What does cloud adoption and immersion mean to your accounting practice?

To start with: exactly the same benefits as any other business, however, as their accountant, business look to you for help and advice. So once you have built skills in cloud technology, you can build services that help your customers and provide new revenue streams.

Let’s look at the standard benefits to all businesses:  

Systemisation for scaleability

We all know that good systems and processes are essential for scale and growth. Systems need to drive the business and remove manual functions, allow automation, integrate data and satisfy the business needs for marketing, sales, operations, reporting and all other functions.

The pyramid below is fairly self explanatory as to how technology fits in our productivity. 

Drive Efficiency and optimisation

The business case for technology is quite often driven by cost savings.

• Automate repetitive tasks
• Integrate systems to reduce manual work
• Optimise workloads around the team
  

But remember, freeing up time is then available to earn more revenue! Develop new services, spend time with the client to find more opportunities for you, develop information webinars etc.

Gain insights to make business decisions

Good systems are critical to ensure you get accurate data on your business performance, customer profitability and staff performance to guide your business decisions.

Staff attraction and Team development

It is much easier to attract and keep staff when you have great tech in place. Most candidates and employees want to work for a business that is embracing ongoing change and new tech. They don’t want to get left behind and out of date. Use your technology and systems to show your market and knowledge leadership, and the opportunities this provides to candidates and employees.

What are some of the standard processes in an Accountancy practice?

• Customer acquisition
• AML and Customer Onboarding
• Proposals
• Regular comms (newsletters, GST/Tax reminders, compliance rules updates, legislation changes 
• Month End processing and reports
• GST/compliance processes
• Business advisory services (planning, forecasting, coaching and accountability)
• Audit Services
• Document management
• Practice (Job) Management
• Business performance reporting
• Invoicing and debtor management
• Staff On boarding
• Remote working
  

Check out our blog post on How to Implement Technology in your Business for ideas on the next steps to optimize your own cloud adoption and app stack.

‍What are the additional benefits of App Advisory to accountants?

Once you understand the process and worked on your own technology and app stack, you are in a great position to develop additional revenue earning services.

Analyse your customer base - what do they need - DR mgmnt, cashflow, project analysis and reporting, credit management - Think about finance functions first. How many of your customers are capturing receipts and supplier invoices at point of receipt (Receiptbank, Hubdoc, Datamoleno, AutoEntry), do they have integrated payroll?

Then start to look at industry specific issues such as Project/Job Management, POS Integration, Inventory Management. Either build your skills to help them or use expert cloud integrators to help.

Next steps is to understand what services will provide value to your customers and increase your revenue streams link to