The evolution and benefits of strategic accounting

I founded AcctTwo to help midsize companies and nonprofits with their finance and accounting technology and services needs. While I was at PwC, I saw the benefits of outsourcing non-core functions like accounting, payroll, HR, and other back-office departments for large corporations.  I knew that these strategic accounting services could benefit smaller organizations as well. 

As this new business venture called AcctTwo began to take shape, I knew that I wanted to provide these managed accounting services on one technology platform so that our employees could become specialists in one system and could specialize by function, eliminating problems that can arise when an accounting team is made up of a handful of jacks of all trades, masters of none.

We evaluated a variety of accounting and ERP systems and chose Sage Intacct as the core technology foundation upon which our services would be built.

Since then we’ve sold and implemented Sage Intacct alongside a number of other amazing technologies like Bill.com, Nexonia, and FloQast to name only a few, and we’ve managed the strategic accounting and finance operations for software companies, energy companies, churches, and nonprofits. This has been the most rewarding endeavor of my professional career.

Reflecting on 10 years

Ten years later, it feels appropriate to reflect on what we’ve learned, where we’ve come as an organization, and most importantly what we feel that our customers and all organizations deserve from their technology and service providers. This exercise in reflection started off as handwritten notes, then became a slide deck, and then grew into something larger – a position or mission statement and then an eBook.

I feel that it’s important to share what we’ve learned so that CEOs and CFOs can take advantage of these lessons and realize a better future for their employees, colleagues, and shareholders – a future where everything that can be automated is, where an ever-expanding technology landscape is made manageable, and where deep insights into their organizations are readily available so that the right decisions can be made at the right time.

What we’ve learned over the past ten years is that technology is disrupting everything, including the finance function. We’ve seen enterprise software move from industry-centric, on-premises software to horizontal cloud suites to best-in-breed solutions with open APIs for integrations. This trend has accelerated as the COVID-19 pandemic has made digital transformation for businesses go from optional to urgent. But as these best-in-breed products multiply, many still lack vertical focus, they are overwhelming to research and evaluate, and even when they are properly integrated, they often lack “last mile” functionality and can’t yet provide the KPIs and insights CFOs need to be strategic. 

The modern finance function requires a "whole product" solution

The modern finance function requires a “whole product” solution – curated, stress-tested, and optimized by a solution provider with deep industry experience that can provide the last mile functionality and the insights that CFOs need to transform finance and accounting into a strategic business asset and to use data to challenge the status quo. This whole product solution should be available as-a-service, whether that be software subscriptions, outsourced finance operations, or even technology implementations, consulting, and development.

I’d love for you to go a bit deeper into these insights by reading our eBook, I see it as the culmination of everything we’ve learned from supporting our incredible customers for a decade (most of whom are still with us) and a guide for finance and accounting leaders at all organizations to establish what they should expect from their service providers.