John Stokdyk has some early findings of an ongoing survey currently underway at TSG. The findings are fascinating (and disturbing) for several reasons. Rather than repeat what’s already been found I’ll concentrate on a few disconnects:
A third of the early respondents identified lack of IT skills as a major source of pain and expense. This skills shortage was more acute for businesses (39%) than accountants in practice (31%), which was reflected by other survey responses which showed that businesses tended to take a more strategic view of technology than their business advisers.
I’m not quite sure of the connection here between skills shortage and strategic vision. The Sage Pulse report I commented upon last week said that business respondents overwhelmingly consider their accountants as important or critical to the business. If TSG is correct, then the same is not true from an IT perspective where a strategic view about technology can be the difference between good and bad choices.
Later, John says:
In contrast to accountants, several businesses wanted to see evidence of tangible benefits before they invested. When they did spend money on IT during the past year, 86% of businesses came in on or under budget, compared to 67% of accountants.
In other words business is almost 25% better at managing IT spend than their professional counterparts. That’s appalling when you consider that Sage sees the professional market as a prime channel to business. It also indicates an appalling lack of project management skills. But then I’d expect that from a profession that’s immersed in billing on hourly rates rather than on the basis of value delivered. It also dovetails well with comments made by Francince McKenna about the state of technology readiness among the Big Four. More from John:
Managing directors of commercial businesses were more likely to view IT as critical to the business (42%) than their financial director colleagues (33%), while practitioners took a more relaxed view about it, with 30% citing technology as “very important” rather than critical.
Professional accountants both in business and in the profession have appreciably less of an understanding about the value IT can deliver back to the business. This bit I can get. In my experience, professionals look at IT as an alternative to pen and ink rather than considering productivity gains. There is clearly a ways to go before professionals are up to speed on issues like cost reduction, utility computing and other value adds that can be obtained through judicious choices.
All of which begs the question – how the heck can business trust professional accountants to recommend IT solutions when a significant majority are not on the same IT planet as their business counterparts? This must be a matter of educational concern.
