Episode Summary
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.

About the guests

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.

Connect with Rebekah Gardner

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.

Connect with Jason Keever

Key takeaways
- The tax industry has significantly evolved to keep up with digitalization and changing client needs and expectations.

- Technologies like AI can be leveraged to improve work efficiency and enhance the client experience. 

- It's important to break down silos between professional services and product teams through improved trust, communication, and aligned incentives.

- Companies must balance innovation through new product development while maintaining important client relationships.

- Accumulating and analyzing vast amounts of industry data can provide a competitive advantage through solutions like streamlining document processing.

Quotes
"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, we’re 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

Recommended Resource

Books

Good to Great by Jim Collins 

Dare to Lead by Brene Brown

Scaling People by Claire Hughes Johnson

Amp It Up by Frank Slootman