Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map

Prepared for Sarah Bourne · Trintech · August 2026
Here is the map of the US market, from the alliances side rather than the direct side. Your market is really two markets stacked on each other: the firms that could carry the product to their clients, and the finance teams underneath them who feel the close. This covers both, who signs inside each one, and roughly how many sit there. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Accounting and advisory firms with a practice to feed
The firms large enough to staff a finance transformation or outsourced accounting practice, which is the test of whether a partnership can carry delivery rather than just a logo. The band matters more than the total: almost nine in ten US firms are under ten people and cannot staff an implementation.
Who signs: managing partner, national practice leader for client accounting or finance transformation, technology and alliances director, firm CIO.
1,000 to 2,000
US accounting firms carrying 50 or more staff, out of roughly 50,000 firms with employees nationally
Systems integrators and ERP implementation partners
The partners already sitting inside the close when a finance system goes in, which makes them the shortest route to a reference-shaped first deal. The wide count is large and mostly irrelevant; the slice with a named record to report or finance practice is where the recruitment work belongs.
Who signs: finance practice lead, alliance manager, delivery director, chief technology officer.
Several thousand firms
US systems design and integration firms; the layer with a named finance or close practice is in the low hundreds and is identified one firm at a time
Managed accounting and finance process outsourcers
Providers who run the close as a service for other companies, so software choice is a margin decision for them rather than a line item. Small in number, high in volume per relationship, and rarely worked as a named list because they do not sit in any one industry code.
Who signs: chief operating officer, head of finance operations delivery, solution architect, commercial director.
A few hundred at national scale
not published as a single register; assembled name by name from delivery footprints and job postings rather than counted
Global business services and shared service operators
The end buyer that partner-led motions route into. Multi-entity, multi-ledger, and the place where a close problem is a headcount problem long before it is a software problem. Longest cycle on this page and the largest engagement at the end of it.
Who signs: global business services leader, corporate controller, head of financial transformation, chief financial officer.
11,000 to 11,500
US employers at 1,000 people or more, the band where a shared service function typically exists
Lean finance teams in the mid-market
The largest reachable group and the one most often left to inbound. Too big to close the books on spreadsheets without pain, too small to fund a transformation office, so the controller carries it personally and buys quickly once someone names the problem out loud.
Who signs: corporate controller, VP of finance, director of accounting, chief financial officer.
27,000 to 28,000
US employers between 250 and 999 people
Private equity firms and portfolio finance
A route rather than a segment. One relationship with an operating partner can reach every finance team in a portfolio, and close discipline is one of the first things a new owner tries to fix. Worth being straight about a limit: ownership is not recorded in any public employer register, so portfolio companies cannot be filtered out of the wider market from public data.
Who signs: operating partner, head of value creation, portfolio chief financial officer, group controller.
3,500 to 4,500
US private equity firms; the portfolio companies beneath them run to tens of thousands and are identified one owner at a time

Where the openings are

1
Recruiting partners is an outbound problem wearing a relationship costume. The buyer is a practice leader at a named firm, the list is countable, and most partner programs still run on whoever the alliances team happened to work with before. That ceiling is a coverage ceiling, not a credibility one.
2
A signed firm is not a live firm. Across partner programs, activation fails in the gap between the alliance desk that signs and the several hundred client-facing partners who each have to know the thing exists and when to raise it. Reaching those individuals by name, on a schedule, is distribution work that no partner agreement performs by itself.
3
The 50 to 249 staff firms are the underworked band. Large enough to hold a real practice, small enough that the practice leader answers their own email and can decide without a national committee. The largest firms are covered by everyone and the smallest cannot deliver, which leaves the middle open.
4
Partner-sourced and direct pipeline share one buyer. The controller is the same person in both motions, so a channel that reaches controllers by name in a chosen segment feeds the partner conversation as well: a partner joins faster when demand is already visible in their accounts, and that sequencing can be built rather than hoped for.
Built from public registries, counts banded deliberately. Firm counts describe employers with staff, so owner-only practices and very small firms are excluded on purpose. Workforce bands use filed plan participants as a headcount proxy, so they indicate scale rather than an exact staff count. Ownership structure and delivery-partner status are not published in any register and are described rather than counted. Segment codes are self-reported.
ENQUIRER CONSULTING GROUP
enquirerconsulting.com