Of the 6,000 SMP respondents to the survey, more than 28% indicate that their company intends to allocate more than 10% of revenue to investments in technology within the next year. These most commonly include in-house IT staff development and the adoption and use of cloud technologies.
“As the first-choice strategic adviser to their clients, firms are recognizing the importance of adopting technology to provide insights and expertise and strengthen their role as trusted business partners,” IFAC CEO Fayez Choudhury said. “It is well-known that the majority of SMPs’ revenue is generated by traditional compliance services, but there has been an increase and diversification in the provision of advisory and consulting services that are real-time, forward-looking and based on specialized industry or sector knowledge, which is a trend we expect to continue in the future.”
Practices continue to employ technology for data analytics because so many transactions are automated today. Most of these offerings (86%) are in an advisory or consulting capacity, and more than half of the practices (51%) are anticipating fee revenue growth as a result.
December 2018
