If you're a CPA in Melbourne (or a CA) and interested in SMEs, I'm talking at the CPA Australia SME group on Wed Sept 14, 2016.
Contact Andrew Cahill below. Seating is limited.
Topic: Cloud business systems: How good a solution is a system linking Xero or Quickbooks Online with a cloud-based inventory
Venue: CPA Australia
Time: 6.00 - 8.00 pm
RSVP is compulsory, seating is limited: to Andrew Cahill, Chair of the SME Interest Group (Melbourne) ajcahill
More Information:
This month we have Tim Richardson CPA speaking for us. He is a former ERP & BI developer who became a senior international finance manager working in Asia and Europe. He now runs GrowthPath. GrowthPath provides finance transformation services to corporates, and helps SMEs move to more effective finance and supply chain information systems.
About two years ago many SME owners and directors started seeking out GrowthPath for migrations to cloud-based supply chain, CRM, BI and finance solutions, probably due to the unusual perspective that my skills and experience bring.
Belying the reputation of Xero and its competitors being micro-business tools, about half of these clients are migrating "down" from traditional SQLServer-based ERPs, and often a "low-end" integrated solution such as Dear Inventory + Xero is a strong fit. Such clients are larger than you may think: they are often multi-site, multi-channel businesses with import and export supply chains, with turnover up to $25m. The capabilities of cloud systems are growing fast.
Importantly, they provide an extremely interesting IT platform exposing capabilities which only a few years ago were well beyond the budgets and internal competence of typical SMEs.
I will talk on why the owners and boards of these SMEs are taking command of IT decisions and very actively seeking out cloud solutions, and what the key wins and compromises are. Depending on time and audience interest, we may touch on what this means for CPAs serving the SME sector.
This is a no-sales talk purely designed to share my observations to fellow CPAs on a topic I find very interesting and which may contain some surprises to those unaware of how fast cloud business IT is moving.