Legacy model:
-Keep clients at arms length
-Low frequency engagement
-Biz owner is gatekeeper to CPA
-Only engage at the top of the value ladder
-Hourly billing to reinforce the barrier to engage
-Services *encourage* frequent touch points
-Robust support team to engage at all levels of value ladder
-Daily engagement
-Deep team integration below owner level
-Fixed billing encourages collaboration with limits
If a new model firm solves 10 other pain points for a small business owner, rightly or wrongly, you can expect them to transition their tax work as well.
COVID forced many biz owners to manage distributed teams for the first time. Expect this resistance to decrease.
Nobody likes managing in-house acntnts.
This is also why *tax firms*, not QB live, not ScaleFactor, not offshoretomated startup of the wk, will shepherd in the new model.
As long as clients are made up of teams of humans, they will engage teams of humans.