Last week I spoke with Will Parker, country manager for AccountsIQ, an on demand accounting provider I’ve been quietly following for a while. In development in Ireland over the last four years, AccountsIQ is now ready for the UK market. I was interested to see how the company plans on positioning the service given they are playing directly to the accounting professional audience.
Will says they are positioning this somewhere around an Exchequer or AccessAccounting rather than further up the food chain. That should provide them with a sizeable market to attack. The question is how easy they will find it to persuade the professionals upon whom success depends.
AccountsIQ has something of an edge because it was developed by partners from Farrell Grant Sparks (FGS, one of Ireland’s top five firms. They know the professional mindset. That should make it easier to sell the concept. Most recently, they’ve developed a relationship with Allied Irish Bank which allows them to automate the allocation of payments made via the bank. This removes a sizeable chunk of duplicated drudge effort. AccountsIQ has also developed some of the processes required for franchise operations as a first step towards verticalization. That is to be welcomed because the future of ondemand accounting is very much that of ensuring eearly entry into prime verticals.
The combination makes for a good way to differentiate in the market. However, they will need to partner carefully in order to ensure that the professionals they team up with are able to onboard clients. This is where the real effort comes in but has the potential to provide the most effective way to acquire clients.
The difficulty lays in getting professionals to understand the value of providing two way on-demand access. If Mark Lee is correct, there is a long way to go.
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