A key deliverable for the 2020 Good Bad Ugly technology poll was to identify the main technology stack across different revenue groups in the profession….Here are some of the key insights from the latest report:
In addition, identify the popular third party apps and services provided by key technology suppliers to the profession. Recent feedback on the Technology poll from participants included not only general technology adoption but specifically ‘what do firms of similar size utilise’. As you can see from the 2020 analysis and the 250 participating firms, there are key differences between smaller and larger firms and the technology they implement. Larger firms of $4m revenue are utilising the longstanding providers such as MYOB and APS, with trends showing Xero starting to increase market share with larger firms.
Although there have been any number of technology advances in the past decade, the key challenges for the accounting profession remain:
- Fully utilising your existing systems
- Lack of integration
- Data security
These challenges can be the deficiency of the practice, industry suppliers or a combination of both.
Analysing five years of Good Bad Ugly technology data, results show that one in five firms have removed their server infrastructure during that time with now 29% of participants removing the need for a server. A clear majority of these are smaller firms generating less than $4m in revenue. Security is still a of moderate or high concern for 75% of participating firms, with most of these firms taking steps to invest in security over the last 12 months. Again, there was a clear difference in results with larger firms much more security conscious than smaller firms. Interestingly, 15% have no idea where their data is hosted?
New to the 2020 Good Bad Ugly technology poll this year was third party client add-ons. No surprise that the most popular add-ons being payroll, point of sale and inventory. A key insight was clients of larger firms were implementing a reporting add-on compared to smaller firms barely rating it as an option. Larger firms also rated significantly higher that their clients will increase the take up of third party apps over the next 12 months. Curiously, approximately 25% of participants do not actively promote or refer add-on business apps to clients, with another 20% only doing so when asked directly by clients.
Business Fitness has always been on a mission to help accounting practices boost productivity and growth, and the current environment has been a timely reminder of what we set out to do when we started Business Fitness almost 20 years ago – and that’s to help you standardise, streamline and systemise your processes. This ethos has never been more significant as we all adapt to new ways of working. We hope you enjoy the 2020 edition of the Good Bad Ugly technology poll.
2020 technology poll participants
Click Here to download your copy of the 2020 Modern Technology report