A Poll – Making Uni Students MORE Job Ready

After writing my last post I thought more about what makes an accounting student job ready when completing their degree. And it became very clear that if they work while completing their degree they not only learn the skills required while at Uni they reinforce those skills obtained as they are using them every day (well most of them)

I was a product of working full time and studying part time while completing my degree. One year full time and 3.5 years part time. So 4.5 years all up.

When I worked full time and studied part time at night my rate of learning increased dramatically.

Without even researching the usual impacts, I wonder what would happen if government encouraged part or full time work with part time study by offering incentives to students or employers or both? HECS/HELP reductions for students ? Grants for employers? Payroll Tax concessions? Work Cover concessions?

I know these exist for apprentices for many trade based businesses but I have not come across many if any for professional organisations wanting to employ uni undergraduates (so happy to be made known of these).

What would happen if a student was able to earn more quicker and pay back their HECS/HELP debt faster. Surely that would come from having more skills, thus helping their employer grow, thus helping the economy grow ? I know these are some pretty out there comments but in these changing times where more and more HSC leavers and international students are going to Uni we need to think outside the box to ensure they are able to help the economy at large prosper with the skills they have obtained in their degree faster.

So here is a poll. Two questions…Yes or No answers. Love to know your thoughts.

Macquarie Uni pioneering changes to benefit accounting students

On Thursday evening I was invited to attend a welcome function for the Guest Speakers / Industry Professionals that are part of the new unit being run by Macquarie University titled ACCG315 – Accountants in The Profession. I have been asked to be one of the first batch of Industry Professionals, representing the SME space of accountants and public practitioners.

Along with myself, there are representitives from all strands of the profession. Big Four, Publicly Listed entities, Commerce, Banking, Not for Profit & Government as well as CPA Australia. (side note, I wonder if the ICAA was invited?)

The aim of the unit is to expose final year accounting students to as many of the different parts of the profession that it can over the course of the unit. It hopes to help the students identify which parts of the profession will suit their particular skill sets and interests. It will give them the opportunity to perform a skills gap analysis on themselves as they prepare to make the transition from student to employee.

They will be spoken to by industry representatives in a lecture format and then complete personal course work and a group assessment which is marked in part by the industry reps as well. Essentially they will be being assessed by those persons and organisations who may one day be their future employers if they chose to follow the career of an accountant. This will surely provide both students and university staff with a fresh perspective on what us industry professionals are expecting of our new graduates when we employ them.

Overall the unit hopes to make graduates more “job ready”. As many in the profession know graduates of accounting degrees, whilst armed with good technical and theoretical knowledge, lack any real hands on skills and the investment required to be put into a new graduate in terms of the job training to get them “job ready” and able to complete work efficiently is quite large.

I am hopeful that this is just the start of University degrees having a greater focus on developing practical skills as well as teaching the important theoretical skills in a subject area and building an undergraduates critical thinking skills. Hopefully this greater industry participation filters down into earlier degree units. For example, Accounting 1A and 1B in the commerce degree at Mac Uni are completed in year 1. By graduation, most employees have forgotten the fundamental basics of how to perform a bank reconciliation, which is mainly because since year 1 they have not had to perform another one (so really, no fault of their own). !

A number of focus groups I have participated in have asked what is a barrier to employing a new graduate and the lack of practical skills is always my answer. I go on to add that it is more cost effective to employ an undergraduate student and develop them that way (even at the risk of losing them when they have finished their degree) than it is to employee a new graduate who has a high starting salary expectation.

The Unit kicked off this week and the first round of industry speakers starts soon. I will be speaking on April 10th. I’ll post some regular update on how the unit is going as the weeks go on.

From Accountant to Business Advisor – Market your Firm in the Cloud

From Accountant to Business Advisor – Market your Firm in the Cloud.

A very interesting article from the WorkflowMax blog. Quite a detailed look at how the traditional accounting firm can and should make the move to become a “firm of the future” to avoid becoming stale and out of date.

It opens by challenging what the role of the accountant will be if and when automation takes away much of what a traditional accountant does. What is a traditional accountant you ask…..it is one who relies upon the compliance driven model to bring business to their door year after year. What will happen when business owners realise that many of the cloud accounting applications now coming onto the market will allow them to look after this compliance process themselves ?

As I have noted many times before in my articles, the traditional accountant must change and begin to build a true advisory business using the smart technology available and deliver it to these business owners in an efficient and effective manner. This is where they will be able to add value to their clients. This will allow them to use the business advisory skills they have acquired over the years and not simply be data entry clerks, filling out forms and basically being a middle man between businesses and the tax department. This will allow them to run a real business.

The article is actually a road map or action plan that many accounting firms could use to kick start their transformation.

Accounting industry technology trends – a collection of articles from the past month

As there are many articles being written each and every day on the disruption occurring in the accounting industry thanks to technology shifts I have decided to collate and post a select collection of them each month and provide some commentary on them.

Four this past month have really focused on what is happening to the role of accountants and how it is rapidly changing.

It is obvious that the change is driven by the technology now available. Automation is making the data entry process easier and quicker and even non-existent in many cases. This we all know.

But what about the human element ? Part of the change is coming from clients demanding that their accountants start utilising this technology and so the “traditional” accountant is adapting as best as they can to meet this shift in consumer demand often from a self preservation point of view more than anything else.

But the other human element is the tech savvy accountant creating the modern practice from scratch or re-engineering their existing firm to become a modern practice. Taking the time to brand themselves as “cloud accountants” and using this as a point of difference in their marketing to attract those business owners and clients of other firms whose accountant hasn’t responded to the market shift.

Here they are:-

“Why an algorithm wants your highly skilled job”. Talks generally about how technology could take jobs away from humans…and accountants have a 94% probability of being replaced by computers !

http://www.smh.com.au/business/why-an-algorithm-wants-your-highly-skilled-job-20140120-31454.html

And the next….

“A new breed of accounting firm”. Lucy Danon from Xero in the UK describes the shift she is seeing happening in the traditionally conservative profession in the UK, something that is being replicated around the globe.

http://www.xero.com/blog/2014/01/new-breed-accounting-firm/#more-39860

And one focusing on our friends at the ATO

“ATO to Automate 4.5 Million Individual Tax Returns, Starting from 2014”. BoxFreeIT’s editor Sholto Macpherson reports on comments made by the ATO on its plans to liberate individual tax payers from any significant burden at tax time. ie, auto filing of tax returns.

http://boxfreeit.com.au/2013/12/17/ato-to-automate-4-5-million-individual-tax-returns-starting-from-2014/

My specifc thoughts on this…… How will this impact the profession? Of these 4.5million returns, 2 million are prepared by Tax Agents. At even a cheap $100 per return, that is a lot of lost revenue to the industry. How will it react ? I think it will put downward pressure on fees as those accountants/tax agents who no longer have individuals to focus on start offering cut price corporate tax return preparation services in an effort to keep their heads above water. Many small businesses who see no value with their higher priced accountant will take up this cheap service, leaving larger firms with falling revenues. The only way for larger firms to combat this is to use technology to streamline their processes but also to be able to provide higher value advisory services in a more cost efficient manner to their clients so that they do not lose these clients to cheaper service providers.

And the last one from industry commentator Dennis Howlett @dahowlett who I did a video interview with in 2012 which also appeared on the Xero Blog

“Time to reboot the accounting profession”. The article looks at how the new players in the market are disrupting the incumbents. However it goes on the challenge if the new vendors can sustain this disruption.

http://diginomica.com/2014/01/13/time-reboot-accounting-profession/

All the articles support the overriding theory that change is occurring thanks to technology and detail how different parts of the market/industry from consumer, to supplier, to regulator are responding.

Check back mid March for my next collection of articles and my thoughts on their content.