Sydney Roadshow delivers a challenge for Xero

Yesterday I was invited to sit on the Gold Partners Panel at the Sydney session of the May Xero Roadshows. As it always is, it was great to sit up there and share my story and the EFS story with my peers and give them an insight into what has made us a successful financial services firm and how leveraging the cloud has enabled us in part to do this.

Throughout the session Troy Marchant from Robson Partners, a fellow Xero firm and Count firm made some comments regarding the change process that is happening as the disruption continues and how the accountant has to change to survive.

It lead to a discussion afterwards that centered around a possible task that Xero now has as a result of having come into the accounting industry and “changing the game” and that this task is a responsibility to educate accountants appropriately with how to deal with this change and how to transform their practices to ensure they remain competitive and survive in what is going to become a very competitive industry as a result of this disruption.

I have gone on record a number of times stating that for too long our industry has relied upon the compliance regime and so I won’t repeat that here but Xero has an opportunity to further enhance its industry leading position by taking on this role to ensure that a traditional accounting firm has the tools and knowledge to adapt due to the disruption it is causing.

I firmly believe that Xero does have this responsibility and look forward to seeing how they take up this challenge. If they do answer the call it will be a win win for accountants, our clients and the industry as well as the economy in general. The “economy” you ask….how will this benefit the economy? Well, if you want to know, pose the question in the comments below and I will respond.

I’ve also added a poll below to see if people agree with my views 🙂 I am very interested to see what people think.