“The Accountancy Revolution”, Sixth in a 6 Part Series

The sixth and final part of our Accountancy Revolution definition found on the first post was summarized this way:

“…paperless productions of varied financial reporting.”

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.

The underlying implications of this final part of the Accountancy Revolution are huge.  It’s all about the accountancy’s move to a paperless environment in everything they do.  I mean… EVERYTHING.  As a profession, there is such strategy in a ‘No Paper’ belief.  Paper is the enemy to fast processes, faster digital manipulation and faster financial analysis.  If we want our customers to see the benefit of timely financial analysis, then we must remove paper from their lives.

This is an uphill battle, as you well know.  You still use paper don’t you?  I do too.  And I know it is slowing me down.  But we don’t really have all the means necessary to eliminate it from our businesses, and our lives.  We need intelligent systems, software and people to gives us vehicles to a ‘no paper’ world.  Some do exist…

Bill.com, with a tagline of “Chase Dreams, Not Paper,” is the premier business process product that is allowing us as a profession to eliminate paper from our lives.  In fact, Rene Lacerte, the CEO of Bill.com, said recently of the THRIVEal organization:

“Managing a company’s processes and digital interactions in the cloud is a strategic advantage for any company, and we’re totally pumped to support the THRIVEal community as they take small businesses into the cloud!”

And Bill.com is one of the sponsors of THRIVEal’s Firm of the Future Symposium, with Ron Baker and Ed Kless, coming to Greenville, SC October 28 through 29, 2011.  Are you coming?  All of the innovators will be there.  Rene rocks, and the THRIVEal organization knows it.  Not because he is a big bad CEO, but because his company is building software with the purpose of eliminating something that is a burden to our world: paper.  It totally sucks, and you must target it’s elimination with a laser focus.  You don’t think this is a big deal, because we all operate in a world full of paper.  But I’ve seen the light!  I’ve tasted a little bit of a world with no paper, and it is better!  I’m calling you into the light!

As a warning, as with any innovation, eliminating paper will NOT be easy, it will NOT come naturally and you will HAVE to convince your customers of it’s importance.  Crap, you have to convince yourself first.  So get to convincing, dang it, and start seeing the opportunities before you.  A world of ‘no paper’ opens up so many other strategic ways to help our customers that you won’t even see until you eliminate the burden of paper.

Now that I’ve preached the opportunity of ‘no paper’ I need to move on to the second part of this mantra: “…of varied financial reporting.”  Open up your minds and consider what you can give your customers besides a sheet full of numbers.  Don’t you know that most of our small business customers can’t read a sheet full of paper?  Can’t you give them something else?  I’m not even sure what the members of THRIVEal will create, but can it be something other than a sheet full of numbers?  Yes.

Remember, your customers don’t know to ask for anything other than a sheet full of numbers.  Give them some pretty graphs, some seriously condensed numbers or some narratives.  Whatever you do, your financial reporting can now be varied and meet the needs of the customer.  And since paper is not a hindrance to the delivery of these documents, you can potentially use the smart cloud systems we all use to deliver this data.  We use an accounting system called Xero and it allows for some cool layouts within the financial reporting center of the software that greatly summarize all of the financial data. We show what the customer needs to see, and summarize everything else so they don’t look at it.  And it just happens automatically!  As we help the customer manage their ‘digital conduits’ of financial data, the reporting on the back end can just happen automatically.  That will leave more time for us to innovate, dream and consider what our customers really need from our new profession.

I’m excited to be a part of this changing profession!  As a whole, we still lag behind in major ways, but there is a movement towards the innovations that will make our profession better; and better meet the needs of our awesome customers.  Are you with me?

Contribute to the Conversation

06/02/2011
Jason Blumer

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The sixth and final part of our Accountancy Revolution definition found on the first post was summarized this way: “…paperless productions of varied financial reporting.” Here...

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