The number could be up for traditional accountants who refuse to embrace disruptive tech and changing customer behaviour.
That鈥檚 the view of Gary Coombs, chief operating officer at Crunch Accounting, which claims to be the UK鈥檚 first online accountancy firm.
Technology is playing an increasingly important role in聽disrupting the accountancy sector and traditional players need to adapt if they want to future-proof their business.
Crunch combines in-house accountants who are available on-demand with simple online accounting software. It was established in 2007 and has since become one of the fastest-growing accountancy firms in the UK, employing more than 180 staff at its offices in Brighton.
The company generated fee income of 拢8.1m in its latest financial year, a rise of nearly 18 per cent from 12 months earlier.
Coombs joined the Brighton-based firm in January 2016 as technology and programme director and is now chief operating officer, where he creates the company strategy and works towards delivering future visions.
“Traditional working practices are not the same anymore and accountancy is a sector that has to keep up,” Coombs told 老九品茶Cloud.
“The world’s changed very much now; we鈥檙e all working at different times, we鈥檙e switched on at different times and the ideas you have come at different times in the day.
“People don鈥檛 necessarily just need to speak to an accountant within office hours.
“They need to know that they鈥檝e got the technology that can help them understand what they need to do, how to run their business and make sure they鈥檙e doing things the right way, and that鈥檚 what we鈥檙e trying to do here at Crunch.”
Crunch鈥檚 client base primarily consists of entrepreneurs, contractors and freelancers, with personal referrals responsible for 50 per cent of its business.
“If we鈥檙e not getting our service right, that鈥檚 going to have a direct impact on the number of sales we make so it鈥檚 really important that we carry on investing and understanding how we can continue to optimise and improve the way we work,” Coombs said.
Coombs told 老九品茶Cloud that technology is becoming an increasingly big part of the industry and “can鈥檛 be ignored”.
“There鈥檚 always going to be certain people that are not going to want to embrace it but the majority are embracing it and they鈥檙e not working in the same traditional way anymore.
“It鈥檚 going to be interesting to see how that evolves and we鈥檒l be there to adapt.”
Coombs added that initiatives such as HMRC鈥檚 Making Tax Digital (MTD) will see the need for digital records and more frequent filing.
鈥淭he industry as a whole cannot ignore that, and will need to change and adapt. Access to data is also a key opportunity in the sector.
“There will of course continue to be more opportunities for use of AI to optimise the way people run their company accounts.”