There was a strangely business-y frame of mind to the Accrual World Team morning catch-up today. 

It all started with tongue-in-cheek question: “Do you think accountant’s get nervous when they hear the words ‘Lord’ and ‘Carter’ in close proximity?” as one of the more technically minded members of the team joined the dots together on the implications of a report by another Lord Carter. 

We’re obviously firm believers in technology, but we do think that there’s a very big shift around the corner and wonder if accountants are prepared? It’s all well and good to talk about SaaS models for accountants, but are they ready for their client becoming truly digital in their business practices? 

Lord Stephen Carter’s interim Digital Britain report paints a picture where accessible and fast technology finally becomes a push rather than a pull factor. Once that happens it’s realistic to expect that the average home, small business and cost cutting firm will quite happily start to embrace the ‘cloud computing’*  concept once they realise that it can be so much easier and cheaper.

The real question is what does this mean for the way we receive and send information? The accountant who hasn’t got a robust and effective online presence will be the equivalent of the old guard accountant who refused to play around with that “new fangled email malarkey” back in the 90’s. Many of the larger practices are already there or heading in the right direction, but will the smaller firms be able to get away with hoping that their client remains a luddite? 

Of course it may never come to pass. A dependence on the private sector to fund this shift is the equivalent of asking someone in a desert if they can spare the last of their water, so expect lines to be drawn in the sand there. Either way, it’ll be fascinating to see the response when the next instalment of the report comes out in Autumn. 

*although whoever decided to give an intangible concept an intangible name really didn’t help the cause! Mind you… we giggled like school children when we first heard of the Nintendo Wii, so our track record’s not great.