Paul Wallbank | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Learning the tools of online business

Accountants are faced with a great opportunity, but they have to learn the tools of online business

The accounting and professional services industries are uniquely positioned as the economy goes digital, while their own sectors are undergoing radical change so too are their clients.

Given the changes facing the accounting industry, the invitation to host last week’s CPA Australia Technology Accounting Forum‘s second day in Sydney was a good opportunity to see how the profession and its clients are dealing with major shifts in their industry.

The accounting profession has been one of the big winners of the Twentieth Century’s shift to a services economy. Last week’s story on how the workforce has been changing illustrates this with a chart showing how the occupation has grown over the past 140 years.

In many respects accountants should be well placed to benefit in a data driven economy given the training and skills they posses. The big challenge for existing practitioners is to shift with the times.

The transition from what’s been lucrative work in the past will be a challenge for some in the profession. Many of the manual tasks accountants previously did are now being automated with direct data links increasingly seeing operations like reconciliations and filing financial returns being done in real time without the need for any human intervention.

In private practice, the shift to cloud computing and direct APIs has stripped out more revenues with useful earners like selling boxed software petering away as services like Xero and Saasu arrived and established players like Intuit, Sage and MYOB moved to online models.

Shifting to the cloud

That shift has already happened with the presenter in one breakout session asking the audience how many practitioners used exclusively desktop software, purely cloud service or a hybrid of the two. Of the twenty in the room, the vast majority were using a combination with three being purely online and one sole operator still stuck with a desktop system.

For accountants the message from all of the sessions was clear; the future is online and businesses based around paper based models are doomed. The question though for them is how will they make the transition to being professional advisers.

Strangely, the big challenge for accountants in private practice may be their clients. A number of panel participants pointed out small business owners are slow to adopt new technologies and this holds both them and their service providers back. Divorcing tardy customers may be one of the more difficult tasks facing professional advisors.

The Technology, Accounting and Finance Forum showed the potential for accountants and professional services providers to be the trusted advisors in an online world, the task now is for practitioners and their clients to learn and understand those tools.

A handy guide to a company’s performance

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz’s sixteen point guide to evaluating a tech startup’s performance is useful for all businesses.

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has a nifty sixteen point guide to evaluating a tech startup’s performance.

This is a handy checklist when looking at the claims of any business – big or small, tech startup or something more conventional.

Pre-booking of contract revenues in particular is one of my favourites and it’s something we’re going to see more of as the subscription economy becomes more widespread.

Saying goodbye to the boxes of gold

Intuit’s plan to sell Quickbook is part of the shift to cloud computing that’s leaving old business models dead.

“No-one is making money from cloud software, in the early days everyone made money from software,” bemoaned one of the panellists at last week’s CPA Technology, Accounting and Finance Forum.

A good example of this is the US accounting software giant Intuit putting the 32 year old Quickbooks on to the market.

Intuit was built on the back of Quickbooks but today the product today makes less than 6% of the company’s revenues and under 2% of the profits. Making matters worse is the old code base is clunky, proprietary and expensive to maintain.

Apart from getting a captive – and almost certainly dwindling – client base, there doesn’t seem to be a lot to attract buyers for Quickbooks as a desktop based product in a market shifting to the cloud.

The shifting business model hurts more than Intuit; the accountants, resellers and other service providers who were making a decent income from selling or supporting the box products have seen their margins evaporate.

For users, both Intuit and the services providers moving away from the product risks leaving them and their data stranded, something every business should understand about the risks of proprietary formats.

The shift though by Intuit should be a warning to small businesses that the days of box and inhouse software are numbered and running packages on servers and desktops will soon be for large organisations or niche applications.

Almost every business is going to have to plan its move to the cloud, those who don’t are increasingly going to be left behind in a shifting market.

Are small businesses too old and slow?

Does an aging small business population pose a risk to the economy?

Yesterday I hosted the second day of the CPA Australia Technology, Accounting and Finance Forum that looked at how the accounting profession is being affected by the changing technology landscape.

There’s plenty to write about from the day and how the accounting profession is facing technological change which I’ll write up shortly but one theme from the day was striking – that older small businesses owners are struggling to deal with adopting new tech.

Gavan Ord, the CPA’s policy advisor warns older practitioners are opening themselves to disruption and the Australian business community is in general is at risk as older proprietors aren’t investing or embracing technology at a rate comparable to their overseas competitors.

Older small business owners

That older skew in small business operators is clear, in 2012 The Australian Bureau of Statistics found 57% of the nation’s proprietors are aged over 45 as opposed to 35% of the general population.

Even more concerning is many of those small business owners expect to retire with a 2009 survey finding 81% were intending to retire within ten years – it would be interesting to see how those ambitions changed as the global financial crisis evolved.

A risk to the broader economy

This blog has flagged the risks of an aging small businesses community previously, but Gavan Ord’s point flags another risk – that older proprietors being reluctant to invest in new technology means a key segment of the Australian economy is unprepared for today’s wave of technological change.

A key message from the CPA forum was that the shift to cloud computing is radically changing the business world as sophisticated data management, analytic and automation tools become easily available. Companies, and nations, that don’t take advantage of modern business tools risk being left behind in the 21st Century.

Life at the data frontline

Google’s challenge with managing exponential data growth is something all companies will have to deal with

One of the defining features of the next decade’s successful businesses is how they manage data. No company has a greater challenge in dealing with information than Google.

In a feature tracking Google’s evolving data centres, Techcrunch describes how the company has dealt with the challenge of being the web’s repository.

The challenge has been huge, Google’s current Jupiter network delivers a petabit each second, a hundred times more capacity than its first-generation network and in 2005.

Google boasts 10,000 of their servers are capable of reading all of the scanned data in the Library of Congress in less than a tenth of a second.

While most businesses won’t need that sort of capacity in the near future, the exponential growth Google has dealt with is the same issue facing most managers and business owners as more devices, staff and customers become connected.

For most organisations, dealing with that dramatic growth is almost impossible and this is why automated services running on the cloud will become even more a part of daily working life. Those services will be running on the technology Google is developing today.

Learning from the workforce of the past

A Deloitte study of past workforce changes gives us clues, but not answers on how the future of work will look

One of the constant questions posed to anyone reporting on the technologies changing the workforce is “where are the jobs coming from?”

A paper by Deloitte UK economists Ian Stewart, Debapratim De and Alex Cole titled Technology and people: The great job-creating machine looks at how technological change has affected the British workforce over the past 170 years.

While the study itself seems somewhat hard to get hold of, The Guardian earlier this week reported on what the economists found when they examined employment patterns through the rapidly changing economy of the last 150 years.

One clear shift the collapse in manual jobs, particularly farm labourers whose numbers fell from a peak of 950,000 in 1881 – 7% of the workforce – to less than 50,000 or 0.02% in 2012.

The decline in the employment of farm labourers shouldn’t be surprising – in 1871 the proportion of the British workforce employed in agriculture was 15% while today it is less than 1%. A graph from the UK Census office illustrates that shift.

It’s notable comparing the UK to the US in this respect; at the beginning of the Twentieth Century nearly half the US workforce was still working in agriculture while the Britain had been a predominantly service economy for nearly fifty years.

Even today nearly 3% of American workers are employed on farms, a number not seen in Britain since the mid 1930s.

In both countries, the late Twentieth Century saw a shift to a service economy, something illustrated in the Deloitte survey by the rise of the British barman where the proportion of workers in the liquor industry tripled from 0.2% of the workforce between 1961 and today.

That British bar employment tripled in the post World War II years probably illustrates best the rise of the consumerist culture during the late 20th Century.

What should be flagged is those transitions away from agriculture to consumerism weren’t painless, much of Britain’s economy was racked by recessions through the Twentieth Century and many of the nation’s regions were devastated by the shift away from manufacturing in the 1970s and 80s.

In the US, the transition away from an agricultural economy in the 1920s was particularly painful, Steinbeck’s book the Grapes of Wrath tells of the human costs to families displaced from their mid-west farms during that time.

That technological and economic factors have driven massive changes over the centuries isn’t new, but the fact the vast majority of today’s workforce are in jobs which couldn’t have been imagined a hundred years ago should encourage us about the prospects for the future workforce.

However, assuming the future will look like today and that employment will be largely in consumer service industries may be as mistaken of the beliefs among 1960s policy makers that manufacturing would be the future.

Even more pressing for today’s policy makers and leaders is to prepare for the pain of transition. If we are seeing a workforce shifting to new business models then there will be high community and personal costs. We need to be preparing for the pain of the shift as much as we anticipate the benefits.

Business and the workforce in an app driven world

As the workforce shifts to being mobile, so too must businesses

One of the things we know about the future is the workplace will be very different. Just as the Personal Computer changed offices in the 1990s, the smartphone and tablet computer are changing today’s.

Part of that change though is being driven by the change in generations. While this blog tries to avoid falling into the trap of generalising about different age cohorts – and contends the entire concept of baby boomers as an economic group is flawed – there are undoubtedly differences between the world of the PC generation of workers and that of the new mobile breed.

The key difference is the idea that work devices are different to those at home. Those of us bought up with the idea that the office computers would be tightly locked workstations – in the 1990s we also had the quaint idea corporate desktops were generally more powerful than what we had at home – are now seeing that way of working being abandoned.

For the next generation of office workers, accessing corporate resources through an app connected to a cloud service will be as normal as opening Windows NT to access the shared corporate drive was 15 years ago.

Along with the technology and generational change driving businesses into the cloud-app computing world there’s also the needs of a much more fluid and mobile workforce. The shift to casualisation began well before PCs arrived on desktops but the process is accelerating as we see crowdsourcing and the ‘uberization’ of industries.

Older workers will adapt as well, many came through the evolution of business computing from ‘green screen’ displays – if their businesses had any at all – through to the server based systems of recent years. For them the shift to smartphones might be troublesome for those with fading eyesight, but it won’t be the first change.

For businesses this shift means they have to start planning for the mobile services that will change workforces and industries. The shift is already well underway – accounting software company Intuit estimates small businesses already use an average of 18 apps to run their business.

We all have to start thinking about how these apps can be used to manage our staff and workforces.

Taking the pain out of sporting venues

Smart stadiums should make attending sports events more fun says the CEO of VenueNext

“We’re trying to take the pain out of visiting a stadium,” says John Paul, CEO of smart stadium service provider Venue Next in an interview with Robert Scoble.

Scoble as usual gets the better stories than we do as this site’s visit to a smart stadium was somewhat underwhelming. Compared to the Sydney Cricket Ground, Santa Clara’s Levi Stadium is several degrees more advanced – one might suggest a generation ahead.

The Santa Clara stadium has a comprehensive offering with everything from parking, where guests can purchase spaces through the app, and transport integrated and right down to ushers monitoring the restroom queues.

Having one app to control the various feature is a benefit, “we can’t expect people to use multiple apps at a venue.” Paul says and adds the observation that venues can use the gathered intelligence enables the stadium management and concession holders to more efficiently deploy resources.

This is a problem at the SCG where a plethora of agencies and outsourcing deals puts barriers in the way of introducing smart apps, at present a user who wants to check seat availability or buy parking has to deal with different service providers.

One of the big problems facing Australian stadiums are the ticketing agencies where the two major operators – Ticketmaster and Ticketeck – have exclusive deals with the venues that dynamic pricing and upselling is difficult.

Upselling tickets was one of the benefits of the smart stadium cited by Mike Caponigro, Cisco’s head of Global Solutions Marketing for Sports and Entertainment when Decoding the New Economy interviewed him last year.

Having multiple providers with mismatching or inaccessible data sets is going to be a barrier for businesses trying to implement apps like VenueNext and information access is going to be an essential part of subcontracts and outsourcing agreements.

Ultimately this is about making things as easy as possible for the fans. By adding features they are able to spend more money and have an enjoyable time.

What’s notable with the VenueNext applications is the focus on the fans’ experience. By making the services more accessible and reducing the hassles of attending a major event, it’s more likely to attract more spectators.

The sports industry is leading the way on using apps to enhance customers’ experiences, something other industries such as the restaurant or conference sectors can learn from.

Mimecast and the future of email

Email continues to the key computer business application says Mimecast’s CEO Peter Bauer

Email remains the biggest business app in the world says Peter Bauer, the CEO and co-founder of mail management service Mimecast.

Boston based, South African born Bauer founded his company to “make email safer for business” and after launching in his home country and attracting 14,000 customers and spoke in Sydney about his company and how email is changing in the world of the cloud.

In many respects email is one of those applications – like SMS – that happened by accident. In it’s early days no-one intended or expected those messaging systems to become key communications services.

“I started my IT career in the mid-1990s as an e-mail systems engineer and if you think back to the mid 90s no business cared much about email at all,” says Bauer who believes the experience gave him a unique perspective to how the service evolved into a key business application.

Over the next ten years Bauer saw how email became the personal filing systems for most workers and put systems under pressure as companies had to manage large file stores with the associated compliance and discovery risks.

The security risks too were huge as email became the preferred malware delivery system as virus and spyware writers used infected messages to get onto users’ systems, a problem that has become worse as ransomware and phishing attacks have become common.

“Because business operations and process became dependent upon email, it became necessary to make the service highly available,” says Bauer in emphasising how important it has become to most large and small enterprises.

Even with the shift to the cloud, most companies have remained with email with companies moving to Microsoft’s Office365 – Bauer claims the take up has doubled in the last twelve months. Google’s Apps are gaining traction in the small end of the industry but the enterprises are really wedded to the Microsoft platform.

Bauer sees that shift to cloud based services as changing the risk profile for businesses and this is another opportunity for his business.

Email faces a number of challenges as social media and instant messaging apps become preferred communications tools for younger groups while some businesses are banning email.

For the moment though, it looks like the service is safe as companies remain wedded to email as the preferred form of business communication.

Project Ara starts looking lonely

It may be Google’s Project Ara is about to become the latest victim of the company’s attention deficit disorder.

Two years ago this site interviewed New Deal Design’s Gadi Amit about Google’s Project Ara.

Project Ara is an experiment in creating a modular phone where users can customise their devices by adding or removing components.

PC World now reports the mooted soft launch for the Project Ara phone in Puerto Rico has been cancelled.

While Google aren’t saying the project has been shut down, the sporadic and cryptic messages around Ara don’t bode well given the way the company loses interest in and then abandons products.

If it is being abandoned, it will be interesting to see where the intellectual property from the project ends up.

Subscribing to disruption – Zuora founder Tien Tzuo

The shift to a subscription economy promises to change many businesses says Zuora’s Tien Tzuo

“This is a customer driven revolution,” says Zuora co-founder and CEO, Tien Tzuo, of the business shift to a subscription payment model.

While the cloud computing business has been one of the leaders in the shift to the subscription model, the move is happening in industries as diverse as jet engines, agricultural machinery and music.

Zuora is one of the businesses providing the tools to manage customer subscriptions and Tien Tzuo shares with Decoding the New Economy how he sees the subscription economy changing industries.

Tien, who was an early Salesforce employee, describes some of the forces he sees driving this shift and where the opportunities lie for business owners, managers and entrepreneurs.

“We looked at companies like Netflix which at the time it was DVD rental service and Zipcar and saw the same payment challenges we had at Salesforce,” says Tien. “The leap for us was looking at the transformation of companies like Zipcar into a subscription model.”

There are few industries that won’t be affected to the shift to a subscription model, Tien believes, and he sees this radically changing many sectors with Internet of Things providing a huge push towards pay-as-you-go services.

Diversifying South East Queensland

Is being designated a ‘smart region’ enough to diversify South East Queensland’s economy?

Australia is one of the world’s most urbanised countries with the bulk of the nation’s population clustering in half a dozen centres mainly strung along the east coast of the continent.

The northernmost of Australia’s population centres is South East Queensland, a sprawling collection of suburbs extending from the upper class enclave of Noosa Heads down to the Gold Coast and the New South Wales state border.

Cisco believe this sprawling region of three million people can become a ‘Smart Region’ with the use of technologies such as intelligent lighting and parking, citizen applications, and smart power metering could add up to 30,000 jobs and $10 billion of value to the community over coming years.

“The residents of South East Queensland told us they want to experience greater convenience and integration of public transport, greater digital engagement and intimacy in their cities, more reliable local government services, and new digital ways to further reduce the cost of red tape,” said Cisco Australia & New Zealand Vice President Ken Boal in releasing the South East Queensland: A Smart Region report.

Local civic leaders in the cities making up the South East Queensland conurbation see this as an opportunity to grow their economies. “The future of cities and regions and their ability to create enduring employment opportunities are entirely linked to their digital capabilities,” says Sunshine Coast Mayor Cr Mark Jamieson while Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale said Ipswich was already preparing for a strong future as a digital city.

“We have recognized that building and taking advantage of digital highways now will set Ipswich on a secure and successful path to capitalise on the ballooning digital economy,” said Cr Pisasale.

For South East Queensland, the challenge in creating new industries and jobs is becoming acute. The Australian miracle economy has left the region – like most of the nation – hopelessly uncompetitive and the bulk of employment is in domestically facing service industries underpinned by property prices.

In fact, the residential construction industry has been the mainstay of the SE Queensland economy and the region remains probably the most economically volatile of the Australian conurbations given its high dependence upon the building sector.

The digital economy does hold out hope for diversifying South East Queensland’s economy from building and domestic tourism, but the work is just beginning. Cisco’s smart region initiative is a first step, but there’s much more work to be done by business and civic leaders.

Brisbane image, “Brisbane CBDandSB” by Stuart Edwards. – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brisbane_CBDandSB.jpg#/media/File:Brisbane_CBDandSB.jpg