The past two weeks I’ve been addressing perceived threats to the bookkeeping industry. Click here if you missed them. This week is about the perceived threat of disruptive innovation. What is disruptive innovation? Wikipedia says that it’s an innovation that helps create a new market and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market.
So what’s the disruptive innovation in the bookkeeping industry? Online accounting software. I often hear bookkeepers express concerns that Xero and other online software herald the end to the bookkeeping industry. The sky is falling!
The threat is that the data entry won’t take as long and if you are charging by the hour your income will be reduced. There is also anecdotal evidence that some Accountants have told their clients they don’t need you anymore and they will look after everything.
Unlike the first two perceived threats I’ve spoken about which you really have no control over - Accountants bringing the bookkeeping in-house and offshore processing, there are a couple of things you could do about the perceived threat of online software.
You can put your head in the sand and hope it will go away, or you can ride the wave. The fact is that this new technology won’t go away and trying to ignore that fact and continue with “business as usual” is likely to be more harmful than the perceived threat of the technology itself.
So what can you do about it? Embrace what the new technology has to offer. Reinvent yourself and how you charge your client. Position yourself not as “just the bookkeeper doing data entry” but as the BAS Agent who is passionate about empowering business owners around their finances. You will become an integral part of your client’s business by offering additional services and utilising the add-ons that are available with the technology.
Article by Debbie Roberts
