The majority of the networks of the participating firms were ordered economically and politically to wait for the client networks to communicate their need for compliance accounting to them. Actors within the networks of the firms were, therefore, ordered by location and agencies to expect, then translate, incoming client materials. Some managers and directors, however, told of client networks where the new technologies, Xero and MYOB, had been enrolled into different relationships strategised to translate client network accounting materials into compliant accounts, a trend certain directors from the participating firms, reflecting their networks, understood would continue.
If true, then the dependence on translation of compliance by firms for their cash flow and mode of ordering was in jeopardy. To minimise this risk, certain managers and directors commenced
negotiations with clients and prospective clients to determine their new financial needs resulting from their changed strategy. However, to satisfy changed client financial needs requires different
translations resulting in changes to the ordering of the networks and, therefore, to the mechanics of power within them. On the other hand, to the majority of the participating firms, “Compliance, we will always rely on compliance. It’s not in the best interests of business to do their own compliance.” On behalf of the networks of the firm, this manager from M was asserting their durability and
obduracy.
Yet, even within the firms that stated they relied on compliance, there were murmurings of change. The manager at W who wanted to increase the client base came into conflict with the entrenched demand to meet chargeable hours:
If the staff are given the direction to go and see your clients and get more work from your clients, but the staff say they can’t do that because they have a budget to meet, I have targets to meet, so I can’t spend an additional half an hour or hour with the
client because then I will have write-offs, so at the moment the two worlds are colliding a little bit.
Here the manager was politely expressing her frustrations. She wanted and was negotiating to achieve transitioning the firm to take advantage of the new demands of the clients. However, the directors firmly continued to maintain the traditional mode of ordering with its emphasis on
chargeable hours, resulting in the manager being unable to enrol actors into the relationship changes she wanted.
There was a similar issue for the manager at N:
I know that in compliance it is all about the speed to get the job done but if you have to talk to the client about their accounts, I mean really tell the client about how their business is making out as per the accounts, then this competes with the need for speed. If the client is important, then you need to cut staff some slack.
For both these actors the durability of the networks was made known, since where actors within the networks initiated negotiations to modify translations through the reordering of actors within the networks and the scope of their agencies, these attempts at enrolment were strongly resisted by other actors within the networks.
These firms certainly had no intention of giving up compliance work completely; rather, they wanted to discover other complementary revenue streams. This desire was evidenced by the manager at C:
We would still be; we do a lot of stuff; in terms of revenue split, we would probably do 85 percent compliance currently … I would say with what we are doing, and if it goes well, we are really launching education as a core service that we are looking to get into. I could see that going over the next 3 years to more of a 50-50 split.
The directors had ambitious plans to move their fee base over 3 years to an equal split between compliance work and satisfying client demand for Xero, QuickBooks and MYOB training and related business education and advice, a change that would, ultimately, “provide a greater fee base than compliance, for sure.” From the network perspective, the number of actors within the relationships that translated client materials into compliance would be downsized. A new network of relationships would be negotiated and actors enrolled, to translate client network requirements for education, financial advice, training and financial reviews.
These specific financial needs of clients the firms would provide in exchange for agreed fees that would increase the economic value of both entities. I refer to these firms as market firms because of their focus on going to and developing relationships with businesses in the market. Not that they were abandoning compliance; they were simply moving their focus to take advantage of the new and emerging revenue streams, as the manager at C explained.
We are educating our clients as we are going along; we are offering them support and that they are succeeding. Rather than the traditional compliance where 6 months after compliance date we tell them the news and sometimes they like it and sometimes they don’t so that’s what we are trying to do, to meet with our clients frequently.
The director at HT put this need for more regular communication with clients more bluntly:
They do not have a working relationship with the client. They are God. The God comes and sees them once a year and grants the graces of spending some time with someone who is going to charge them $400 an hour 300 or whatever the figure is, right, and when they walk out, the words they heard they do not understand; what they talked about they do not understand and they walk out shaking their head and saying ‘I don’t know what that was about but it’s over for another year’. That’s your typical model of a number of accountants.
Thus, the answer for this director lay in relationship building:
I think most others focus on building the revenue rather than focusing on the relationship with the client. I think they are two different things. Building the relationship gains the revenue. I think that if you go out to gain the revenue you destroy the relationship.
All these actors on behalf of their networks want to retain the traditional mode of ordering of
calculation as well as adding more services from their client networks through proactive relationships with them. These additional services had the potential to generate tensions within the network as the traditional mechanics of calculations are based on minimum timing of the agencies informing the translation, while the alternative ordering for financial and management advice, training and mentoring services is based on actual time spent or, contracted time. These are different models of calculation, hence the comment from N: “If the client is important then you need to cut staff some slack.”
As the director at N explained, “We get the client to upload their accounts to us monthly so we can give them feedback on their progress within 2 weeks. At the moment, it’s closer to 1 to memory.” The cloud-based accounting programmes made it easy for the clients to upload their accounts to the cloud and for the accountants to review and analyse them there. Essentially, the networks of the firm were disciplining the networks of their clients by influencing the ordering of their financial networks to build the revenue base of both. If the client networks were not prepared to change their ordering, then a few of the firms including C were prepared to terminate that client, “maybe look to go elsewhere”, an unthinkable act to the majority of the networks because their ordering privileged the client, as evidenced at WDN:
Person comes in and wants to see their client manager and they are not there; they might be having a bad day and that could lose us our client. I know that’s the extreme but it is one of the things we pride ourselves on is that of availability.
Thus, the networks of the market firms were negotiating changes to the ordering of relationships between actors to achieve different translations in parallel with the existing modes of ordering for compliance.
These firms, by expanding their relationships with clients and negotiating to provide different financial services while retaining compliance caused tensions within the networks because the new ordering to achieve the required financial services translations challenged both the calculations used by the traditional mode of ordering and the network truths. Consequently, actors who constructed their understanding of their place in the network relationships through the mechanics of power based on compliance calculations resisted enrolment into these new relationships. Were these actors involved in these negotiations for change teleworking actors or, did these teleworking actors remain part of the traditional mode of ordering?
The market firms and telework
Teleworkers located within the relationships of the networks of the market firms had not moved their location or changed their agencies; nothing had changed. All remained located within the
calculations-based relationships that translated client materials into compliance accounts for the client networks. A mode of ordering these market firms had negotiated with certain teleworker actors that allowed them to achieve, without timesheets, their calculations of translation, to be located within the networks of their homes and to be remunerated by different calculations. These actors, therefore, were 100 percent productive and contributed no other costs to the network.
Though common, this was not the only mode of ordering used by market firms. At N, for example, a combination of job completion dates, revenue generation and timesheets were used, as the director there explains:
It’s taken a couple of years to get this right but we are finding that things are working quite well now. With each job, we map out how long it will take to determine the costs to the client. This will depend obviously on the services the client wants from us but it’s a good way to delight your client. Dear client, here’s how much it’s going to cost, here’s when it will be finished, here’s when you will meet with us and this is the person who is doing your books and this is your manager.
This firm was different. Its accounting and productivity networks were so ordered that any
accounting actor could work from home. All actors used timesheets, although the directors did not, and all bar two accounting actors were paid a salary. Their calculations were based on budgeted hours and completion dates. The latter was a motivator, as the teleworking actor understood the client had the meeting date diarised well in advance. Additionally, these teleworkers, having been involved
in negotiating budgeted hours for the job, were motivated to achieve these with no incriminating write-offs. To the network, however, motivation is an effect understood and communicated by the actors. The network calculations with modifications for client meeting times or revenue generation continued as part of the traditional ordering of the productivity network. Timesheets, emails and telephone calls, all charting the progress of the client job against budgeted hours or meeting times or revenue generated, continued as normal. The traditional mode of ordering remained unchanged.
HT maintained the traditional mode of ordering, but did not wait for clients to come to them. This firm reached out by forming relationships with its clients and prospective clients:
So, we are talking about annual accounts, ACC, administration, Company’s Office, GST returns etc. I sit down with D (teleworker), at this point and I say this is what I think this is worth, what do you think? She will get out some paper and do some sums and we roughly get to the same area and if we both get to the same area that is what we put to the client. We talk through it, we say this is the value we are giving you. The client will sign off on that. The thing with that is that we both take on risk. So, if both D and I both price the job too low then we both take risks together.
At HT, the hours the client job would take were negotiated between the teleworker, D and the director who also told:
My job is to play devil’s advocate. If I think D has allowed too many hours, I will challenge her calculations. In the end, we have to be fair to everyone. So, if both D and I both price the job too low then we both take risks together.’
Although there appears to be equality of location and, therefore, agencies between the actors where each can influence the other equally, this was not the case, as the director’s comment:“My job is to play devil’s advocate” evidences that the location and, therefore, agencies of the director have priority. To the networks of this firm, the required calculations of translation had to be achieved.
These directors also noted that paying teleworkers a proportion of the client fee motivated them to complete client jobs quickly so they could move on to other jobs. This attitude contrasts with the traditional firms’ attitude where the managers all commented that “they (teleworkers) can take their time, our productivity is not affected.” Note the emphasis on revenue earning by teleworkers as the productivity calculation by the directors at HT, C and N, while to the traditional directors, the productivity calculation was in the form of chargeable hours. This revenue-based calculation also removes the need for observation because the evidence is in the bank. At HT, discussions with actor accountants were had only if “the invoiced amounts and bank balances related to that teleworker are materially different from the negotiated budget”. As a result, “We may on reconciliation find that Z was sick that month or took leave unexpectedly”.
Overall, teleworkers in the market firms were, like all other accounting actors, still ordered by the accounting networks as a cost and a revenue stream that collectively contributed to the viability to the firm. I suggest, however, that the productivity networks, though appearing to dispense with certain
actor’s agency of observation, have actually moved this supervision to such devices as the mobile
phone and video conferencing, as the next chapter will explain.
If the market firms still retained their modes of ordering for compliance, did this ordering still
privilege the office? According to the director at HT: “I don’t have a problem where staff work[s], as long as the job gets done and the client is happy.” Additionally, from the director at N, “If they want to work from home, fine. It’s all about trust and confidence in your staff.” This director also noted that if staff wanted to work odd hours that was also fine as long as the work got done on time. The director at HT had a similar view:
It would not make any difference to my feelings towards it either way. It is the issue of the skills and attributes of the individual person and whatever rings the bells right is what you are going to do.
This firm maintained its calculations by enrolling teleworking actors in changes to the productivity networks that allowed them to work from home providing they accepted a changed calculation of remuneration. When during the day or week and in what network the teleworking actors carried out client translation was immaterial to the networks of this firm, provided the translations were
completed on time and within revenue budgets. N however, remained different by allowing anyone to telework and paying all actors on salary.
Consequently, among the market firms, just as among the traditional firms, there was no purity of ordering for exchange. Although the market firms were concerned to be proactive and generate relations with clients and prospective clients, negotiations to achieve this outcome were in the early stages. The market firms, therefore, like the traditional firms, continued to rely on compliance work as their main source of revenue. Teleworkers, therefore, continued to be located within the
accounting and productivity networks of these firms assisting in the achievement of the calculations of translation for compliance.