Is Accounting Prudence holding you back from evolving your organisation?

I read a very insightful Gartner report today “CIO’s must possess five key characteristics to lead and deliver on digital transformation “,

In the report there were two characteristics that really illuminated for me, both the conundrum facing prudent accountants, and the missed opportunities in misconceived cloud accounting adoption.

Apoorva Chhabra who developed the research opined that the first key characteristic is to be a Neophiliac –to have a tendency to like anything new, a love of novelty.

You can understand that tendency from a CIO perspective, but what about from an accounting perspective. Are we engineered to love novelty or new technologies – or are we prudent and sensible? Do we prefer to deal with facts, with numbers, and may we be somewhat averse to risk?

So how does the genetic prudence and caution of an Accountant marry with being early adopters of the latest digital True-Cloud accounting technologies?

You want to take advantage of the latest advances in technology, but you also want tried and tested providence and stability. It’s exceptionally rare that the twain shall meet, however we believe we can offer that right balance in iplicit.

Accounting has evolved from paper ledgers to Dos, to Windows, to early web software, to True-Cloud digitalisation.  The perfect combination is the latest technology backed by industry experts with decades of proven ability in developing and delivering accounting solutions.

As someone who started in their accountancy journey in the 80’s using red hardback ledgers, I can understand the dichotomy of prudence V’s the desire to use innovation to push the boundaries. The prudence can now be rewarded, fear can be removed, the risks mitigated, and the benefits assured.

But what of the reason for digital change in the first place? Apoorva suggests that one should never consider digital to be the outcome – Digital is a means, not an end!

This sounds all to simple to be a factor, but it’s an unexpected reality that I have encountered all too often recently.

The jump to cloud or being on the cloud historically in many organisations seemed to have been at any cost. Actual functionality was traded against a panic to be in the cloud. Many organisations traded highly functional server-based systems to end up moving to far more restrictive & less flexible entry level cloud solutions with data volume limitations, speed & performance issues, or simply a functional step down.

In the worse instances, even discovering that the “cloud” software they bought wasn’t actually cloud, but pretend-cloud “hosted” software that still needed local resources and servers…

The rush to cloud as the final destination didn’t allow the time to consider the actual functionality that they wanted. They didn’t yet see cloud as a “means”, and not just an end in itself.

Other organisations chose to use cloud to simply keep doing what they did before, but now in the cloud. Why go to all the trouble to just replicate what you did before? Why not seek out the potential and opportunities that new technology can deliver? Why not review your processes, bottlenecks, operating practices? Why not challenge your KPI’s, department needs, staff needs and seek to revolutionise your organisation.

Why can’t the move to cloud not be a rallying call for revolution, to automate, to drive efficiency through assistive technology, to empower your colleagues, to be the epitome of best practice and technology adoption ensuring your success and growth into the future?

This is where adopting cloud technology, is worlds apart from choosing a True-Cloud accounting system that can be highly versatile, can be configured to exceed your needs, to surpass your expectations, and to deliver all the functionality of your highly-functional server based solutions, and so much more, digitally in the cloud.

Becoming a digital-first organisation is a foundation for the next generation of your organisation. It is what you do in the cloud that is transformational and will deliver the most reward for you, your organisation and your colleagues.

The full report by Apoorva Chhabra can be read here

Alan Connor
Managing Director
iplicit Ireland