We’re seeing and hearing from our clients that some of them have been taken by surprise by the recent and quick move to lock down in Australia.
Despite providing pretty much the same compliance services to the public, remote work for firms has been a huge range from “not a problem” to “very difficult”.
For more progressive firm owners who started off in the digital age, everything is already up on the cloud, and the links between the applications already operational. Things already work, and apps already talk to each other. Working from home is probably pretty much similar to how they usually work, except without a Barista making that great morning coffee.
For firms that have been in business for longer, and with owners that have been resisting change, the shock of working from home has been massive. Some accounting firm owners are letting their clients know that there will be delays in work.
When we mention “resisting change”, this means either passively or actively refusing to adopt new ways of working. Passively resisting change involves a lethargy to push clients onto new cloud apps and packages, which (lets face it) allows your customers to be more competitive. And it means the same desktop/server legacy systems are present in the firm’s office.
Actively resisting change, yes we’ve seen a few of those. We’ve spoken to one accounting firm owner who said he resisted computerisation in the early 00’s and was resisting outsourcing, but finally contacted Odyssey to assist. Change is hard to hold back.
Many accounting firm owners should be taking this time to step away from the compliance work, and work on the future of their firm. Fix up the systems that are broken, implement new systems, look at new service offerings, forecast where the opportunities are going to come from in the next 1-12 months when businesses restart, look at how you can assist current clients in this difficult environment, and reach out to current clients more than usual.
And remember, if you have a backlog due to relocation to a remote location, don’t forget Odyssey can assist with some ad-hoc work to give you the time to help your clients in this critical time.
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