The booming late1990s have brought bellwether change to an industry that in the past only conjured up images of little men in green visors, hunched over bulky ledgers performing tedious number-crunching feats. Yes, the accountant of today plays a much greater role in the financial paths that many companies plot for themselves.
    Thanks in large part to the affordability of high-speed computers, accounting firms find themselves able to spend more quality time with their clients, discussing market strategy rather than last year’s deductibles. "It’s because of the technology," says Bruce Blakley, managing partner at Coopers & Lybrand, one of the city's more robust accounting firms.
    No doubt with a collective sigh of relief, Blakley says audits, the bane of most humankind albeit the butter on most accountants' bread, are completed more quickly now than five years ago. "That's because of our computerized systems and procedures, carrying things forward from prior years," the Bowling Green graduate explains. "It’s not a paper and manual worksheet process anymore."
    As a result, Blakley says hiring has somewhat "flattened out across the board" in the category of junior staffers — those whose jobs in the old days of adding machines and No. 2 pencils pretty much revolved around "recalculating things in great detail."
    Adds Blakley: "So frankly, a lot of what we’ve lost is some of the junior time as a percentage of the annual audit and/or tax cycles. ... I think the percentage of junior staff out of the total staff has decreased a little bit at most firms as a rule."
    But fear not. No software program will send accountants the way of the dodo bird and T. Rex — i.e., into extinction. "I don’t think that’s a reasonable possibility, given regulatory oversight requirements," Blakley says. Not with everyone from the Securities and Exchange Commission to banks requiring regular company audits. "And the IRS," adds Blakley ever so diplomatically, "well, Congress hasn't gotten really simple with the Tax Code yet."
    Blakley doesn’t like to speculate, but he's quite optimistic about the local economy. "I don’t see very many issues that are negative — other than what I hear from my clients, which is primarily a lack of (employees) with professional technical skills, engineers and the like. But I absolutely think we’re going to see more start-ups. It’s still good territory for that to happen."
    Another competitive Holy Grail for accounting firm, the IPO, will continue to cause a scramble for business, although Blakley suggests that such public stock offerings are beginning to "lighten up" at least in the biotech field. "I think we’ve seen that nationwide," he says.
    An avid Chicago Bulls fan who once played a round of golf with Michael Jordan, Blakley says accountants too have moved out of the shadows and into the corporate board rooms. "I think accountants as a whole are better regarded as general business advisers now." Now, if all those start-up clients could just "be like Mike."