Flexibility is key to keep 130-year-old accountancy firm thriving
FOR someone who did not even have her eye on partnership when she started out as a Chiene & Tait trainee in 1994, Carol Flockhart has certainly made her mark on the accountancy firm since taking over as managing partner two years ago.
In addition to increasing the number of people holding the role of director at the firm, Ms Flockhart has led its expansion into Inverness and Glasgow and overseen the launch of a corporate finance division. She also has firm ideas about how the business should modernise in order to remain relevant.
Yet, while she put herself forward for the top management position at the 130-year-old Edinburgh firm because she thought she “had the skills to make a difference and was the right person for the role”, leading the firm was not a challenge Ms Flockhart had been coveting.
“Chiene & Tait was my first position out of Edinburgh University and I went into accountancy because all those in my business studies and accountancy class were doing it so I thought I would go and do that too,” she recalls.
“If someone had said way back then that I would still be here now I’d have said ‘not at all’, but I’ve experienced a lot of change over the years moving into different roles.
“I’ve worked my way through the ranks – from manager to senior manager then director and partner – and as I was going through I was always thinking ‘I’m keen to get to the next level’.
“Some people start their career and think ‘I want to be partner’, but that was never how I wanted to do it. It was always about the next step.
“I could see the next level and wanted to go on that journey.”
That she is the first female to have led Chiene & Tait is in many ways irrelevant to Ms Flockhart, who says she never felt nor was made to feel that a woman could not hold the top role at the firm.
However, she does recognise that accountancy remains a male-dominated profession – just 30 per cent of Chiene & Tait’s 10-strong partnership is female – that could greatly benefit from a higher degree of gender diversity, not least because of the client opportunities it would open up.
“I’ve been involved with Investing Women, a business angel group that helps female-led businesses, from the outset,” she says.
“Only about 10% of business angels are female, but if we can get more it will lead to more female-led businesses.
“About one in five at the moment is run by females, which is not a great statistic, but one will feed the other.
“We act for some of the businesses [that are supported by Investing Women] and some of the investors and we provide advice to Investing Women the organisation as well.”
Given that many of the women seeking funding from Investing Women are in start-up mode, the clients it has brought to Chiene & Tait all come from an entrepreneurial background, which in turn has influenced the kind of work the firm is targeting more generally.
“A growth area is entrepreneurialtype businesses and that’s something we have developed in the last two to three years,” Ms Flockhart says.
“We’re acting for the sort of businesses that are either new or at that fast-growth stage.
“They need tax advice and advice on how they are structured and they also want to get the right management information about how to run their business and take it to the next level.”
Acting for such businesses was part of the reason behind the firm’s expansion into Inverness, which came just a few months after Ms Flockhart took up the managing partner role.
“In Inverness there’s a lot of growth and development on the entrepreneurial side - there are a lot of exciting things happening there,” she said.
Chiene & Tait chose to launch an office of its own in Inverness rather than try to take over a local outfit, hiring EY tax manager Jackie Fraser to lead the push. She has seen been joined by her EY colleague Shona Fraser, with the two directors taking joint responsibility for running the operation.
“They are from Inverness and know the area really well - they’re established and have a great reputation,” Ms Flockhart says.
Having seen the benefits that an on-the-ground presence can bring in the quest to attract new clients, the firm last year followed its Inverness launch with the opening of a base in Glasgow. Paul Mason, who had joined Chiene & Tait to launch its corporate finance practice the year before, is leading the push into the west of the country.
“We opened in Glasgow about a year ago to help service clients in the west of Scotland and to win new work here,” Ms Flockhart says.
“That’s tied to our decision to
establish a corporate finance division. [Paul] works in Glasgow so it was a natural fit to open an office there.”
Like most professional services firms, Chiene & Tait is wedded to the mantra that everything it does, it does for its clients. Yet with the sector going through rapid changes, in large part driven by advances in technology, clients are no longer as ‘sticky’ as they were in the past.
As Ms Flockhart says: “You can’t just think ‘we’ve had that client for the last 20 years so they’re going to stay with us’.”
To ensure they continues to get work through the door, whether from new or existing clients, firms like Chiene & Tait have to find a balance between offering the cost benefits technology can bring with the personal touch professional services firms have traditionally been known for. At the same time, firms have to find new ways of developing their own staff in the face of technology either replacing or, at the very least redefining, their roles.
“There have been a lot of changes due to technology,” says Ms Flockhart, who recalls that when she started her career there were just two computers to be shared by the 12 trainees that made up her intake.
“Artificial intelligence is driving efficiencies because it shows a lot of what we do can be automated.
“If it’s a more efficient way of working it’s good for us and it’s a good thing for the clients.
“Everyone is thinking about getting value for money, but you have to be on your toes and delivering a top-quality service.
“Some providers are going towards delivering a product but it’s more remote and the human interaction isn’t quite the same – they provide the compliance that a business might require but without the relationship building.
“Our view is that it’s all about the interaction.”
With different ways of working meaning the traditional route from graduation to partnership is no longer strictly adhered to, Chiene & Tait is doing its bit to encourage a more diverse intake to the profession by taking on school-leaver apprentices as well as graduate trainees in the last few years.
“We have four in different areas and they are so enthusiastic and keen to learn,” Ms Flockhart says.
Yet despite these changes starting to shake up the way accountancy is practised, it remains a conservative profession and Ms Flockhart notes that for many people this means that “partnership is still a trophy”.
Whether the apprentices and trainees coming into the profession now will ever get to lift that trophy remains moot, though, with Ms Flockhart noting that the pace and direction of change could be such that firms like Chiene & Tait will have to completely revolutionise their business models in order to compete.
“When we talk about long-term career goals people still say they want to be a partner but I don’t think I can say that will be the model forever because, with the way things change in business, who knows what will happen?” Ms Flockhart says. “We have to be open and flexible – that might not be the forever-more model. You can’t be in the dark ages any more – you have to keep moving things forward.”