Technology and Accounting: Building a Smarter Business

Anytime, Anywhere

You’ve seen the IBM advertisements lately, about how IBM wants to build a smarter planet by “infusing intelligence into the systems and processes that make the world work”.  It makes sense, what they’re saying.  By analyzing systems and recognizing patterns, it’s easier to predict behavior.  It’s done every day, from Amazon letting you know that “others who purchased this item also purchased xxx”, to the merchandising systems at large store chains who know when and where to stock the umbrellas or presto logs.

Technology has reached a point where huge amounts of business intelligence is being gathered every day – even from the smallest of businesses – simply through the technology-supported enabling of business processes.  Where systems were initially focused on automation of processes to reduce labor and streamline workflows, the goal now is to turn the data captured by the system into actionable information.  Data is just data, but information is power.

I spent a lot of time over the past few weeks, deciding what path I would take with the Bookkeeping in Bunny Slippers Blog and other publications this year.  It seems that that past few years have been a consistent mantra of “using technology to work smarter, not harder” and “using the Internet to work closer with clients” – rehashing the same value propositions about how technology can make you more efficient.  But I think we’re moving beyond that now, and it’s time to talk about what comes next.  It’s really quite simple: the paradigm is shifting now, and we either shift our thinking along with it and use it to our advantage, or lose relevance.

In the coming months, I’ll be talking more about this paradigm shift – this sea change in how we think about business automation and information – and how it is impacting each and every player in the business value chain.  Accounting professionals in particular need to pay attention to what’s happening with technology.  You thought you had competition before?  Say hello to zero data entry, smarter OCR, intelligent dashboards and interconnected systems that know what’s going on before you do.  Now more than ever before, it’s up the accounting and finance professional to bridge the gap between operational performance and financial reporting – to move from reconciliation to forecasting and predictive analysis.

Is the CPA losing out to the MBA in today’s business world?  Perhaps in some circles.  But if you remember that each and every action in a business means money, you ultimately conclude that accounting and finance is where the action is and always has been.  Follow along with our newsletter, the Practice Development News, and the blogs Bookkeeping in Bunny Slippers, Running QuickBooks in the Cloud, and Cloud Accounting 4 Canada to keep on top of the issues, technologies, and solutions impacting today’s rapidly-changing business environments.  We’ll continue to deliver the information and intelligence you need to help make your business, and your client businesses, smarter.  Maybe we’ll even beat IBM at making the world smarter… one small business at a time.

Make Sense?

J

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