The Back Room adds strategic firepower in new advisor Bruce A. Phillips

Bruce A. Phillips brings his 40-plus years as a CPA, business owner, and strategic advisor to accelerate the growth of The Back Room, a global Business Process Outsourcing Company. Bruce holds a BBA from The College of William & Mary in Virginia, started his professional career with EY in Atlanta, Georgia, and founded HPC, a US-based technology forward CPA firm that combined with Aprio (a top 25 US-based CPA firm) in 2018.

The Back Room's CEO, Wayne Findlay, welcomed Bruce aboard, saying, "We are delighted to have Bruce join our leadership team. His strategic acumen, commercial nous, and track record in Accounting and business leadership will be invaluable in delivering our ambitions for The Back Room."

The Back Room has followed a phenomenal growth trajectory since its inception in 2019. It has seen 100% growth in clients year on year and expanded to serve North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia from its original founding country New Zealand where it represents 40% of the market. In 2023 The Back Room expanded its operations to Colombia from their headquarters in the Philippines to offer even more time zone coverage, especially for their United States customer base. 

With a long history in building and growing successful accounting firms, Both Phillips and Findlay were early cloud adopters and had a shared interest in improving the Accounting business model and operations. After meeting at an event in Australia in 2014, Bruce visited Wayne in his hometown of Wanaka, New Zealand.  It was an easy meeting of like minds in 2017 at Xerocon that planted the seed for this latest collaboration. 

In the intervening years, Phillips started to utilize resources in the Philippines through his US based firm HPC and realized how special the talent and people are there. After 2018, he led the charge at Aprio, helping spearhead phenomenal growth in the offshoring model. He was also instrumental in setting up Aprio's Philippine team with the support of The Back Room, which has  grown 10X since the first tranche of employees in 2019. So much so, that Aprio ultimately developed its own joint venture with The Back Room, offering offshoring services directly for its accounting affiliates and business clients. 

Commenting on his new role, Bruce expressed his excitement, stating, "I am thrilled to join The Back Room and Wayne at this pivotal juncture in its journey. The BPO industry is undergoing rapid growth and transformation, and I am eager to collaborate with the talented team here and chart a course that not only meets the evolving needs of our clients, but also propels The Back Room to new heights."

He has already kicked off his work with the team and is based primarily in Costa Rica, when not traveling up and down the East Coast of the US on his yacht Wanderlux.