The 2024 Innovative Practitioner Award winners have been selected.

Jody Grunden is the Co-Founder and CEO of Summit CPA Group, the leading provider of Virtual CFO Services in North America. His entire career has been devoted to innovating the accounting industry, starting with the company's mission statement: “changing the way people think about accounting.”

As an innovative practitioner, Grunden led Summit CPA Group in pioneering Virtual CFO services, introduced the concept of subscription-based billing, and transitioned his firm in 2013 from a traditional brick-and-mortar firm to a digitally-focused fully distributed model with 50+ employees. Determined to raise the bar in the accounting industry, Grunden is now focusing his efforts on teaching other CPA Firms how to sell and provide successful Virtual CFO services through a digital course, The Virtual CFO Playbook, as well as free online webinars and a mentorship program.

Grunden is a member of the AICPA, the Forbes Finance Council, and the Indiana CPA Society, including holding a seat on INCPA’s Innovation Council. He is also the author of Building the Virtual CFO Firm in the Cloud.

Javier Goldin begun as one of the early adapters of technology as an intrinsic component of the services provided by the firm Goldin Group CPAs. As technology continued to develop, these developments allowed the firm to become increasingly sophisticated in its approach to providing outsourced CFO/Controller services by customizing software component to fit the needs of the clients. Each client's "tech stack" was tailored based on the specific needs of the Organization, their culture, and their budget.

Fast forward 5 years and the firm's model took yet another leap. As the client composition and demand for services grew, the firm noticed that the nature of outsourcing itself was being redefined. Larger clients desired to maintain an internal finance team while deriving the benefits of outsourced CFO services. Namely tech savviness and best practices expertise.

This innovation challenged his firm to implement an internal and external financial team approach. His firm came up with a model that yields the optimal combination of an internal vs external finance team that takes into account factors such as internal competence, volume of activity, level and style of internal leadership, and technology needs, among others. Considering each of these components, the firm was then able to suggest the optimal combination of the jobs and duties required by the external team (his firm) and internal team (the client). This innovation is propelling Javier's firm into an outsourced model that extends beyond technology and CPA skills, and incorporates elements of HR know-how, and by extension, a placement and coaching consultant.

Kelly is passionate about technology and is always looking for ways to implement it to improve accounting and financial management. That was the idea behind the creation of BDODrive, a combination of technology and resources that streamlines core accounting functions and offers mobile, real-time access to information. As the driving force behind BDODrive, Kelly is a true revolutionary, pushing the boundaries of firm operations and client services. The platform relies on technologies like Microsoft, Intuit and BILL to offer customizable dashboards, greater insight into business performance, continuous collaboration and access to world-class BDO advisers. Its many convenient features include online payments, auto bank feeds and reconciliation, secure document management and customized reporting. BDODrive helps companies run more effectively and make better strategic decisions, all while standardizing processes and enhancing efficiencies.

With more than 25 years of experience in accounting, Kelly oversees a team of professionals who provide clients with the customized solutions and infrastructure to achieve operational success. She began her career at PwC LLP as an audit manager, then expanded her accounting skills by working in the corporate accounting division of a global financial services firm and provided advisory services for private wealth clients. Kelly, a CPA in the commonwealth of Virginia, is a member of the AICPA and the Virginia Society of Certified Public Accountants.

CPA firms solve clients' problems, and the best avenues to explain how we do that is through our professionals' experiences and summaries of our services. As Postlethwaite & Netterville grew, our experience and service offerings also grew, and it became more of a challenge to ensure everything was up to date and accurate. Additionally, younger professionals are conditioned to manage their own information online and expect information at their fingertips.

Rachael and Caitlin had an innovative idea for a tool that could manage our professional bios and sales materials, ensuring that materials are accurate, consistent and available 24/7. They led the development of Pounce, which is an easy-to-use, web-based system designed not only for our firm, but also for all professional services firms. With Pounce, everyone in the organization can quickly access marketing collateral to assist in business development efforts, such as professional résumé, industry experience summaries and service capability summaries.

Pounce keeps it all in easy reach with one's own custom-designed data searches and availability anytime, anywhere via a desktop or mobile device. Since this tool launched internally, we reduced administrative time getting similar materials in our professionals' hands, which means our marketing department has more time to focus on strategic initiatives. Additionally, in only a month's time since the software launched externally, demand from other firms has been impressive. We believe that not only has this tool been of significant benefit to our firm, but also that it will help solve similar challenges in many other firms.

Sparking innovation through a marketing effort, Technology Partner Natalie Hoffmann led her firm to launch its first app. The mobile app streamlines Honkamp Krueger's Client Patronage Program, in which the firm rewards employees for intentionally shopping at clients — staff can easily discover firm clients, review their products and services, map client locations, get driving directions, submit spending amounts and win fun prizes. Marketing is able to run spending reports by industry, client and employee, to enhance business development and client retention efforts.

Results: Receipt submission increased by 43%, employee participation increased by 47%, spending dollars increased by 50%, and manual hours spent by the marketing department decreased by 14 hours per month. The firm's program received national recognition from Accounting Today (Jan. 2015) and INSIDE Public Accounting (Nov. 2014). The firm also won the Association for Accounting Marketing's Maverick Marketing Award. None of this would have been possible without Natalie.