Ep: 93 Top experts answer: "What could the tech/software vendors do better to serve accountants?"
The Accounting Answers Podcast, hosted by Rob Brown, asks critical questions of the experts, leaders and influencers who shape the decision-making of accountants, CPAs and finance professionals. Today we ask:
What could the tech/software vendors do better to serve accountants?
You'll hear insightful and passionate answers from these 5 experts and influencers:
Geni Whitehouse | Keynote presenter, CPA, Winery consultant, President of Information Technology Alliance
Greg Kautz | Finance and technology executive of a lease accounting software company
Harriet Formby | Founder of BelowTheLineFinance, Holistic CFO & Purpose-Led Business Advisor
Heath Alloway | Director at Upstream Academy and servant leader for career professionals
Hitendra Patil | President at Datamatics CPA Outsourcing, Top 100 Influencer, Author, Speaker
Tune into more on this daily show for short, sharp episodes that keep you informed of what's happening in the accounting world and the whole ecosystem of consultants, organizations, vendors and advisors who serve them.
To participate in our international virtual speed networking events for the accounting community, book your place at the next gathering. Great for building your personal brand and making valuable industry connections in return for a small donation to charity: https://accountinginfluencers.com/events
◣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◢
Thanks to our sponsors:
CPA Trendlines. Actionable intelligence for the professional tax, accounting and finance community. Facts and figures, insights and implications, news, trends, tips and research serving more than 500,000 tax, accounting and finance professionals from around the world. go to https://cpatrendlines.com to sign up for free email updates.
Dan McMahon and Integrated Growth Advisors. IGA are the CPA firm experts in Growth, Building Infrastructure, and Exchanging ownership. This management advisory firm focuses on empowering CPAs to grow their revenues and increase their profitability and firm value. IGA’s methodology delivers on services built upon "IGA GBX" which represents the firm’s value creation model of "firm Growth, Building infrastructure, and eXchanging ownership. https://www.integratedgrowthadvisors.com
If you'd like to sponsor the show and elevate your brand with our audience, reach out to show host Rob Brown on LinkedIn and his team will reach out to fix up a chat to explore.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/therobbrown
You can also check out other Accounting Influencers Shows on YouTube:
https://bit.ly/AI-youtube
The future of accounting isn't just about numbers and financial statements, it's about empowering businesses to make informed decisions, navigate complex challenges, achieve their financial goals. Everyone recognizes that accounts are at the heart of this and must become trusted partners, with business acumen, expertise in data analytics, storytelling, strategic guidance, taking the clients towards success and whatever your role is in this ecosystem, you need to stay ahead of the curve to stay relevant and that's why this accounting answers podcast was conceived to keep you informed and competitive. I'm your host Rob Brown and I've interviewed 111 accounting experts, leaders, advisors, vendors and influencers in the last few months and collected for you the very best and latest thinking on what works and what is coming up. In this week's day's show, 10 to 15 minutes gets you the lowdown on what matters today in the rapidly involving accounting landscape and the professionally shed in its traditional image of number crunching embracing a bold new future, data, technology, strategic guidance, rain supreme. I've asked the same five questions throughout covering the next generation of accountants, the proactive advice they need to be given, the drivers have changed the role of tech and software vendors, plus the best predictions for the next few years. Let's get started and hear what our experts have to say. In this episode, we'll continue to ask our accounting influencers and leaders about the rule of tech providers and software vendors in driving the industry forward. Techies spearhead in transformation and innovation in the traditional accounting role. But how could the sellers of this tech better serve the needs of accountants and what exactly are those needs? Let's find out all the missing pieces of the accounting vendor jigsaw as we ask our experts. Sharing their thoughts now is Jeannie Whitehouse, a keynote presenter, CPA, Winery consultant and president of the Information Technology Alliance, she combines her accounting expertise with a passion for technology and wine. The traditional tech vendors that have us locked into their systems are really holding profession by. They don't have open APIs. They aren't moving to cloud. We're still using tools that are desktop based, written in old technology, and they're way too slow to move forward. So what we're seeing now is a bunch of individual apps that are doing really cool things. But now I got to have 47 tools to get my job done inside a firm. So what we're going to see, I think, is acquisitions of some of these tools and the traditional vendors either going away or really figuring out how to harness them quickly enough that we can stay ahead of our clients because we've got to show that we're more tech savvy than they are. And right now with these clunky tools, many of us still have, we're not getting there. The vendors who aren't evolving fast enough are going to lose clients. We're all moving to newer technology that does the thing that we are desperate to have improved correctly. So we're moving to cloud vendors, we're moving to mobile apps, we're moving already, even if it's not complete or even if there's not a suite of tools, because we have to. We can't continue to work on these arcane systems. And those vendors are realizing it, they're trying to catch up. But often the internal structure of those companies moves too slowly. And so I think they're going to shrink, they're going to stretch, they're already feeling the implications because there's so many new products that are coming out that do really cool things that got to get with it, they got to move faster, they've got to stop talking and start doing. Next, we welcome grid cows, a finance and technology executive and a lease accounting software company leading the way in simplifying complex leasing transactions for better financial transparency and compliance. I think it's finding better digital point solutions. We've got examples of one stream black line that companies have been using to supplement and enhance their accounting systems and ERP systems. In case we've got our system as well, all designed to help optimize, look for ways to improve process and bring the knowledge to the system. So the accounts don't have to read the rules, it's built into the platforms that people are looking for. Let's hear the perspective of Harriet Formby, founder of Below The Line Finance, the Holistic CFO and purpose led business advisor who brings a comprehensive approach to financial leadership focusing on the impact beyond the bottom line. I believe that we need to approach this from being fully accessible at like a bare minimum. So at the moment, the way the tech and accounting software works is we all have to approach it from the same way. So our clients have to access it in the same way, it shows to us in the same way and we're much more awake at the moment of kind of like way that neurodivergent brains process information. And I think we can tailor things so much better through navigating the software that is more intuitive and it's more able to be customized to preferences and how people learn, how people receive data, whether it's visual, whether it's text, whether it's audio, and actually give them that experience, give them a more sort of five, the experience of like it can be more, you know, if you've got a more creative brain, you can have your accounting information rather than a P&L format, you've got more like maybe it just automatically shows it in a video form or it gives you an audio description of it, just ways that we can bring it to life. So it's not just about somebody glazing over when they see their numbers or they see graphs and it doesn't make sense, they're making it work to their brain. And the thing with, you know, but the important thing, I know at least happening, I know we kind of embracing AI within software, but really to make sure that we see that there's so much value in this that we can change the role of accounts that we can take away the misery that people experience of, you know, chasing deadlines and taxes and, you know, the amount of hours and professional time put into just building reports and, you know, manual adjustments and stuff that maybe we don't need to do in the future. And I think the, you know, the tech side of that and the accounting software side of that needs to be fully, you know, geared up to embrace that and be straight there with the latest innovations and, you know, bringing them back to accountants, of course, asking accountants what they want from it and, you know, shaping user experience to it and making sure that, you know, from the business owners represented in the way that they want to deal with their accounts and their information, that they aren't just getting fed a default position of this is how the software works and this is what we get. Please welcome Heath Alloway, director upstream academy and a seven leader for career professionals dedicated to developing the next generation of leaders in the accounting profession. I do believe on the front end, much more upfront, better expectations, you know, I just, I reflected on my own career path and anytime we were making a software or a technology change, usually on the front end, there was a lot of excitement, a lot of hope, a lot of desire to do it. And then once we get into it, it was a lot more challenging than what we anticipated. And maybe people started to lose some of that excitement and hope and that would result in more failure or frustration. So setting realistic expectations on the front end and that would be my advice. Jumping into the conversation now, we say, Tender Patel, president of Datamatic CPA outsource in a top 100 influencer ought to speak who brings innovative solutions and insights to the field of accounting outsourcing. Yeah, I've been with the conference for the last almost 20 years and I see where clients think that they can do something that only professionals should have been doing. And I think if technology companies take that approach to set the world, only professionals should do and the work that clients can do themselves in the solution that clients can use themselves. I think that would be a great help to the profession and to account them. And if while protecting their business interests, take vendors can enable easy real secure data exchange between various solutions, it will free up the time and talent and expertise of the account. Today, each solution has its own ab economy around it. So it's like a customized integration between different solutions. But as a profession, if we can, you know, open up this data exchange in different sets of software solutions that would help up the, not just the profession, I think it will help the human race itself because we spend so much time in just managing data because they can't push data from one system into another unless you do something very specific, which is time consuming and expensive. So there you have five great answers to the question. What could the tech and software vendors do better to serve accountants? Each work in dev the week Monday through Friday, we give you the insights of five top influences in the accounting world on this critical area of the tech provider software vendors and how they serve accountants. That's 25 valuable perspectives, viewpoints and best thinking every week. And with each fresh week comes a fresh question. And more thoughts from the best accounting leaders and influencers we can find. Thanks for listening to this brand new accounting answers podcast and sharing the show with your friends. If you want to join the conversation, you can plug into our community of influencers at accountinginfluencers.com and check out our virtual speed networking events. These happen every few months for the North America region and the UK Europe region. The great opportunities to raise your profile, build valuable connections and share your thoughts with influential peers. Until next time, this is your host Rob Brown saying stay informed, stay relevant and stay connected. [MUSIC PLAYING] (gentle music)
