In most advisory firms, people learn the job next to someone experienced. That works as long as the experienced people have time to teach and there is someone nearby to learn from.
At Quattek & Partner, a tax advisory firm based in Göttingen with around 150 employees at three locations, that model stopped working well after the pandemic. Miriam Engel, tax advisor and partner responsible for further training, apprenticeship training and HR, described the gap to DATEV magazin: "New colleagues lacked people to turn to, and experienced ones lacked the resources."
What Quattek & Partner did
The firm founded its own internal academy. Since 2026 it has bundled apprenticeship training, onboarding, qualification for career changers and internal further training, set apart from daily client work in space, organization and teaching method. Trainees, new starters and experienced staff learn there in a structured way, starting with filing structures and moving through DATEV applications to technical topics.
Engel explains the principle: "We deliberately take knowledge transfer out of day-to-day business." The firm has used ProCheck, a DMS and digital processes for years, set up a digitalization task force and has its own AI manager developing search and assistant functions, with avatars for DATEV ProCheck and knowledge databases planned. The article was published by DATEV, the firm's software supplier, and reports no figures.
What it already gives the business
Quattek & Partner has turned what its experienced people know into a structured program that runs whether or not a senior colleague has a free afternoon. The stated aims are relief, better quality and an even level of competence across the teams.
Engel's reasoning carries over to any owner: "Nothing is more valuable than knowledge. And nothing is more dangerous than knowledge kept on an island." Her advice to firms without knowledge management fits in two words: "Just start."
The ExValu perspective, a hypothesis
Where a Company Brain could take it next
An academy teaches what the firm already knows how to explain. The harder part is the judgment that sits with partners and team leads: how a difficult client file was handled, why an exception was made and which approach suits a healthcare practice.
A Company Brain could connect the academy's material with those decisions and with the search functions the AI manager is building, so a new advisor finds both the lesson and the real case behind it. That is our hypothesis, and the article does not describe it.
What an owner and a buyer would look for
Track time until new starters work on their own, senior hours spent teaching and the share of staff who have completed each academy module.
A buyer of an advisory firm checks whether client quality rests on a few partners. A documented curriculum, attendance records and an even level of competence across locations show the business can run without them. Client tax data is highly sensitive, so training cases should use anonymized files.
The problem behind this case
Facing the same problem?
About this analysis
* The image is AI-generated and does not show Quattek & Partner staff. The facts and figures on this page come from the published source named below.
This is an independent ExValu analysis of a published case. Facts, figures and names are as reported in the source below, which our team checked on October 14, 2026. The ideas for next steps are our own perspective and make no claim about conditions inside Quattek & Partner. To request a correction or removal, write to [email protected]. Quotes from the German-language source are translated by our team.
Primary source: Magazine article by the firm's software supplier, DATEV magazin, April 2026. Available at www.datev.de/content/dam/markenassets/themen-und-produktgruppen/datev-magazin/datev-magazin-pdf-dateien-/DATEV_magazin_2026_04.pdf.