Finance Has Moved On—Have You?

AI, automation, global markets shifting — finance isn’t what it used to be. But here’s the problem: too many businesses are still running their back office like it’s 2015. Outdated systems. Clunky processes. A mindset that belongs in a museum.

Matt Lescault, CEO of TydeCo™ and co-host of The Unofficial Sage Intacct Podcast, has been watching the industry evolve in real-time. And here’s his take—businesses that adapt are pulling ahead. The ones that don’t? Well, let’s just say spreadsheets won’t save them.

In this interview, Matt gets into why finance leaders need to stop looking in the rearview mirror, what’s coming next, and how to stay ahead in a game that won’t pause for anyone.

Matt: Well, there’s nothing earth-shattering here. I mean, we’ve talked about how AI is impacting our organization, our industry, and our profession as a whole, and that’s been talked about ad nauseam by everybody under the sun who wants to discuss it. I think there’s a lot of fear-mongering happening around what AI will do—how it’s going to take jobs away and negatively impact the profession—but actually, I’m pretty excited about where it’s going to take us as a profession.

Historically, we’ve discussed the “retirement revolution,” where 75% of CPAs are expected to retire. I know those data points are U.S.-specific, but we’re seeing this globally. This isn’t just a U.S. reality. We’re seeing a mass exodus from an aging-out perspective, a retirement perspective, in most regions currently. The fact of the matter is that the estimate was that AI would impact about 50% of tasks within the accounting profession—tasks such as tax preparation, audits, outsourcing, and internal accounting department work. But there’s still a gap, and I’ve talked about that gap.

Now let’s focus on what we don’t always talk about. As I mentioned on one of the podcasts I did, AI is an assistant. AI isn’t going to be able to handle nuanced judgment—things that our human brains take into account, like how someone will feel, how they’ll react, how they’ll care, or how they’ll make decisions. These are internal, and understanding them requires a degree of knowledge about the person, the situation, and the nuance involved.

From my perspective, our internal utilization of ChatGPT, for example, has elevated my ability to lead in a truly impactful way. So what I see is a continued adoption of AI within the accounting profession—one that enables a more advisory-level finance team that can actually accomplish more with less. I know that’s an old term with a bit of a negative connotation, but in this case, it’s about achieving more value and doing less tactical work. I think that’s exciting. Those aren’t dirty words.

Matt: Well, I’m going to argue something here. I actually don’t think that firms are incorporating AI into their practices the way they need to. I think what’s happening is, they’re subscribing to a Ramp, or a BILL, or Sage Intacct—which, right now, is the leading ERP when it comes to AI—and they’re saying, “Well, we’re buying these products, so we’re incorporating AI into our firm.” And I call a bit of bull on that, because that’s just incorporating products that have AI. That’s not actually incorporating AI into the firm.

One of the ambitions I have for our organization is to create an AI and data office—the concept of an office that deploys AI as a support mechanism across the entire organization. This means not just supporting operations teams, but also client services teams—elevating us beyond the time-consuming tasks that used to bog us down and enabling us to step up our game. By doing so, we can focus more on impactful initiatives that drive growth and scalability.

When you ask about misconceptions, I think the biggest misconception is that there’s a really clear, well-thought-out process of how AI is incorporated into firms right now. Yes, the big firms—the top 50—are doing it. They’re investing billions and doing it every day. But for your average firm, 500 people and below, I don’t think they’re really doing it yet. Now, I’m sure there are exceptions, and somebody will hear this and say, “That’s not me,” and that’s fine. I can’t make a blanket statement for every firm. But on average, I think that’s the reality.

Matt: So it’s not just AI. It’s the business landscape today. I’ve said this a million times: we’re becoming a global economy in a very real way, where even small businesses now compete in a global market. And as a result, competition is becoming more and more fierce.

One of my team members on our leadership team recently sent me a video about two different organizations that did exactly the same thing. They had the same vendors, the same processes, and yet one outperformed the other significantly. The video didn’t tell us why, but usually this comes down to how we approach our operating processes and systems—whether or not we’re willing to invest in the next way of doing things.

My message is this: businesses that stick to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality are at the greatest risk of becoming irrelevant. They’re slowly losing market share, and they’re gradually no longer the preferred vendor for their customers. On the other hand, those that succeed are the ones that focus on how they deploy their software. It’s not just what you use, but how you use it. For instance, how I deploy Hubspot or Intacct may be completely different from someone else’s approach—and that’s where competitive advantage and differentiation come from.

If you keep relying on legacy software and manual processes, you end up spending more on tasks that don’t actually contribute to growth, scalability, or customer value. But if you invest in tools that let you refocus your time on value-driven initiatives, it’s a no-brainer.

Matt: If we’re honest with ourselves, the reason we hold on to compliance work and tactical work is because it’s busy work. It’s easier to deploy, it takes time, and you end up with higher billings. It’s just natural to us—we’ve been doing it forever. But that’s the big challenge. It’s about managing this change and approaching change management with the mindset of shifting from tactical work to advisory-level work.

The tough part of that change management is taking your current consultants, staff members, or internal teams, and getting them to think about deploying differently. Change can be scary. I’ve experienced it multiple times in my career, where I thought, “Oh, I have to do something completely different. Can I do it? Am I capable?” And I’ve had to put myself in uncomfortable positions—admitting that I didn’t know everything—learning through my own trials and tribulations.

What it boils down to is this: the services we’re looking to offer at the end of the day have to answer one question: “What’s going to make this client continue to come back to me, continue to use my services, and continue to invest in me as a team member?” And by “me,” I mean the company as a whole.

How do clients view us? Are we just a one-off solution for a single project, or are we a long-term partner in their success? If I can get my staff, teammates, and colleagues to buy into that concept—thinking about how I would react to that vendor if I were a consumer of those services—then that changes our entire approach as an organization. It’s not an easy transformation. It’s not something you just do once and move on. It’s something you have to consistently drive and maintain, because it’s constantly changing.

Matt: Well, I think the key is to understand what compliance really means. Compliance means that we’re following a set of prescribed rules. If you want to put it that way, okay, I don’t care what kind of compliance—whether it’s tax compliance, IT standard compliance, or governmental compliance—what it comes down to is a set of rules that a business has to follow. Most of those rules relate to things like data retention, reporting, and providing documentation.

So, the answer for me is simple. All those things are repeatable. Let’s think about it this way: compliance is repeatable. The laws may change, but they don’t change drastically. If I have to report payroll wages and be compliant, I’m going to do it pretty much the same way every time. So what is compliance? It’s about setting up a system within your organization that automatically follows the compliance regulations.

That means all you’re really doing—and I don’t like saying this—is checking the boxes. I think most regulators would say, “We don’t want them just checking the boxes,” but when you reconcile through it, understand you have the reports, ensure data integrity, and have all the right components in place, you’re naturally going to be compliant. At that point, compliance stops being a “bad word” or something you do at a specific time of year. Instead, it becomes something you do consistently across all your business operations. It’s no longer an isolated activity—it’s part of the natural ebb and flow of the organization.

Matt: I don’t have a great answer for this. One thing I would say is most employees across the board believe they will get more money by switching companies rather than by getting promoted within their current company. And when you have a shortage—meaning that supply doesn’t meet demand—the ease of switching to get more money creates higher turnover, which also drives up costs.

I think we need to figure out the right balance as organizations. There was a time when compensation wasn’t even in the top three most important factors employees considered when choosing a job. Now it’s consistently one of the top three—sometimes it’s number one, sometimes number two, but it’s always a major consideration. This shift has economic implications. Consider it: South Africa has dealt with high inflation for a long time, and the U.S. is just now facing similar challenges. Every day it costs more to live, so people need to earn more.

So I started by saying I don’t have a great answer, and that’s because I don’t think anyone has a perfect solution to this issue. I’ll give you an example. Private equity (PE) firms are buying up accounting practices left and right. How are they retaining their talent? By offering really high compensation packages and benefits. Smaller firms can’t compete with those earnings, so they need a different approach.

For me, the key is finding a balance—leveraging highly skilled, technically advanced talent and paying them a targeted rate, even if it means accepting a lower margin. Then we can train junior consultants who generate higher margins. This blended approach helps us manage compensation while still attracting and retaining talent.

Additionally, I think culture plays a critical role. It’s a tough challenge, but we’re reaching a point where the relentless focus on fast-paced targets—driven in part by private equity—may lead to more people prioritizing work-life balance. When that happens, firms that can offer a balanced, supportive environment will attract top talent who simply want a better quality of life. And that’s where I think we need to focus.

Matt: I can’t speak for the entire M&A market because I think it’s a very niche approach. I work with different private equity firms. Some focus on blue-collar businesses like HVAC, plumbing, or electrical, and I think there’s a different strategy there. Others focus on the accounting world, where the strategy also varies. Across the board, there’s a lot of M&A activity on the larger private equity side. From my experience, which involves smaller-scale M&A, the key is finding organizations with niche capabilities that may not be on the radar of larger firms.

One key factor is complementary services. My biggest recommendation is to ensure you’re not venturing too far outside your existing service offerings. The ideal acquisition mirrors what you’re already doing—maybe a different product, but still aligned with your core business. You also need to pay close attention to culture fit. If the culture isn’t aligned, you risk losing a critical part of your acquisition: the staff. Without retaining that talent, you lose half the value of the acquisition. Clients are one part of the equation; staff is the other. Some overlook how vital the staff is to maintaining the client base because clients place great value on those individual relationships.

I also think culture is a major component. Within our industry, we’ve been discussing the retirement of accountants and the challenges that creates. You have many small firms—let’s say five to fifteen people—that lack a succession plan. For us as an organization, that presents an opportunity. We can give these firms a runway to exit while providing reassurance that their clients and staff will be well taken care of. If you find an owner who values their staff as much as the money they’ll earn from the sale, you’ve likely found a good culture fit. That’s one of the most important aspects I consider in these situations.

I also believe this is an excellent time to be involved in M&A. We have some very specific focuses we’re planning to explore in the next 18 months.

Matt: What does it look like? It looks like information is—how do I put this? We’ve always had operating systems, non-financial systems that hold information for a long time. The problem is that, traditionally, we had to copy that information from one place to another, and every transfer introduced data degradation. If someone left the firm, we’d have to retrain someone else, and they’d handle the data slightly differently. This created a complexity issue: what’s the truth within all that data?

A fully automated data solution, or data transfer, means that most of your information comes directly from the peripheral operating systems and flows automatically into your financial and reporting systems. I say “financial reporting” because sometimes your financial system can handle all the reporting you need. Other times, you need additional FP&A tools, data manipulation tools, Power BI, Domo—whatever you use. What you don’t want is to manually handle those processes.

Right now, for example, we’re working on integrating HubSpot, which many people see as just a marketing tool. But it’s more than that. We use it for marketing, sales, client management, and service desk functions. Once it’s fully set up, it will contain almost all the information from the pre-engagement lifecycle to the service component. HubSpot can then feed that data into every other system, including customer names, contact information, project details, and department assignments. All the pieces of the puzzle automatically flow together, giving us clear, actionable data.

With that kind of system, we can easily see if we’re hitting sales targets, profitability goals, or even internal benchmarks like staff turnover rates. If all your systems—sales, marketing, HR, payroll, project management—are flowing into one core platform, you get data integrity and on-demand information. That’s what a truly connected, real-time financial system looks like. If I had to describe it simply, I’d say it looks like the Matrix.

Matt: So I don’t know that CFOs historically haven’t been in that growth conversation. But what I do know is that CFOs historically haven’t always had all the information necessary to be as effective in that role. And that’s the key. I think we all know that a CFO is a strategist. A CFO supports the CEO. The CFO is supposed to understand the numbers in a storytelling mentality. What I mean by that is, the numbers should talk to that CFO. That’s the way they should think: this is telling me a story. It gives me a background, gives me a starting point, a middle point, and endpoint, but also points me in the direction of where we’re going, and should also be able to indicate levers that can be pulled based on historical information and where we’re going, and help guide those decision-making.

Now, if we have a CFO that has a system in which it’s really manual, the amount of information that they have to support the CEO is a lot less. And so where the CFO can really change the concept of being that growth partner is to—they already do value the information, but to value the information in a different way. It’s not just financial statistical information. It’s key indicators and understanding those in such a way that the CEO doesn’t need to be versed in financials. They need to be versed in business concepts, and the CFO can tell that story in a way that the CEO can quickly act on that information.

Again, I don’t think I’m saying anything that any CFO wouldn’t say themselves. But I think it’s how those CFOs—and I’ll put myself in that realm—elevate ourselves to be even more dedicated to that, even more focused on how we can support that strategy, that growth. And we’re not just a finance arm, but we are, as you said, a strategic growth advisor to the organization.

Matt: I’m going to first say I disagree with the question. I think change is a challenge for any industry. I don’t think it’s just finance. So that’s—that’s my one quick statement. I’m just—I’m being a little bit cheeky in there. But look. Change is—change is difficult. It is so much easier to stay hunkered down and doing what you’ve known how to do, especially if you’ve been doing it for a long time.

But what I like to talk to people about is how change can be positive. How do we—how do we change the narrative? We change the narrative about change. How do we look at change in a way that supports our own personal goals? Think about motivation. Iff every reason I give somebody is centered around how it’s going to better impact the organization, what does that have to do with that individual?

But if we can rethink how it impacts the individual and why they should care—and it’s not like, “Oh, because your job’s going to be easier,” that they’re going to look that way. But how it can make them better at what they do. People naturally strive to develop professionally. Try to talk around the development of a profession, you know, from a professional perspective, and so forth. So, you know, for me, I don’t know if I always do a great job with it, but I really try to find a way to make change seem less scary.

Matt: So I said this at a talk recently. ERP—Intacct is the ERP. ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. And the old concept of ERP was it’s one system that does all. It was a CRM. It was the manufacturing. It was the inventory. It was the—it was the operations. It was the—it was everything. And I think that that is—I think that is for the past. That is a—that is an old school legacy mentality.

I think what a great ERP is, is one that can be extended through third-party applications. Because I’d much rather use a product that just does one thing, and one thing better than anybody else does, and integrate that to my hub. Think about it like a wheel. We got hub and spokes. Intacct is your hub. Third-party solutions are your spokes, and they’re all connected. And that’s what I think the new ERP should be thought about. The new ERP should be—we want the strongest core system that has the easiest function of integration, meaning an open API, a large marketplace, and the ability to leverage multiple capabilities of development within the product. And one that continues to focus on its core.

I take Intacct—you asked about Intacct. They launched AP Bill automation. That was all AI and OCR, but created an inbox within their system and created, you know, this really heavy capability of approval routing and things of that nature. But then they moved right—right into PO automation. You know, before we get a bill, we use POs—purchase orders—to do it. And now there’s AI and automation and workflow around that. There was always workflow, but it was the—it was the automation portion.

What I see more and more from the development of Intacct is this deep investment in the core function of what finance needs and a continuation of development of partnership within their ISV ecosystem.

Matt: Let’s think about a bold prediction. By 2030, I believe we’ll see the end of the traditional project-based approach in accounting, where a firm does a single set of work and then moves on. Instead, the firms that thrive will focus on providing highly specialized support services, establishing themselves as subject matter experts within the specific systems their clients rely on. These firms won’t just be external vendors. They’ll become integral parts of their clients’ internal operations, collaborating closely and embedding themselves in the clients’ departments.

Rather than performing routine accounting tasks, these firms will evolve into finance technology solution providers. They’ll leverage their expertise and technological capabilities to add significant value, driving efficiency, and enabling better decision-making. This shift—from traditional tasks to strategic solutions—will define the new landscape of accounting and finance in the years to come.