Visions of the future

Accountants tend to be a conservative lot and there are still accounting departments where the most modern piece of equipment is a manual typewriter, says Richard Neal of Administration for Businesses.

Whether it is dinosaur tendencies or resolute cynicism, is it any wonder the profession has held back from total immersion in labour-saving gadgets. Technology is changing so fast now that it is difficult to distinguish genuine advances from mere gimmickry.

The computer industry has been promising the paperless office for years but just look at the amount of white stuff most of us still deal with.

But even Neal admits his museum-piece vision is becoming ‘increasingly unusual as younger people who’ve been brought up with computers come in’.

The revolution won’t take place overnight but there are minor changes in the pipeline that will make our lives much easier and there’s also evidence of longer-term trends that will change the whole way we do our jobs.

Familiar office equipment is improving. One example is the advent of multifunctional printing devices. Ricoh is bringing out products that combine the functions of fax and copiers, and in some cases laser printers, all sharing the same digital technology. They are relatively inexpensive (the MV310 printer/fax/copier starts at # 2500) and don’t take up much space so you could have several in the office instead of having to traipse around with stacks of paper. Because the technology is digital it can do clever things like number copies for security purposes when circulation of a document is to be restricted.

Computer monitors are also due for upgrading. Andrew Prodromou, managing director of Delphi Information which distributes Fujitsu Plasmavision screens, predicts: ‘This technology will replace the cathode ray tube (CRT). I have a 21 inch screen on my computer that’s only three inches deep. It’s portable and it takes up less room, has fewer emissions, is flicker-free and is more restful to use than a CRT.’

Currently plasma screens cost several thousand pounds but Prodromou reckons that by the end of the decade they will be priced comparably with conventional monitors.

Input too will get easier with devices to suit all tastes. Touch-screens are already here and voice recognition is gaining ground. Laith Amiry is director of TalkWrite which targets financial customers with voice recognition products from Dragon Systems Inc. These can be used for dictating.

The computer takes speech and automatically translates it into words on the screen. The system uses dictionaries – including specialised ones for accountancy and taxation – to help make sense of what it hears.

At the moment users have to help the machine by separating out words and phrases but Amiry says the ability to process continuous speech is not far off. Voice input can be integrated into any Windows application and Solution 6 has a specially-adapted system, PerTax MP, that allows you to complete a tax return by voice.

Of course not all of us will work in offices. Teleworking is starting to take off. and it will soon be possible to do video-conferencing over the Internet although current capacity or bandwidth limits the picture quality.

Carl Koppel is vice president of White Pine Software Inc which develops software for conferencing and collaboration over the Internet. By the end of this year he expects to be selling an add-on kit complete with camera for less than # 200 that will allow PC to PC conferencing. ‘These products will rapidly alter the way people communicate,’ he believes.

‘In five years’ time this could be how the telephone network is driven, not just voice transmission but also video, document, data.’

Koppel also believes that for most business users the ability to look at a document – say a spreadsheet – at the same time as a colleague is even more valuable than the ability to see their face. He sees the Internet being beefed up to support these uses better. Business-users will pay for the extra bandwidth in return for the assurance of a reliable service.

According to a recent Walker International survey of 100 finance directors, 70% of businesses expect to be using the Internet in some form within the next few years. Forty per cent expect to be using intranets, private networks that employ some of the same technology as the public Internet.

Communication links allow businesses to share information efficiently, EDI being an obvious example. Service providers are also enticing customers by offering direct access to their systems. Independent business travel agent Seaforth Travel provides customers with software that allows them to make their own bookings, tapping into Seaforth’s reservations system via a standard PC and modem.

‘You or your secretary or travel specialist can sit at your desk, look up timetables and fares, and book tickets on the spot,’ explains managing director Jenny Mills. ‘We even provide larger customers with ticket printers.’

Diners Club is working on ways to share information with its customers to help them manage expenses. ‘We’re putting together an expense reconciliation package to allow companies to create their own databases of expenses incurred on corporate cards by downloading transaction data from our central server,’ says Adrian Morgan, information product services manager. Employees can then dial into the database, download all their transactions via a password-protected process and create an electronic expense claim for submission by e-mail.

‘For example the finance department can use the analysis to negotiate discounts from suppliers,’ adds Morgan who argues that since corporate purchasing systems don’t generally go down to this level of detail the scope for making economies in travel and entertainment is often overlooked.

Probably the greatest benefit of systems like this is integration. Information can be squirted from one application to another so that everyone has a consistent view. The fact that most newish software runs under Microsoft Windows makes this technically much easier and for that reason DOS users are likely to become an endangered species. Newer products like Access Accounts are offered to PC-users on a Windows-only basis and vendors Access Accounting say there haven’t been any objections.

Another aid to consistency is groupware, software that promotes co-operative working between groups of people who may be in different functional departments and geographical locations by organising the flow and storage of information.

Walker’s survey predicts a five- to six-fold increase in the use of groupware, reflecting respondentsi belief that the finance function will work much more closely with the rest of the business.

But what effect will all this automation have on the accountant’s job?

‘I see computer systems moving from passive processor to active assistant,’ says Charles Woodgate, director responsible for marketing with Hartley Computer which produces software for accounting and practice management.

He explains: ‘In the past when you sat in front of the computer with your spreadsheet you drove the process. The computer did what you requested and no more. Now with more powerful systems and artificial intelligence features such as fuzzy logic creeping in the computer can be much more helpful. Instead of saying ‘error’ it can suggest corrections and actions by interpreting what you do.’

He sees rule-based systems usurping some of the accountant’s traditional work. ‘One of the first impacts computers had was to reduce headcount by eliminating clerical effort involved in retyping accounts. That will go further. Data will be self-reviewing so skilled staff no longer need to spend time reading over accounts, currently a large and tedious task.’

With both admin and audit functions highly automated accountants will focus on what is arguably the more rewarding aspect of the job, helping clients to run their businesses profitably. Hartley Computer is on the point of launching a system which analyses the data from standard accounting systems to provide meaningful management accounts.

This will allow even small firms to provide effective management consultancy at a very low cost. Woodgate explains: ‘We believe this is the area in which accountants will earn the bulk of their fees in the future. It will enable them to maintain a continuing positive relationship with clients instead of being a necessary evil that appears once or twice a year.’

Automation will have a similar effect on the corporate finance department making it much more business-oriented, according to Walker International’s findings. Garrey Melville, director of marketing, says: ‘In five years’ time our respondents expect to be far more involved with their organisations’ business decision-making processes. The finance department will be focused on providing value-added internal services and producing information about key performance indicators.

Finance people want to be the custodians of management information and the visionaries of the organisation. There will be a flatter organisation structure and a culture of sharing information, an idea which is disconcerting to some.’

Information is power, after all, but only if you can rely on it. As the dinosaurs would point out, there’s something to be said for waiting until other people have tried out a new technology. That way when you get it, it is cheaper and, with any luck, it actually works.’

Alison Classe is a freelance journalist.