s the other thing that people really need to look at what this people tech is. It’s not just like I’m going to do everything the way I did. I have to think about it, I have to be a lot more intentional. I have to show that appreciation. I need to engage my staff, and we need to do more of that stuff because of technology by itself is not going to do it.

Wilkie: That’s a great point, Donny, and we’re seeing more and more firms that are saying, things are “back to normal.” We’re having problems with engagement, we’re having problems with collaboration, so now we have to bring everyone back in the office. They’re saying you have to be back in two days, three days, whatever per week.

I think that is a very slippery slope because the firms that are figuring out the people tech, and they are looking at it as an opportunity to do things differently and to your point, Donny, they’re not just saying it’s technology and technology is going to fix it. They have to think about it, and they have to use it differently. Those are the firms that are truly going to evolve.

Those are the firms that people are really, really going to work for or want to work for. I think we’re running a huge risk with the firms that are saying, well, we need to be back in the office so that we can be back together. No, we need to leverage technology that brings us together no matter where we physically are.

Shimamoto: Completely agree with you. I hear too many firms say, it’s not working, we’ve got to bring everyone back. It’s like, no, you didn’t take the effort to adjust the way that you’re managing the firm and working with all of the teams.

Hartman: There’s one other thing and this is me being also flip side of like, this thing could go interesting directions. We talked about technology in the last session, we talked about AI and usage and all that. So, one thing I will caution: Again, AI is not the thing that’s going to solve all problems. If you’re sending up connections with your staff, don’t use an AI bot to make automatic replies or something like that. Actually connect with people. Because my first thought is like, well, we can automate that by automatically sending out when a project is done, read through the notes and draft something up, and then automatically send it to the staff member as kudos. I’m like, as a manager – manage.

Wilkie: Wesley, you’re absolutely right. The point should be you should be leveraging the technology that frees up your time so that you can connect with people. Because we have more and more work to do. We have more clients. This profession is built on relationships. Leverage as much technology as you can to free up your time so that you can focus on the relationships.

Hartman: Absolutely.

Drew: Donny, you mentioned that there are some companies kind of, not on the bleeding edge but leading edge in terms of people tech, I didn’t know if there are any you might want to mention that the people could look up or …?

Shimamoto: I’ll mention some that we’re using.We’re testing out 15Five. We’ve also been using Motivosity a bunch. There’s another like five or six that are probably out there, too, that I know other firms are using. If anyone’s interested, they can feel free to reach out to me because we’re finding new ones, I feel like, every other month maybe. The list is growing.

Drew: All right. We have got a lot still to cover. We will start with what has now become a tradition on the tech roundtable, which is to ask Amanda Wilkie, “Where are we with blockchain?”

Wilkie: Ooh, where are we with blockchain? Jeff, I feel like we’re getting to the point with blockchain, it’s like talking about the internet. It’s just kind of there and in the background. There are some developments, but it’s not a hot topic anymore.

I think what practitioners really need to be aware of is more of what’s happening in digital assets. You can call them cryptocurrencies, alternative assets, digital assets. Recently the SEC approved some cryptocurrency ETFs, not to be confused within NFTs. I think we’re starting to see these digital assets be more incorporated and become not just mainstream, but being mixed with more traditional assets. And I think that practitioners really need to pay attention to what’s happening there. Additionally, I would throw in regulations that they really need to start looking at the regulations in the legislation that is coming down the pipe.

Hartman: I think also just to jump on the blockchain thing. This was just an interesting use case because someone asked me about – and I know we keep going back to AI, so I apologize – but one of the things was creating fake data that can be fairly realistic using AI. And just a random thought was like, I wonder if that’s one of those areas where, in the audit process or whatnot, having blockchain, because once it’s on the chain, it’s not coming off.

Now, once the data has been verified, it goes on and you can’t change it, anything like that. So I’d be curious that, this was just musings, but like if blockchain can help solve what could become a potential problem of AI, in that they’re using it to generate fake data for fraud purposes and all that other stuff, where blockchain could potentially dam that up, I don’t know. I can’t think of a good analogy, but I think that you see where I’m going with this.

Wilkie: Wes, there is a lot of opportunity out there, actually. One of the things Boomer Consulting has been doing is we’re minting some of our content. Because if you think about trademarking and things like that, that can take a long time, and it can be pretty costly. We’re actually taking some of our content and minting it so that it does show ownership and we can track some access to it as well.

Drew: When you say minting it, can you explain that?

Wilkie: Basically we’re “putting it on the blockchain.” We’re tokenizing it, if you will.

Shimamoto: Some of what you are saying there, I think, actually ties back into some previous discussions we’ve had where it comes down to basically auditing the blockchain and making sure the right controls are in place around it. That should help. That specifically is already out there, that guidance is already out there.

Drew: Speaking of controls, we have talked in the past about the controls you need to have on your networks and systems because of the always evolving and often quite scary-to-hear-about cybersecurity threats. Where are we? Anything new on the cybersecurity front that we want to scare CPAs with, or that we want to give some advice where they can do something and actually feel a little better?

Shimamoto: I’m tired of scaring everyone, and that’s actually why I created some of the courses I did around cybersecurity to not have that scare factor.

Let’s say, instead of scaring, it’s remind – that the FTC rules, the updates to the FTC rules went into effect last year. And so, if the firms have not looked at that, and some firms go “I’m too small” because there is a [5,000-consumer] threshold, a lower threshold. But it’s a lower threshold. It’s not that it gets you out of it. There’s a lower standard that you have to follow, but it’s still like you have to have your written information security policy. You have to have basically a program where you’re minimizing or addressing some of those risks. It’s not like you totally get out of having to do everything.

Even small firms, even sole proprietors, need to make sure that they’ve looked and addressed that risk. The other thing that we’re seeing that is the trend is the renewals from the cyber insurance companies are becoming a lot more onerous. They’re requiring a lot more to be in place. Even this whole concept called EDR or MDR, which is effectively monitoring whether the cybersecurity controls that were put into place are actually operating and starting to be more preventive and actually detecting. That’s that “DR,” detection and response. Detecting and responding to cyber threats, we’re starting to see some of those actually get required. That was never required before.

It wasn’t even mentioned before in these applications. But we’re starting to see them with the renewals. So, we’re seeing increasing cost of these policy renewals and increasing requirements, especially for those with higher risks. And CPA firms, accounting firms, have higher risk if you’re dealing with all that taxpayer information.

Drew: When you talk about monitoring, what are we talking about practically, like having people doing penetration testing or setting up … ?

Shimamoto: This one, monitoring, it’s more of the other side. And actually it will bring the AI back in. A lot of these tools use AI. They look at a pattern; they’re looking for patterns basically. Did I see somebody try and ping a desktop to see if you get into it? Did they also ping the firewall? Did they also ping the tablet? Well, now I see a pattern, and so now I’m detecting a pattern rather than just a one-off thing. So a lot of our current security measures are focused on individual device or on individual endpoints. These tools help to look at the aggregate picture.

Hartman: I’ll be, if you don’t mind, Donny, I’ll take on the scary-person thing. I’ll scare the accountants out there. I’m going to talk a little bit about quantum computing, which is the new technology that is being talked about but no one’s actually understanding. So, the first thing is that you hear about data hacks and data being taken. But they’re like, “But everything is encrypted. It’s OK.” Well, bad actors, they’re holding onto that data because they know it’s only a matter of time once quantum computing reaches a point where it can break those encryptions, then they get access to all that data.

It’s a matter of not just encrypting your data so that it’s safe, but also, the cybersecurity of keeping people out as that race of bad actors versus cybersecurity people, as that keeps going neck and neck, and until the new encryption algorithms that – again, the NSA or one of those government agencies is researching to put together to implement, to be quantum-computing proof, so to speak – that, so just realize that even if your data gets compromised, in some ways, it might be only a matter of time before that data is actually accessed by the bad actors.

It’s really on not just a CPA but also the vendors to be like, hey, it’s not just “Oh, well, our data’s encrypted, so we’re safe.” No, it’s you encrypt your data and you got to keep everyone out. Because with quantum computing, I wanted to state that encryption is just a math algorithm. That’s all it is. It’s math. With quantum computing being able to do what is the Schrödinger’s cat? The cat is simultaneous. If you don’t, until you check in the box. With quantum computing, it can simultaneously do math algorithms to break those encryptions. That’s what makes it scary.

Shimamoto: Bottom line I’m getting from you, Wes, is prevent rather than worry about detection. So, be more focused on prevention.

Hartman: Absolutely. The old saying, ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right? Keep the bad actors out. Absolutely.

Drew: Amanda, Where are we on the Web 3.0?

Wilkie: Jeff, I think this time last year, I was very excited about Web 3.0. I still am.

But I feel like this time last year, when generative AI just kind of exploded, a lot of people started focusing on that. Even large companies like Apple, Meta, Google, they refocused their energy and their capital on generative AI. But there’s still some things that are happening.

Apple is actually releasing their new VR headset, I think Feb. 2. That’s the Apple Vision Pro. And I don’t know if this is like the first iPhone or the first [Apple] Watch, or if we’re going to need a couple of iterations for it to really take off. But I do think that it being a smaller, more powerful headset, opposed to the Oculus, and it being in the Apple ecosystem, I think we’re right on the edge of VR becoming more mainstream and not just for playing games and things like that. We talked last year about using VR for things like training and doing some meetings, and I think that we’re still seeing a little bit of that, but it’s definitely not taken off like I had hoped that it would, but I think we’ll still see it.

Just to recap for our listeners, Web 3.0 is that next iteration of the internet, if you will. It is much more immersive – so, immersive through like VR, but that means that we have to figure out things like an economy in that world, so that brings in crypto or digital assets. It brings in blockchain. We’re going to have to figure out privacy and identity, so that’s going to bring in identity on blockchain. It’s going to bring in cybersecurity, so, again, Web 3.0 is that next iteration of the internet.

Drew: With the immersion, would we be able to go to Wes’ house on Halloween, and he always sets up this incredible haunted-house-type walkthrough. So could we walk through that and then do a virtual roundtable from there and just have it on cybersecurity?

Wilkie: I would love that.

Drew: People could just come sit in and then Wes could rig things to come out and scare them when he talks about various threats.

Hartman: Along those lines, it’s funny. I was at a restaurant and they had a little bot wheeling around that was bringing like drinks and waters to the different tables and all that and have the correct drinks and all that stuff, so I’ll look into that. I’ll get a bot that can drive through the maze and just you guys put your Apple devices on your head and you’ll get it.

Wilkie: I’m so there. I’m there, Wes.

Drew: Wes, you mentioned that the one thing you were excited about is you got a 4K monitor, and now your eyes feel better. I thought I’d let you talk on that for a while.

Hartman: I know this is silly, because 4K has been around for a while, right? I’ll be honest, one of the reasons why I didn’t go 4K monitor was I’m like, well I got – so, spoiler – I got five monitors on my desk. My center one was like a 27-inch, but it was a 1080 regular high-definition, and I was doing coding and my eyes would get tired. I couldn’t look at as much code as I wanted to, and I was looking at different ways to maybe rearrange my monitors.

I’m like, you know what, 4K monitors, they’re pretty inexpensive now. I’m going to get one. And I got one, and I wish I got one years ago, so I guess my point is that they’ve come down in price. It’s like old tech in some ways, because 4K monitors have been around for a while, but I’m just like it’s worth it. You’re staring at screens all day and the idea is more pixels. More pixels means sharper images, such as text and numbers, which means your eyes don’t have to strain as much trying to fill in those tiny little fuzzinesses around numbers and letters.

Like I said, that’s why it’s silly, but for me, some of the ideas of old tech – like, I have a mechanical keyboard sounds like I’m from the ’80s now are the ’70s with keyboard and clicking away, but it feels satisfying to type on. And I use a vertical mouse, which is a bit more new, but just changing the orientation of my arm, so it’s just I guess the year of new peripherals for me in some ways, but it just makes my computing experience better, the thing I’m on all day.

Drew: Yeah, I don’t think it’s bad at all to actually provide some information to our listeners that doesn’t scare them and might actually offer a cheap, unexpected solution that makes their life better, so that’s always a plus. Donny, I’m assuming that you had mentioned that you guys have done some research. I’m assuming this is the Center for Accounting Transformation on what makes successful firms, and you had an interesting finding related to technology?

Shimamoto: Yeah, we’ve been working with several of the firm associations and actually, we’ve expanded our research quite broadly. One of the things we ask is how successful do you think your firm is, and we give them a scale of 1 to 10. We consider on that scale of 1 to 10, 7 or 8 is considered successful. It’s like the net promoter in a sense.

We also ask them a bunch of other statements that gave us an indication of what their firm was doing. It was very interesting, maybe not so much surprising, but it was good to get the data because we always talk about this, even on this podcast. We always talk about it like, hey, you need to use technology, we said it a bunch here, but it was good to get the data that validated it. In our research, what we did was we compared firms that considered themselves a perfect 10, so on a 1 to 10 scale, perfect 10s compared to those that were that 7 or 8. It doesn’t sound like it’s a really big gap, perfect 10 versus 7 or 8.

What we actually were able to see was that firms that were perfect 10s were actually using technology a lot more. On a scale perspective, it was about 20% more indicative that technology is actually being leveraged, so it’s quite a big difference there when we look at that to say hey, this is the No. 1 thing that is different between a perfect 10 firm and just a highly successful firm.

The No. 2 thing, which actually ties back to what we were talking about in people tech, is really a focus on people and development. We always talk about, you know, a firm’s people are our greatest assets, but people came on No. 2 to actually utilizing the technology. And then No. 3 was actually having a distinct culture in a way that we work. Again we talked about this earlier where it’s like well, technology actually helps facilitate that, so you see all these connections back to technology, but technology was that No. 1, so I hope everyone listening does take that to heart that a lot of what we’ve discussed, both in the previous episode and this one, it’s things you really need to think about. Because for these firms that are considered themselves perfect-10 successful, they’re leveraging technology a lot more than even just the successful firms.

Drew: In other words, to sum up for the audience, if you listened to what our panelists say and implement that, you will feel better about yourself and everything will be perfect. Which I think is a good way to end – of course, I’m being a little facetious – but obviously, there’s been a lot of great advice given in these two episodes. I’m going to close it with an open question that I like to ask every time. Basically, did I forget to ask something? Is there’s something I should have asked but didn’t?

Hartman: I’m just going to make one more [comment]. It wasn’t something that you didn’t ask. I’m looking at my computer right now and just one of those silly things. I switched over from Chrome to Edge because of the feature of vertical tabs, so instead of having 100 tabs that are super tiny all along the top, it looks more like a bookmark list, like, on the left side. One of those things it’s really silly, but it’s a nice feature. It makes me feel much more efficient. Yeah, so now I have like 40 tabs open as opposed to always keeping my browser clean. Silly things.

Wilkie: I feel like it’s new year, new you, Wes. You’ve got all those little things that are making a big difference in your life. I think that’s great.

Hartman: It’s funny.

Wilkie: That’s what I think it’s all about.

Hartman: Yeah, although it’s funny because part of that new me consisted of some clothing shopping, because some of my friends disagreed with my fashion sense. I embody the tech person in some ways, so they upgraded that. Very separate, sorry, from the tech podcast.

Wilkie: You should build new chatbot friends.

Hartman: I’ll build a …

Shimamoto: … friends that you can hang out with in Web 3.

Wilkie: Exactly.

Hartman: We’ll get the goggles. I’ll put a fashion show on.

Drew: Which will be very exciting on a podcast. We could do a video one just for you, Wes.

Shimamoto: I’m going to tie what Wes just commented on back to our conversation, which is. It may feel like [but] we did, we covered a lot of different things.

There’s actually a ton of additional things we didn’t cover, but, when you have like the 40 tabs or you have all these 50 things, if you try and do all 40, 50, even 10, even 20 things, it’s too much. So, final advice to listeners: Pick one or two and focus on those and get those in, and then choose another one or two and focus on those and get it in.

That will actually get you through something, rather than “I’m trying to do 50 things” or even 15 things all at once.

Wilkie: It’s all about progress. You’re never going to be done implementing new technology because there’s always something new.

Hartman: Yep, 100% agree. Technology always moves forward.

Drew: Thank you for listening to this special episode of the Journal of Accountancy podcast featuring Part 2 of the 2024 Journal of Accountancy technology roundtable. An edited transcript of the roundtable will appear also in two parts in the April and May issues of the JofA. You can access the monthly JofA flipbook by going to journalofaccountancy.com/issues, or you can go to journalofaccountancy.com and click on the “Magazine” link under the search box.