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I had a great time speaking at the Right Networks Boston C4 Conference recently. I met a lot of new people and found some old friends (and some new wisdom) I wanted to pass along. Check it:
Eric Pulaski
Greg LaFollette
Joe Woodard
Find out more about the Scaling New Heights Conference here: http://www.scalingnewheights.com/index2012Preview.htm
You can now listen the the newest episode of the THRIVEcast on our website or download it from iTunes. Jason Blumer and Greg Kyte help you understand the value of community, give you pricing strategy, and bring you an interview with Eric Pulaski of SmartVault!
The fourth part of our Accountancy Revolution definition found on the first post was summarized this way:
“…which will ultimately become digital conduits…”
Here is the full Accountancy Revolution again:
Rapid technological means of data creation and production are allowing the former manual manipulation of raw accounting data to disappear, forcing the profession of accountancy to be redefined towards enhancing and developing internal business processes which will ultimately become digital conduits of paperless productions of varied financial reporting.
Bear with me as I predict the future here, dang it. We addressed how the “Accountancy Revolution” is changing the practice of accounting into bigger and better types of service. And we mentioned that ‘no paper’ was part of that future. In this post, I want to take that just a bit deeper and say that financial statements are one day going to simply be digital conduits to hold digital data flowing smartly into cloud-based accounting software. Again, accountants won’t be manually manipulating that data, we’ll just be managing the data flows that will be smartly presented in our financial software.
I see two future implications:
1. Cloud-based software accounting vendors must build smart systems. And they are. As the new breed of accountants, we just have to be able to bring these smart systems (and their intuitive APIs) into our customer’s processes and retool their companies to make the best use of the systems. Thanks to the innovative vendors that are leading the way with smart accounting systems, we can now focus on these digital conduits of data and how they help our customers. The future is made up of smarter vendors.
2. Accountants must become experts at manipulating and interpreting these digital conduits of data. We are already running into systems that don’t talk to each other (even though the vendors are getting smarter and smarter). We have to be able to walk our customers through attaching these systems as best we can. At the least, we are having to research and explain how one system should talk to each other. The future is made up of smarter accountants.
Are you comfortable within digital conduits? What other implications do you see? Leave it in the comments.
The third part of our Accountancy Revolution definition found on the first post was summarized this way:
“…forcing the profession of accountancy to be redefined towards enhancing and developing internal business processes…”
Since it’s been a couple of months since we addressed the first two changes in the “Accountancy Revolution,” let’s summarize:
First, we are seeing very rapid technological brand new ways to actually create accounting data. Note: we as the profession are not creating the data anymore.
Second, we learned that the first point means that the manual handling of accounting data is disappearing. Paper is going away. And that is good – paper is killing our businesses. We use human capital to shuffle paper through companies, and that is the worst use of human capital I can think of. We ain’t gonna do what we did before. The manual manipulation of data is going away.
Here is the full Accountancy Revolution again:
Rapid technological means of data creation and production are allowing the former manual manipulation of raw accounting data to disappear, forcing the profession of accountancy to be redefined towards enhancing and developing internal business processes which will ultimately become digital conduits of paperless productions of varied financial reporting.
But this all leads to my third point in this awesome “Accountancy Revolution”: it is going to force us as a profession to redefine what it means to deliver our service. And, as I stated above, I believe it is going to lead us to two things (among many other things):
Enhance Internal Business Processes
We are doing some fun work taking our clients through what we call a Value Process Design Session (see our flyer above we send to clients). When you dive deep into your client’s processes, you will find your customers are delivering huge amounts of value to their customers but not getting paid for it. You can help them enhance the importance of their processes… and make sure they get paid for it! But you have to create the session, give it a name and then sell it. Your customers want to buy it! They just don’t know it yet. And they won’t know until you sell it to them. You are doing a disservice to your customer base when you don’t give them what they need (…that they don’t even know to ask for).
Develop Internal Business Processes
When we take our clients through the Value Process Design Session, we are seeking to enhance their current business processes. But we can often identify brand new business processes that will bring great value to their customers, and for which they can add revenue. So if you can’t enhance what they have, seek to develop new processes based upon the beautiful absence of paper in your customer’s processes. They’ll thank you for it.
Your customer’s internal business processes can be found in every aspect of their business – from getting paid to delivering service, from taking calls to shipping packages. And specialized indistries you might serve like manufacturing or the medical industries will have many more processes deeply embedded in their systems that you can dig through and enhance for your customers. It’s like looking for big money in the couch cushions. But this time you’ll find some big dough, not just stale Cheetos.
I love it! Things are changing and it’s allowing us to deliver brand new valuable services to our customers. I freakin’ love my job!! Do you? Leave it in the comments.
Ron Baker and Ed Kless are coming to Greenville, SC on October 28th and 29th to present the Firm of the Future Symposium!Normally this event would be around
$2500 per person (and worth every penny). However, as a one year birthday gift to the THRIVEal +CPA Network, Ron and Ed are offering a special price of $850 per person. Ron and Ed have been preaching their message to the Accounting, Legal, Technology, Advertising, and Consulting professions for many years. Firms are being changed and Futures are being created right in this very event! This is the last Firm of the Future Symposium for 2011, so you won’t want to miss out!
You can learn more and register online here!
In addition to the conference, Jason Blumer and Greg Kyte, hosts of the edgy new THRIVEcast, will be recording a LIVE podcast with audience participation on Friday evening at Zen Greenville. Guaranteed fun!
Thanks to our friends at Brains on Fire for the use of their space for the Symposium. It’s gonna be life changing!
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