Recent difficulties experienced by big accounting companies point to a fundamental underlying problem: staff productivity and efficiency. Companies such as KPMG, EY, Deloitte, and Osome have all faced operational challenges, which have led to significant restructuring and emphasize the need for a strategic turn toward internal efficiency.
For example, KPMG recently revealed a significant reorganization plan wherein its worldwide national divisions will be consolidated from over 120 to around 30–40 by 2026. The Wall Street Journal (March 2025) claims this change seeks to simplify processes, maximize resource management, and raise audit quality and staff retention. The action of KPMG emphasizes a crucial lesson: organizational complexity may result in inefficiency, reducing worker productivity.
EY’s background highlights these internal productivity issues even more. Internal conflicts among partners over the company’s valuation and pay policies caused its “Project Everest,” a very ambitious plan to separate the auditing and consulting departments, to fall apart. The breakdown, which was reported in Financial News in 2023, showed that significant structural changes meant to boost productivity and growth must first focus on getting everyone on the same page within the company.
Similarly, The Times (2024) reports Deloitte’s recent reduction in its UK advising branch by around 250 posts shows how much inefficiencies and productivity gaps may affect organizational stability. Reflecting the company’s awareness of the precise relationship between worker productivity and profitability, the decrease was part of a more significant performance management effort to address underperformance and minimize operating expenses.
The new digital accounting company Osome analyzes this problem more thoroughly. Employee reviews on sites like Glassdoor (2024) show staff worries regarding internal communication, wage satisfaction, and workload. Osome emphasizes the critical need for internal operational excellence even if it offers a contemporary, tech-driven approach to accounting services. Critics of staff management and productivity challenge her.
These situations across accounting companies point to a consistent trend: prioritizing internal efficiency and staff productivity above large expenditures on outside marketing and promotion. Marketing plans surely help draw in new customers and maintain brand awareness; yet, real long-term success mostly rests on a company’s internal qualities, most especially the staff’s efficacy, efficiency, and satisfaction.
Companies must know that maintaining production requires more than simply task management. It requires investing in appropriate technology that improves accuracy and efficiency and lessens repetitious work. Software that automates tasks, artificial intelligence, and streamlined digital processes make administrative tasks much more straightforward. This frees staff to focus on essential customer interactions and complex advisory duties.
Furthermore, salary and workload management directly influence worker retention. Inadequate pay, poor work-life balance, or internal inefficiencies cause high turnover rates that cost a lot of money, including recruiting, training, and worse service quality during transitional times. Companies such as PwC, with high partner turnover rates in the UK (Financial Times, 2024), have realized the need to rebalance remuneration and expectations to support stability and improve output.
Accounting businesses should concentrate more on reducing internal expenses and improving efficiency than distributing too much money to outside marketers. Consolidating duplicate services or departments, combining cross-regional operations for improved resource sharing, and funding staff training and technology tools that increase output might be part of effective cost management plans. Technology tools that help reduce costs include: Strategically, we should view cost management as improving efficiency to enhance staff performance, not merely as a means of cutting expenses.
For instance, cloud-based accounting tools and automation technologies let accounting personnel operate more effectively by cutting manual chores, lowering mistakes, and freeing time for advising duties. Companies funding continuous professional development initiatives guarantee that their staff members stay competitive, educated, and qualified to use new technologies properly. The continuous investments in digital transformation by EY and Deloitte show that these projects result in real productivity gains as staff members now concentrate on higher-value analytical work instead of low-value daily chores.
Ultimately, the experiences of KPMG, EY, Deloitte, and Osome, taken together, highlight the critical point—that staff productivity and internal operational excellence determine whether accounting is successful. Emphasizing technology adoption, focused professional development, competitive pay systems, and effective workflows, companies should deliberately invest in their internal capabilities. This kind of internal concentration not only helps to manage expenses properly but also stimulates long-term profitability, service quality, and competitive advantage; hence, it lessens the vulnerability to external market fluctuations. Firms can remain resilient in an ever-evolving industry landscape by fostering a continuous improvement and adaptability culture. This eliminates the need for costly and often less successful marketing initiatives.