If you managed to attend Xerocon at the Brisbane convention centre recently, you might have noticed some pink flamingos in a ball pit, and other interesting goings on.
Certainly the new cloud providers are expanding traditional accountants mindset, and challenging the status quo of traditional compliance!
So for some it might not seem unusual on Day 1 of Xerocon for an Anthropology professor and futurist to take the stage and talk about AI and its impact on the future.
In a previous blog we’ve mentioned both Xero and Intuit have been working on releasing AI for use in their cloud packages (Xero and QBO Quickbooks online), and it seems that the presence of a futurist pushes Australian compliance firmly in that direction.
If the take on the impact of Artificial Intelligence is correct, then the change is going to be as major as the invention of the steam engine in the last century.
There’s been plenty of press recently about the automation of the SMSF audit, and the speculation that the SMSF auditors (or indeed all auditors) will shortly be out of a job, alongside the accountants who will also be out of a compliance job .. were it not perhaps for our ever increasing changes in tax legislation..
However, whatever your position on automation, it is clear if you’ve been anywhere near hands on cloud software that automation is helping complete bookkeeping and other tasks more efficiently.
Leaving aside Robotic Process Automation coming into the larger accounting firms, we should be seeing that (as promised) a growing number of repetitive tasks are being delegated to robots, and while these robots are more virtual than not, they are leaving accountants more time to look for value-added opportunities.
The above are in situ examples of what is here. Alongside this we can count things that we see that are on the cusp of implementation. Applications for Drones, driverless cars, and robots. And the reality is that the younger teenagers now (pre workforce) should be better placed to engage and utilise these new technologies.
As we enter this new age of industrialization, it’s important to recognise Compliance, like everything else, will be subject to change. Adopting and adapting to that change, will be critical for the future of Australian compliance workers, and the future of Australian compliance business owners.
