CPE Courses for Non-CPE Needing Folks; It Helps Big-time but Only with the Right Tools

Are CPE resources only good for the CPAs? Most are probably not – In fact, CPE courses and free live webinars tick all the boxes that an ideal training program manual for CFO & Controller organization would have; specialist instructors, tested, reviewed, and updated content, and the coverage of both soft and hard skills. Bingo!

The only challenge left is to find a CPE Provider that offers a multitude of trainings for your team’s varying learning needs and that has the capabilities to link your team’s actual training needs with the CPE resources. This is where Illumeo excels!

If you have been a practicing CPA for more than a decade, you know the struggles of earning CPE back in the day. You needed 40 hours of CPE per year and getting it done was a genuine hustle – the internet, as we know it today, wasn’t fashioned in its entirety and the CPE resources were pretty rare. Conferences, seminars, and in-person trainings were the ways to earn CPE, and professionals needing to score these all-important credits would literally go ‘Sherlock’ to find these events. It came free at times but more than often would cost the likes of money that was inconvenient for both individuals and companies. Previously, Companies did not see any real return from CPE spend and we haven’t seen any major shifts yet.

Fast forward and now we probably have more CPE providers than fast food chains. The NASBA registry of CPE providers lists more than 2,000 providers each competing in a similar domain. There are generic CPE providers and there are ones offering specialized content for specific functions like Tax, Audit, Finance, and others. This made it super easy for accountants to score CPE credits. How hard it can be to find a CPE provider online, see the CPE courses and webinars on offer, look at how often the courses are updated and buy a CPE subscription. A job easily done. 

Why Is CPE Good for Non CPAs?

You may think with all these umpteen CPE choices, choosing CPE for your accounting and audit teams is a walk in the park; well, it still isn’t. Accounting and Audit teams today are expected to develop themselves on more professional frontiers than they were 20 or even 10 years before. They need to get better at their primary job, develop soft skills, and learn other skills that augment their jobs like advanced Excel or other related applications. On top of all this, Learning and Development folks run parallel non-CPE training programs. All this exerts double the pressure on accounting teams who now have to log into company LMS and complete 20 hours of mandatory company trainings on top of their CPE regime. Has CPE lost its effectiveness as a potent tool for professional development? Or CPE providers have failed to link up accounting CPE with how companies and enterprises need their employees trained?

In 2019, NASBA issued guidelines around CPE fields of study for CPAs. Centered around both technical and non-technical CPE, CPAs are now directed to enroll and complete trainings covering functional, ethical, and soft skill subjects. On paper, this reads perfectly – just like a complete L&D recipe for the whole accounting team but then why CPE programs are not widely implemented across companies and enterprises? NASBA’s CPE guidelines perfectly fit for both CPE and Non-CPE needing members of the team for their professional development needs. CPE content is frequently updated, covers every aspect of complex accounting and audit functions, and even provides soft skill resources. 

Salespeople working in the CPE industry usually point to one major challenge – it’s always the CPE needing a manager/supervisor who is interested in a team CPE subscription. Learning & Development folks and non-CPE needing managers/supervisors show little or no interest in continuing education for specialist accounting and audit roles. It makes more sense than ever for accounting leaders to sit with L&D folks and emphasize on implementation of training programs that help their teams at large to develop into functional experts. Company LMS or mega brands like Linkedin Learning, Coursera, Udemy, and others don’t offer specialized content purposely developed for accounting and audit staff. A course on leadership won’t necessarily help your accounting teams with balancing the books; a course on balance sheet management would definitely do. 

Why Choose Illumeo?

Illumeo is probably the only CPE Provider that was purposefully developed around team training needs. It was built for accountants by accountants with decades of industry experience and a keen understanding of what CPE trainings can offer. All our CPE resources and built-in features like reporting, user management, and CPE selector were conceptualized and developed knowing specific training needs of the whole accounting and finance organizations.

We serve over 75,000 professionals working in 1,200+ enterprises and NFPs. This includes both CPE and Non-CPE needing individuals. Recently, we asked 100 audit and technical accounting managers to share their thoughts of our platform. Here are some of the key takeaways;

• 68% of our respondents used both Company LMS and Illumeo CPE platforms in parallel.
• 93% of the participating audit and technical accounting managers opined that Illumeo was sufficient for their team’s entire training and CPE requirements. Respondents managed both CPE and Non-CPE needing professionals.
• 92% of respondents confirmed that specialty trainings with Illumeo helped them reduce training costs and effort compared to the implementation of a company-wide LMS. 
• 90% of participants agreed that CPE courses were purposefully developed, offered in-depth knowledge, contained updated regulatory information, discussed best industry practices, and quoted many real-life examples.
• 89% of managers were happy with reporting and user management features we offer with Illumeo Enterprise CPE Subscription.
• 75% of managers made use of our Assessments/CPE Selector Tool; a purpose-built feature that actually helps team members and managers know their professional development needs and offers a filtered selection of courses for them to cover their CPE and skill development needs. 

We consistently did better than any enterprise LMS for specialty audit and accounting trainings while sharing real-time progress tracking with managers and supervisors to take initiatives that boost the learning and development among their teams and improve productivity. Most importantly, all this is at a fraction of the cost and effort spent on the implementation of a learning system. 

So, you have the CPE and training resources for your accounting and audit teams, have the tools to track, monitor and recommend training paths, have the ability to manage users, place your in-house trainings on the platform, and most importantly save a lot on time, effort and money. With Illumeo, organizations like Google, Cisco, Oracle, Maersk, Splunk, Air Products, and 000’s more help their CPE and non-CPE needing teams learn new skills and do better at their work to improve overall organizational productivity. You are just a click away to experience how we can help!