I’m an accountant, get me out of here: Why it’s time for change
New business models could offer greater choice for professionals and customers alike.
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Founding partner, Dow Schofield Watts
A former partner at KPMG, James co-founded Dow Schofield Watts in 2002. It is now one of the UK’s leading business advisory firms, with over 80 professionals in seven locations, and operates a unique licensing model enabling professionals to build their own business under its brand....
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"The landscape may soon look very different, with the creation of larger, specialist firms at one end and smaller start-ups at the other."
How is that a different landscape?
Sounds like the status quo to me (without the fun of the 12-bar boogie variety).
The names on the door may change, but everything behind them stays (mostly) the same.
Effectively, as we have now, the inbetweeners find it tricky to work out where they ought to sit to eat lunch and as soon as they get to a critical mass someone will no doubt wander along and make them an offer they just cannot refuse.
And if you are a discerning consumer being not enormous but needing in depth sound technical advice, where do you now go, well we have been clients of KPMG, Grant Thornton and flirted with what was Baker Tilly, and frankly I have found myself far more comfortable with the likes of Johnston Carmichael (effectively what Scott Oswald were in the Scottish marketplace before they were acquired in one of the consolidation phases that sweep the marketplace) than these larger beasts.
Of course I ought to have a loyalty to Baker Tilly/RSM as that is where I effectively started in the mid 80s , but it is a never changing cycle, the year I joined Hodgson Impey was by chance the year Hodgson Harris incorporated Chalmers Impey and no doubt some of the new emergent firms will get folded into the arms of others before too many years pass.
(Effectively big dogs eat little dogs)
A much better exposition than mine, which suffered from my unaccustomed attempt at brevity!
But your final line says it all ... especially if you add "and thereby leave room for new little dogs".
It's the clients for whom I feel sorry - as soon as they need anything more than the bare minimum of 'standard' services, but aren't equipped with pockets deep enough to talk to the big boys'n'girls.
Of course this applies not just to accountancy services, but to legal and medical and ...
Talking to the big dogs is a waste of time unless you are big enough to get their undivided attention, you just get shunted to some tax manager/audit manager and if you remain long enough then in fairly short order they look different because they are different.
This is the same even with smaller firms, in my second employment I prepare to ETB our books and pass these to external accountants, a local CA firm, at best these days the same person does final accounts etc for at most two years, then they are either elevated within the firm or have departed for elsewhere. Where is the continuity of contact?
I have no experienced medical but legal can be a nightmare, you can end up with 3-4 different teams within the firm each dealing with their own niche part of a single transaction (and the fees to go with it).
In my father's day they were a five partner/20 staff law firm, my father did conveyancing, trusts, CTT planning, leases, some commercial law etc, a broad spread with the firm having a court partner and other broad niches that the five partners covered, they were not the biggest in Edinburgh but were a decent size second tier New Town firm that had existed from the 1830s. Then ,as he decided to retire in the 1980s, the consolidation of law firms really took off, firms swallowed firms, Pairman Miller merged with Drummond & Co, before you knew it Alex Morrison (where my mum had apprenticed) was part of Maclay Murray (think late 1990s/early 00s) more recently Maclay Murray, the largest Scottish firm became part of Dentons , the world's largest firm (we used them a few years back, not cheap but at least only two teams needed for a £250k transaction)
As you say, the death/takeover of some leaves space at the bottom, new firms emerge, if you wait long enough some of them will get consumed and the cycle will continue but the middle keeps becoming hollowed out.
"I have no experienced medical but legal can be a nightmare, you can end up with 3-4 different teams within the firm each dealing with their own niche part .."
Lucky you to have not experienced it, but I can assure you the medics are no better than the lawyers (even where the individual is supremely competent).
I was recently attended upon by a leading Osteoporosis consultant and, whilst looking at various scans, I asked about some white 'splodges' in areas he wasn't discussing. "Oh", he casually responded, "that's osteoarthritis ... I only deal with osteoporosis"!
[When I replied with ever so slight sarcasm that it was nice to be talking to 'God', he positively preened under the presumed accolade!]
Specialism- my father used to tease my godfather (they were at university together) that whilst my "Uncle Don" apparently had read history all he could ever discuss was The Thirty Years War, and then only five years of it.