Do accountants really want to drive the automation superhighway?
While the future of work will be more automated, changing people’s habits and mindsets takes time and vendors must find a way to communicate the value they generate.
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To sum up the situation in a nutshell ......... automation is definitely not automatically better.
As always, technology is a just a tool to help us with our decisions and is not there to dictate to us as to how we make those decisions.
The salesmen either needs to re-attend the training school or find another career, as he broke the cardinal rule in sales ... best expressed as "Walk a mile in my shoes".
Or as I recall from some management training film (video arts?) in the past:
Prospect to Sales exec "Well that's obviously an excellent solution to a problem - that fortunately I don't have. Maybe you'd better find someone who actually has it"!
Automation is always best when it occurs naturally and not forced. The choice should always be there.
I have had a quick read through the report and wonder why a complex report like this was required to arrive at the same conclusions that we have known for years.
Quite unbelievable really.
As with all industries accountancy practices come in different shapes and sizes.
The software you use and the type and volume of customers that you support, all have a bearing on your ability to apply automation.
So I have sympathy with the difficulty accountants have in identifying suitable opportunities for automation.
What I do not understand, is why so many do not try to better understand or use what they already have.
I remember showing some accountants how to use a PivotTable, I was like Tesla reborn or showing someone fire for the first time!!!!
So many simply don't ask for help, to look for a better way.
I suspect some rely on their instinct and experience....that tech in whatever form is not an improvement, either because it doesn't address a problem, or it requires the user down a pathway they are well aware they don't have the skill set for.
I took my car into the garage recently, the battery was flat (I thought, based upon my motoring experience rather than motor mechanics skills)....of course it has that many electric gadgets that they had to connect it to a computer to trouble shoot the problem....I paid £60 for it to tell me the battery was the problem....
Got me thinking, perhaps an alarm to indicate low battery output would be useful....ah technology....who would be without it.....
There is a single answer but it is not being achieved. Correct automation is wanted. The suppliers of automation will, unless and until they understand that, then deliver on it, be left in the dark.
Automation will come eventually, imho accountants' reluctance is often more about their clients' ability to use than their own- whilst I may be getting on I have still not come up against a bit of accounting software I am incapable of learning, but I roughly understand debits and credits, catch is I know what my clients were like, know a fair few of them would struggle and know if they made mistakes they might well not spot and if they did spot would likely make a hash correcting.
Once the older generation who did not get taught to use excel/word/powerpoint etc at school all retire thinks likely will be much simpler. (No idea about E & W but in Scotland they even have a computer literacy qualification they get awarded typically in first or second year of secondary) but until that time all schemes for the great British public to do their own bookkeeping using apps etc is likely to be an error strewn shambles.