I’ve spent so much time drinking coffee whilst talking about accounting technology that it was only a matter of time before a spurious correlation crept into my blog.

I’ve spent so much time drinking coffee whilst talking about accounting technology that it was only a matter of time before a spurious correlation crept into my blog.
This article is an overview of my presentation at last week’s inaugural Accounting Business Expo: “Why Advisory won’t save you from technology”.
Everywhere you look, it seems the world is telling accountants that compliance work is a non-growth future (at worst a dramatically diminishing business, brought to an end by government policy and technology). The answer, according to pretty much everyone, is operational advisory – helping clients with running better businesses. An entire industry has popped up to coach and help accountants “transition from compliance to advisory”. Technology has popped up everywhere, to systemise advisory, with report packs and standardised approaches for how you monetise the “enormous, under-serviced, advisory opportunity”.
So it’s the end of summer. NRL, Super Rugby and AFL are back. Cricket, Basketball and Soccer are all still on. And this year we have the added bonus of some gender equality sweeping professional sport (as well as accounting tech board rooms), with the W League and WNBL being joined by a new Netball league and the AFLW. As Bill Lawry would say, “it’s all happening”!
And its not just happening in the world of sport. Its only the end of February and 2017 has been a massive year already in the cloud accounting space! February was so jam packed with news, its taken some editing to keep the word count down, whilst leaving room for being forthright with my opinions, lest I cop some criticism for not being true to my brand like last month (cheers for keeping me honest Adam)!
2016 reinforced that life doesn’t always pan out the way one (even the experts) might rationally expect…
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At the start of 2016 I boldly put my pride and reputation as a budding futurist on the line by penning my article: 16 predictions for 2016 for the AuNZ biztech industry.
Before sitting down to write my 17 predictions for 2017, its only fair that review how I went with this year’s attempt!
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Its been another busy month on the AuNZ Cloud Accounting scene. Conference season is over as the festive season approaches. From the big boys we’ve seen published results and investor days, staff changes and continued growth. And I managed to sit down with Daniel Rabie from Reckon to discuss my beef with their strategy.
In mid September I published an article: “XeroConSouth2016 – The review no-one else will write“. With the help of a response and tweet from Rod Drury, the article “went viral” (well relative my usual readership) and I managed to get a few extra views and likes than usual. A similar article on the biggest player in world SMB accounting tech, is a logical formula for me to follow. My mantra, go beyond the platitudes and compliments and critique the elements of the conference and strategy that warrant more in depth consideration – something I feel no-one else will do.
I’ve taken the crazy step to post this month’s AuNZ Cloud Accounting update on a weekend – a social media no-go zone/black hole for content. There’s just going to be too much to write about over the coming days and weeks, I just had to get this out today!
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Mark September 2016 in your calendars. It was the month when Artificial Intelligence (AI) officially went mainstream in SMB accounting tech. This month saw #XeroCon South in Brisbane and the MYOB Partner Conference Roadshow across AuNZ, both raising the future of “coding free data entry”.
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The accounting software conference season is upon us, with Xerocon, QB Connect, MYOB Partner Conference all hot on the heels of Sage Summit. Apart from the likes of Clayton and Wayne racking up even more frequent flyer miles and social media posts, what can we expect from these events? Much of the same I expect. I don’t see any major announcements being likely.
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