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Neil Hall, leading strategy consultant at Wavenet, provides timely advice to accountancy firms, to help solve their top technology challenges.
When I started in the technology sector, while most financial accounting was undertaken manually leading to a great deal of paperwork and vast amounts of on-site and off-site filing systems, the benefit was that there was always a detailed paper trail of every transaction. Fast forward some 40-years and all VAT registered business are required by law to keep digital records and file tax returns using compatible software. For income tax the requirements, for the self-employed and for landlords, this will be introduced from:
- 6 April 2026 for those that have an annual business or property income of more than £50,000
- April 2027 for those that have an annual business or property income of more than £30,000
These challenges for business and personal tax means that ever more people are turning to professional accountancy services to support them though the digital taxation minefield, but what does this mean for the profession?
Digitisation and technology in general have had many effects on the accounting profession, the introduction and continued evolution of technology (and accounting practices) are seen by some as simply changes to the profession that has enabled them to be a lot more efficient in billing units of time. However, technological developments have resulted in changes to the hiring pattern seeking tech-savvy staff, and the ongoing education and training of accountants in general, not only in accountancy practices but on the plethora of electronic tools and online applications now available in the marketplace.
The key tech challenges facing accountancy firms
For the technologists in accountancy, whether a CIO in a large firm, or an IT Manager or partner responsible for IT in a smaller firm, they all share similar concerns:
- Service availability – ensuring always-on services especially at critical times in the accountancy calendar.
- Systems performance – meeting staff expectations for speed, accuracy, and availability.
- Data security – ensuring that all client data, especially GDPR-related, remains secure and understanding where it resides.
- Data sovereignty – ensuring data remains within preferred jurisdictions; often unclear for SaaS applications.
- Shadow IT – the use and expansion of uncontrolled SaaS applications.
The continued evolution of online applications (SaaS) means that tech-savvy staff are accessing online applications that may quickly automate repetitive tasks and make their lives more efficient. However, this gives rise to concerns over securing and controlling access, data sovereignty, security, retention, backup, and recovery. These same challenges also exist for the DPO (or DPL) ensuring that staff are not only aware of their data management and control responsibilities but conform to the relevant legislative requirements. In addition, it should also be noted that many SaaS providers (in their small print) do not accept any responsibility for the consumer’s data, making it the consumer’s responsibility to back up their data – and they often provide no method to automate this activity.
How do accountancy firms address these common challenges?
Improving efficiency
In the accountancy business, billable minutes (time) is literally money. Optimising your operations is key to remaining competitive in today’s economic climate. Technology should be there to enable the business, not restrict it. By using appropriate and secure cloud-based solutions, you can streamline your processes, maximise performance, and minimise the risk of downtime where systems are unavailable, resulting in improvements in the overall efficiency of your staff. For example, cloud-based systems and services can help you gather and analyse data and communicate that information to your customers in a secure manner. Documents can be tracked, reviewed, and signed electronically, thus optimising your customer engagement to invoice timelines.
Enhanced collaboration
Collaboration is essential in an accountancy practice, where cross-functional teams must work together to meet customer expectations and regulatory requirements. Cloud computing provides a platform for enhanced collaboration between team members, regardless of their location. By using cloud-based collaboration tools and unified communications solutions, teams can work together on projects, share files, and communicate in real-time, improving delivery speed and reducing errors.
Customer engagement
Through cloud services, as well as collaboration internally, these communication channels can be used to collect and share data with customers in a controlled and secure manner, making it simpler to conform to regulatory compliance. Where the customer is tech savvy, activities can be reviewed and digitally signed by the customer to accelerate the point at which the client can be invoiced.
Data security
Data security is always a significant concern in any industry where sensitive customer data must, by law, be protected. Our cloud solutions are supported heavily by security measures including, but not limited to, next-generation firewalls, intrusion detection systems, encryption, and vulnerability scanning - all essential in the protection of sensitive data.
Flexibility and scalability
Seasonality can have a huge impact on demand for IT services in the accountancy marketplace, particularly at tax year-end and key budgeting periods. Cloud computing offers the flexibility and scalability required to respond to these changes in demand. Cloud-based solutions empower you to scale your IT resources without the need for additional investment, paying for what you consume, only when you need to consume it.
Managing legacy workloads
Many accountancy businesses have a range of legacy applications that are often deemed as “not cloud enabled”. At Wavenet, we have experience reviewing, provisioning, and supporting legacy workloads in cloud environments. There is no reason to be held back from cloud adoption, and we can support you every step of the way.
Continued evolution
As new applications and services come to market, technologists need to be the enabler - to say “yes” - and have processes to quickly assimilate services that add value into your technology portfolio. Having a proven methodology for accelerated assessment, ensuring any service is secure, robust and conforms to legislative requirements, and then ensuring adoption is key to containing shadow IT. Where a service does not conform, the process must document why it is excluded and then prohibit it from the company portfolio.
About the author
Neil Hall
Experienced Strategy Consultant. Digital Transformation, Automation, AI & Services Architect. I help businesses get the best value from their investment in people, process and technology, enabling efficiency, reducing risk and improving service quality.
