Some key takeaways from Frontline Accounting's first EU conference with DFK International at their Emerging Leaders Conference in Lisbon Portugal.
Whilst Frontline have been attending and sponsoring accounting events in the UK, Australia and APAC for many years, we have never done one in mainland Europe.
DFK International are an accounting network with some of the UK and in fact some of the biggest independent firms from around the world as part of their members.
In fact, we were told at the conference that only due to a merger between Marcum and CBIZ (US firms) that combined to make the world’s biggest 6th largest accounting firm. Although the new super firm would not carry on their DFK membership and will form their own closed group just like the big 4 do globally.
This was our first event with DFK, but we will also be sponsoring their global conference in Edinburgh in July 2025, so we are very much looking forward to seeing many of the DFK team again in my home country of Scotland.
Lisbon, if you have never been, is absolutely stunning, I highly recommend it. Not too busy, so friendly, relaxed, easy to navigate and even though it rained a bit, we still had plenty of sunshine too and with temperatures between 17 and 20 in February, it was a damn site warmer than Glasgow!
There were 190 delegates from member firms all over the world, I had the great pleasure of speaking to firms from The UK, Ireland, USA, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Iceland, Sweden, Italy, UAE, Serbia and a few more but the reason I listed so many nations here is that (rather shamefully) I only speak English.
I come from a multi-cultural family and live in a multi-cultural household, yet still I only have my basic French from school. Don’t get me wrong I travel a lot, and I can understand a few basic terms and phrases in Arabic, Tagalog (Filipino), Spanish and of course the high school French that I can still remember, but in no way could I hold a conversation in any of those languages.
Speaking to so many Europeans with perfect conversational English brought into a stark light how far behind we are in the UK. So, with so many AI tools available now, I am determined at the age of 41 to finally add another language to a proficient level, itsit's too late for a new yearsyear's resolution so I’m just gonna have to "JFDI" and invest in doing it properly. Watch this space for updates!
Key takeaways from those conversations:
India is fine for outsourcing, but when the English-speaking nations want to build a dedicated offshore team, The Philippines and South Africa are the destinations of choice.
South Africa offers around 1/3 cost savings against UK salaries whilst The Philippines offers around 50% the quality of the staff are similar in terms of education level.
Asian culture, work ethic and general respect and dedication puts them at the top of the list for dedicated workforce location.
Aligned time zones matter! A number of firms chose South Africa generally because of the English proficiency and the time zone, knowing that Frontline UK staff work the “UK Shift” was enlightening for many saying having staff work side by side, even if its not for the whole day makes a huge difference.
Whilst everyone wants to make use of AI, no one is confident enough to use any AI accounting specific tools just yet with Co-Pilot and Chat GPT being the preferred general AI tools in use for initial research and nothing client specific as yet.
One firm was so impressed with their Filipino staff they have paid for visas and migrated 20 staff from Manila to Dublin!
Many conversations have started, and we look forward to having many more with DFK members moving forward.
We now have an extremely busy schedule of events and client visits from Feb 26th (2020 Innovation conference) all the way to April 5th and we hope to see you at one of the upcoming events!
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