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By Julius C. Green, CPA and PICPA President 2015-2016

As PICPA president, I also have the honor of serving on AICPA Council along with nine other Pennsylvania representatives. At these meetings, we are challenged to examine big picture, macro issues. All of us must lift our heads up from the everyday challenges of servicing our clients and our companies and look around to spot the changes we need to incorporate. At AICPA Council, we are asked to be the profession’s visionaries. Here are some of the insights the Pennsylvania representatives had from the May 2016 meeting in New Orleans.

• The rapid rate of change was a continuous theme of the two-day meeting. To drive the point home, compare the revenue growth between 2002 and 2014 of companies such as Kmart (-67%) and Blockbuster (-98%) to that of companies such as Amazon (+3,179%) and Facebook, which grew from nothing to a $12 billion business during that time. We need to be attuned to trends that can help our companies and our businesses grow and be present in new markets.
• Big data is an opportunity to provide a valuable predictive tool, or it can contribute to data paralysis. Be sure to define your business imperative and understand what data is relevant. Be sure that the data is clean, applied in context, and you can learn to rethink and redo when necessary. An effective use of data can add 6 percent to 7 percent in productivity gains, so it’s an opportunity for growth.
• Cybersecurity will continue to be an issue, and practitioners big and small as well as business big and small must stay vigilant in this area. PICPA’s Council also placed a great deal of emphasis on both cybersecurity and big data, and members should be seeing more resources for both as we continue to explore developments in these important areas.
• RIVIO (Repository of Intelligent Validated Inputs and Outputs) is a joint venture between CPA.com and Confirmation.com to provide a secure clearinghouse for CPA firms, private businesses, and lenders and investors to deliver and access audit documents. Think SEC EDGAR and you will understand how RIVIO can service the key financial stakeholders in the private sector. This is an intriguing service as security and data validity must be maintained while protecting the privacy of all parties.
• Integrated reporting is a concept that has arrived for General Electric, and discussion of their 2015 annual report explored the execution of this concept. As the value of the audit function continues to be challenged, the profession has an opportunity to report on data that not only measures the traditional bottom line, but also helps companies redefine and measure a bottom line beyond financial considerations.

I encourage you to be a visionary. To push our boundaries. To challenge how things have always been done. To be active in a space that may not have existed five years ago. And to call on your PICPA leadership team to help support the profession’s visionaries through education and informed discussion.

Julius C. Green, CPA, is a partner with Baker Tilly Virchow Krause LLP in Philadelphia, and is practice leader of exempt organization tax services. Green is PICPA’s 2015-2016 PICPA president, and will serve on AICPA Council from 2015 to 2018.