In a (figurative) sense, this week has seen the death of one career (the PM), the discussion of amending the GST rate and the continued (and often) incredible rise of ‘Cloud’ computing.

Nowhere is cloud computing more to be seen than in the small business space. Exemplified by Xero who, from a standing start nearly a dozen years ago now claims 540,000+users worldwide, and this week, Intuit announced 33,000 clients from launching only 2 years ago.  

The expectations of an ever increasingly educated market means there are two types of vendors: those that are meeting the expectations of this educated market and those that catching up to meet it.

15 years ago the mere concept of handing over sensitive client data willingly to a third party business without a known address would have been unheard of.  In this new world, some vendors will inevitably get left behind as it is easier now than ever before for a customer to switch vendors.  If one company can gather 33,000 new clients in just 24 months, being a contender in the cloud space will be like playing a game of Jenga; one bad move and it has the potential to all come tumbling down.

Vendors of specialist corporate tax solutions such as CCH (Wolters Kluwers), Thomson Reuters along with several boutique providers have for several years delivered cloud based solutions for areas such as FBT, corporate tax preparation and indirect tax tools.  There are new vendors coming onto the market so with such a crowded space, choosing vendors can be tough; another reason why time travel was created.

If you are considering any projects involving your accounting or tax processes and would like to have independent assistance with vendor selection, connect and drop me a line.  

Alan