The challenge of technology adoption is changing

"Cloud advocate with a pragmatist eye."

Says it all, doesn't it.

Sorry Richard, a lot of us still don't trust technology and I'll give you the reason why.
Normally you have a piece of new technology, let's say the computer. So you're changing from a written system to an automated system. How long has that taken to come about? Many years. We are now asked to accept new technology without question on a constantly changing basis which gives you little time to grasp the basics. I add that the cloud is not yet proven. So, Richard, with your valued pragmatic eye contact HMRC and put them right on MTD.

I detested 'computer accounts' as they were simply unsuited to small businesses.

Then IRIS came along and I was an early-adopter as it clearly worked and saved hours.

It depends very much on the tech. A lot of it seems half-baked and disguised under a marketing word-salad, which is invariably counter-productive.

Less word-salad and more meat on the bone.

Proven technology = pen and paper, proven process = double-entry book-keeping - and proven over a period of circa 600 years.
As I see it there are two drivers at play:
1. The sheer size/complexity/number of enterprises - necessitating huge book-keeping processes that need to be executed in a constrained timeline
2. the progenitor of the timeline constraint = tax cycle.
There is a place for automation to enable these in companies that are of a size - but for other (smaller) companies there is neither need nor benefit within their own context.
BUT HMRC is characterised by 1 above and every contributor is thereby co-opted as part of the overall enterprise and must be shoe-horned into their system one way or another.
On the basis that what most [of the s/ware vendors] mean by 'cloud' is some distributed/remote system for data Storage(-as-a-service) and/or Software(-as-a-service), it is only possible where the marginal cost/performance of comms-links are generally better than UK, as a whole, offers.
The gradual insinuation of HMRC control, ever deeper into companies processes is clearly the thin edge of a wedge that I'm not comfortable with - but, commercially, s/ware providers are on a roll as HMRC is doing the selling for them - selling? I don't think so ... its an enforced purchase.
Overturning 600 years of proven practice/culture should, imho, be something that is done with great care and forethought. What we are seeing is second-rate thinking (-about, not -through), incomplete and second-rate specification by a government organisation whose attachment to reality is, at best, questionable and therefore implementation that is necessarily unstable.

Adoption of tech always comes down to two points; does it save me time (improved workflows, benefit the client), does it make me money.
After this decision, then as Andy North states to make it work, you need a "Director of Getting Things Done" in any business.
Simples.

I agree with Jon Jenkins, being asked to adopt the latest fandango, just because it is the latest fandango, is commercial madness.

This article has a good few points, but it is flawed.

The one sentence that hit the nail absolutely on the head was, “Asking accountants to implement your tool comes at the cost of fitting that tool into their workflow."

Hit the nail it does, but hit it hard enough it doesn't.

The correct question is, "Why the workflow is the way it is?"

Here's the answer.

The workflow is the way it is because it is the only way to achieve functional outcomes in spite of - in spite of! -
the best efforts of the software to impede the workflow required to achieve those functional outcomes. The software offered as a solution to part of the workflow typically ends up being the act of sabotage for the rest of the workflow. The only way to bridge the gap is... to print it out from one software and re-type it back into the next software.

Proof? Some of my purchase invoices need to be re-typed seven times to achieve all functional outcomes - from "time-stamping" the arrival of the document, to sharing it with remote authorisors, to controlling the payment batch, to paying it.

I think we need a new law, that no company is permitted to sell any software pertaining to data management or accountancy unless the majority of the board of directors of the vendor has been a qualified accountant for at least 10 years and has also been preparing basic prime books of entry of a limited company (public or private, but excluding sole traders and partnerships) for at least 4 of those 10 years. If we leave software to the IT people, no software will ever meet the blindingly obvious functional requirements of any enterprise more complex than a sole trader.

Large companies have the fat to fund a bloated and inefficient IT department and equally bloated and inefficient accounting departments. A large company thus has no vested interest to change itself: waste is affordable, so let's carry on wasting. So those of us in the Mittelstand are constantly being fleeced by either unaffordable big software that never delivers or apparently-affordable software whose compatibility with any existing workflow is so bad that it ends up being unaffordable because of all the additional hands we need to employ to type-out-type-back-in.

When I read websites of accounting software vendors, I generally find that the vendor hasn't understood that accounting software is a tool to a service provider, therefore the vendor appears to be careless with service strategy, lazy with service design and deny service transition.