Overwhelmed by the complexity of digital transformation? This may help

‘Accountants are scared of technology’ is a prevailing narrative of accountech providers. But it’s a narrative that confuses fear with reluctance, where reluctance tends to come from having a mishmash of information thrown at them, with a good degree of technical jargon clouding the business case.

As Modulr’s chief marketer, I believe that accountech providers really need to rethink their approach to selling. ‘How automation can help accountants’ must instead become ‘how you will ensure automation helps you’. It requires a shift towards explaining each individual transformational piece, rather than asking accountants to immediately imagine the whole picture of digital transformation.

And when there’s talk of ‘total digital transformation’, it’s no wonder accountants baulk at the prospect of undertaking a complicated project. Such a project would take their attention away from business as usual, as they first try and decipher the different pieces of technology, the new way of working, and then actually learning how to use the technology effectively for the particular setup of their practice.

It’s a necessary investment as even the most reluctant industries begin to see the demanding effects of the Instant Economy; so named for being an economy in line with instant accessibility of technology, delivered at the same speed of the latest, consumer pleasing technology.

In an economy where Netflix makes remembering where you left off streaming effortless, clients of accountants may very well ask why the same standard of tech is not applied to the basics of accounting: payments. Late and missed payments are no longer tolerated by customers.

As the title suggests, I’m not about to begin dropping techy clichés or talking about abstract technological concepts and expecting you, the reader, to figure out how it applies to your practice.

Instead, I’ve identified four parts that, if implemented in tandem, constitute ‘digital transformation’.

Total digital transformation – broken up into four parts

1. Cutting time spent on low value work

Let’s start with the basics – automation frees up staff time. It doesn’t matter which industry you’re in, inefficient use of employee time will always be an expensive bug bear. It may be one that leaves employees grumbling that ‘surely there must be a better way’ or, worse, the business hasn’t yet acknowledged the particular process is dogged with inefficiency.

An example might be the rush of critical payment periods, with manual CSV exports, manual Bacs file processing or file uploads to banks.

 2. Improving data hygiene

Likewise, moving files across separate systems also runs the risk of poor data hygiene.

A common example we find in payroll is the bounce between client systems, accounting software and the bank. This not only leads to working across separate client instances, it also increases the risk of error as employees work across three different datasets.

You guessed it, we offer system consolidation. This means Sage Salary and Supplier Payments powered by Modulr offers only one source of data which keeps itself updated with automatic updates through our API gateway between Modulr’s payments accounts and accounting software – this is what the industry calls automation. It allows for digital data consistency across payments, payroll and accounts for HMRC submissions.

 3. Payment accuracy means improved client retention

Using automation to cut down time spent on low-value work and improving the data hygiene of your systems means payments can now be made accurately in a fraction of the time. It means payments are automatically reconciled between systems removing the need for staff to spend careful time checking up on payments.

And when manual payments go wrong, we all know the consequences of one too many missed or late payments for clients. It involves an angry client phone call, putting employees under pressure to make amends on the human front, spending precious time firefighting when they could be cementing relations or developing new business.

4. Improved Margins

Combined, the points above result in delivering quality service while reducing overhead in the long term.

Accurate, reliable and simplified payments can become a differentiator for your practice and business. Implementation of such a process should not involve lengthy tech training, and it’s on the technology provider to ensure onboarding is as smooth as possible. Salary and Supplier Payments is an add-on to Sage50 cloud Accounts, Sage50 cloud Payroll and Sage200, meaning, once you’re onboarded, it can be used immediately.

Modulr powers the payments infrastructure of several tech and fintech businesses. Our Payment as a Service model, provided by API, is built to equip its partners and clients for the Instant Economy, where faster, more transparent payments are increasingly becoming the norm, as the ageing payments infrastructure becomes unacceptably cumbersome and costly.

Conclusion

Laying out the constituent parts of digital transformation by pain point and benefit is a useful way of identifying the companies you need to partner with or the suppliers you need to enlist. It also helps plot out the roadmap and get the ball rolling, one part at a time, on total digital transformation.

Any comments? Connect with me on LinkedIn.