Rebekah Gardner and Jason Keever discuss how the tax industry has evolved significantly in recent years to keep up with digitalization and changing client needs. They explore how Ryan is leveraging technologies like artificial intelligence to improve efficiency and deliver exceptional client value. The speakers highlight the importance of breaking down silos between professional services and product teams. They emphasize building trust, communication, and incentives to encourage collaboration. Gardner and Keever also address balancing innovation through new product development while maintaining important client relationships. Keever provides an example of how AI could streamline processing large volumes of variable tax documents.
Rebekah Gardner
Rebekah is a relationship-focused global sales leader with over 20 years of experience as a federal tax partner. She has a proven track record across multiple industries, and from small businesses to Fortune-ranked companies. Her expertise spans private equity, strategic partnerships, and software channels, all underscored by a commitment to collaboration, accountability, and achieving results.
Jason Keever
Jason serves as the President of Ryan’s tax.com™ division. With over 15 years of experience in driving revenue for private-equity-backed, high-growth SaaS companies, he leads the executive team in expanding technology services for existing clients and venturing into new markets. Jason’s previous leadership roles include Chief Revenue Officer, President, Chief Sales Officer, and Vice President of Sales across various industries.
“Now one of the prominent pieces of the conversation with Clients is inevitably, what technology are you using to get this done? How are we certain that you are doing this in the most efficient way?”
-Rebekah Gardner
“We’re uniquely positioned, were uniquely focused on corporate tax, and we have the breadth of data that’s going to help empower that type of movement in the market.”
-Jason Keever
The tax industry has evolved tremendously over the past 20+ years to keep up with constant changes in tax law and regulations. In more recent years, clients have demanded that tax work be done faster and more efficiently through the use of technologies like AI, analytics tools, and software platforms.
Companies in the tax industry need to figure out how to meet these demands from clients to leverage technologies that allow tax work to be done more quickly, so professionals have more time to focus on saving clients money.
Digitalization and changing client expectations around technology use have been major drivers of evolution in the industry. Firms must be at the forefront of these technologies to remain competitive and meet evolving needs.
According to Rebecca Gardner, Ryan has always had a culture of thinking outside the box and delivering innovative value to clients beyond just compliance work. She notes it’s a natural progression for them to now bring their tax software platform, Tax.com, into the mix while continuing to deliver on their brand promise to clients.
Jason Keever adds that clients are bringing their consumer-like expectations for digital experiences to work as well. So meeting clients where they are with innovative technology solutions helps maintain important relationships.
They emphasize the importance of the client experience above all. Developing new products and solutions through Tax.com has to enhance, not detract from, how clients experience Ryan and its professional services. Communication and ensuring both teams are incentivized to work together collaboratively is key to balancing innovation with client relationships.
According to Jason Keever:
Rebecca Gardner and Jason Keever discussed a few key ways they deal with potential silos between teams like professional services and products:
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