Ten years ago if you wanted to rent a movie, you drove to your local blockbuster and picked up a DVD—or a VHS, depending on how old school you ran your tech. You then had three–to–seven days to watch it, depending on the popularity of that particular flick before having to return it to that wall slot sometime before its due date, which usually took place at 6 am the day after it was due on your way to work because you had forgotten.
It was comfortable. It made sense. But it was inefficient.
Today a process that took around an hour, and that’s assuming you knew what film you wanted, where it was in the store and that it was in stock, takes a few moments online. You simply head to Netflix, find your film and start watching. And if it’s not on Netflix, you go to YouTube, iTunes, Amazon or some other film vendor where you can rent or purchase it with a click of a button.
Change in industries
The entertainment industry isn’t the only industry that’s changing—they all are.
Technology is changing the way we see, think and do in every industry out there across the board. We can do things faster, more accurately and, in a lot of cases, with much more ease than we have in the past.
A few weeks ago Shift Accounting participated in Henry Schein’s The Performance Series event. It was an exceptional session that was jam-packed with value and a series of great presenters.
There was a consistent theme throughout the event, change. And that got me thinking about how the accounting and bookkeeping industry has changed. More importantly, how they’ve changed to serve you better.
The changing accounting industry
It used to be that at month end you’d print and gather all of your important accounting documents and month-end papers. We’d send a driver to pick those papers up and deliver them to our office, and some six-to-eight weeks later, you’d see your financial statements. Just in time to start filing your next monthly statement… almost two months later.
While this system worked, it wasn’t very efficient. We still caught the same issues and garnered the same insights, but we were catching them late which made changes and improvements slow to come along. The quality of work was still great, but the efficiency wasn’t particularly top notch.
Accounting Today
Today, things are different. Today we get the right information fast.
Instead of paper copies, a cloud-based accounting system connects directly to your bank accounts, payment systems, and cloud-based databases. This allows us to see information in real-time. It also means that as long as you’re regularly on top of your accounting documents, there's less work for you to do!
Not only do we not have to drive over and pick up a box of papers, but you don’t have to wait four to six weeks to get the results back. You get feedback and financial insights fast enough to make changes on a regular basis. Allowing you to consistently improving your clinic’s finances.
The accounting industry has changed to provide our clients with:
- Better service overall
- More efficient work
- To reduce the manual work on the client’s end
- To provide more timely insights
Ultimately, we change to provide a better and more valuable service to our clients.
The truth about change
Change often means trying out new technologies, making your practices more efficient and working with people who can help make you better tomorrow than you are today.
As frustrating and intimidating as change can be, we change to better serve our clients. Your industry is changing, are you?