Looking back at AICPA & CIMA ENGAGE ’24

ShareFile has been to AICPA & CIMA ENGAGE two years in a row now, and it has been incredible to see so many people from the accounting profession come together in Las Vegas to learn about and share best practices and experience the latest technologies.

This year, we were excited to show off the latest enhancements to ShareFile and talk about how those updates can help address firms’ biggest challenges around workflows, document management, client experience, security, and more.

Our ENGAGE experience was fantastic, and we heard really valuable insights and feedback from booth visitors who got a first look at the new ShareFile features and functionality. Watch the video below to see ShareFile highlights from Las Vegas, and keep reading for a recap of our ENGAGE experience.

Getting started early with ShareFile

We kicked off ENGAGE bright and early at 7 a.m. PDT on the conference’s first day at our Solution Session. I hosted a panel discussion with Jody Padar, who’s known as The Radical CPA, and ShareFile customer Nayo Carter-Gray EA, CEO of 1st Step Accounting. We had a great conversation about how firms can improve productivity and efficiency by transforming workflows.

Two of the biggest challenges firms face today are managing clients and managing firm capacity. Streamlining common processes — client onboarding, document list collection, and more — can really help address these challenges and, in turn, help firms deliver the experiences clients expect.

A key to success, though, is to remember that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. All clients are different. All firms’ processes are different, as are their challenges. Firms must look closely at their priorities, understand what their staff spends the most time on every day, where there are bottlenecks, what they hear from clients, and where there are breakdowns in communication. A deliberate approach to transforming workflows will help firms level up their client experience.

Diving deep into ShareFile

The week before ENGAGE, we released new features for ShareFile to help users elevate their accounting workflows. We were thrilled by the turnout at our Tech Demo on Wednesday at ENGAGE and excited to share some of these innovations to a packed session.

Our experts Sheeya Gem, Sr. Manager, Software Engineering, and Libby Rupert, Sr. Manager of Inside Sales, covered ShareFile capabilities, including:

• ShareFile solutions: Our first accounting solution — the U.S. Individual Income Tax Return (beta) — streamlines client document management for federal individual tax processes, from onboarding clients to compiling documents for the return.
• AI-powered secure share recommender: AI automations recommend optimal share settings to help you keep sensitive data secure when sharing documents, helping you streamline workflows, making security simpler, and ensuring compliance.
• Information requests: Improve processes around gathering intake data, like during client onboarding, in a digitized, easy-to-use form.

For more on the latest ShareFile innovations, check out our What’s New blog post. And if you attended ENGAGE, look out for recordings of our Solution Session and Tech Demo, as well as the other conference sessions on the AICPA Conferences page.

5 things we learned at AICPA & CIMA ENGAGE

There were so many valuable CPE sessions at ENGAGE, not to mention the keynotes, the networking, and all the accounting experts in one place. The learning opportunities seemed endless. Here are a few takeaways our team had from ENGAGE:

• During our Solution Session, we asked attendees about their onboarding process and about 70 percent said it’s still manual for their organization and 20 percent don’t have a standard process at all. To get that kind of response at such a large industry trade show tells us there’s plenty of opportunity for firms to use technology to improve how they onboard clients and to get more efficient.
• We talked to a lot of our incredible customers during our time in Las Vegas. Some of them told us they weren’t using ShareFile to its fullest, but they didn’t know where to start to get the most out of the technology. One place to begin is our website, where you’ll find resources like video tutorials, live and recorded webinars, and the ShareFile Help Center.
• What strategies are firms taking toward technology? Everyone has different needs, of course, but we heard some of the same things over and over. Firms are looking to adopt SaaS solutions wherever possible. And while they know they need tech, they’re looking to comprehensive technologies that will help them reduce the size of their tech stack. Firms want ways to integrate and automate processes and apps into their current technology, and they’re also very interested in leveraging emerging technologies like AI.
• And speaking of AI, there were SO many sessions on artificial intelligence and generative AI. The interest was high, but firms are struggling to understand where to start to realize value from the technology.
• Don’t let the struggle to identify the potential for AI in your organization keep you away from the technology. Embrace it and get educated on it. AI isn’t here to replace you or your job. Think of it, instead, as a helping hand you can leverage to improve your workflows and make your processes more efficient and secure. For example, we delivered our first AI-powered feature — the secure share recommender — as part of our most recent round of updates to ShareFile.

Stay up to date with ShareFile

A big thank you to everyone who attended our sessions and stopped by the booth to see us at ENGAGE. We have a lot more in the works to help you transform your workflows and deliver a great experience for your clients. We can’t wait to share these innovations with you.

Learn more about the latest ShareFile features and get your questions answered during our What’s New with ShareFile webinar on June 25 at 12 p.m. EDT. Register today!