I have spent the better part of the last 15 years working for several accounting firms as their IT/Info Security Director. It's refreshing to see someone else validate what a many of us on the inside have been saying for years. This industry typically treats IT as an overhead, you don't generate billable hours so were not investing in it. I once had a discussion with a firm owner about their lack of disaster recover and was told that if the disaster was that bad they would take the business loss insurance, close the firm and walk away. While I get this is the extreme it's does represent the resistance of firms to invest in IT. In a way it's funny as most firms would find it impossible to bill any time without Technology but they still look at technology as just another overhead. The trends discussed above will not change for the better until firms start looking at IT as a valued part of the services they provide and invest in it accordingly.
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I have spent the better part of the last 15 years working for several accounting firms as their IT/Info Security Director. It's refreshing to see someone else validate what a many of us on the inside have been saying for years. This industry typically treats IT as an overhead, you don't generate billable hours so were not investing in it. I once had a discussion with a firm owner about their lack of disaster recover and was told that if the disaster was that bad they would take the business loss insurance, close the firm and walk away. While I get this is the extreme it's does represent the resistance of firms to invest in IT. In a way it's funny as most firms would find it impossible to bill any time without Technology but they still look at technology as just another overhead. The trends discussed above will not change for the better until firms start looking at IT as a valued part of the services they provide and invest in it accordingly.