Your LinkedIn is inundated with posts about an endless sea of fintech companies who recently got their "Series Whatever" funding.
They're coming for the old legacy companies who haven't figured out how to roll artificial intelligence into their archaic platform that everyone still uses since changing feels like it would be a major headache.
They're also coming for their competitors who don't have the talent that they have or features that they're thinking about which will make your life, as the customer, so much easier and more efficient.
They're all "transformational" and going to totally change the way you think about your job, make you "ready for the future" and prepare you to take on "tomorrow's challenges."
Yes, these are all sarcastically in "air quotes" because they're the same marketing buzzwords we've seen on every piece of advertising material from nearly all these tech companies.
It's also the reason why they all continue to struggle to actually get adoption of their new technology, even with deep pockets from VCs and PE firms, and even with some of the smartest and most talented teams on the planet, they treat marketing like a playbook that can just be copied and pasted company to company, industry to industry.
People say accountants just repeat the same things over and over again, but at this point, I'm pretty sure most marketing executives SALY more than we do! But I digress … .
All of this leads to us being overwhelmed by the number of options that exist to choose between.
We know things are changing. We know the role of accountants will be different. We know our skill sets and technologies need to evolve. What we don't know is what basket we should put our eggs in, and we don't really have the time or flexibility in our profession that many other professions do of "failing" — because failing has serious implications.
In entrepreneurship, you're encouraged to fail fast, learn and try again. The worst case is you learned a lesson and are out some time and money.
In accounting, if you followed this logic, you'd have taxes not being properly filed, compliance being not adequately submitted, and financials not being timely issued. Forget about just the individual legal worst cases; there could be rippling mass economic effects.
And that's why we are so hesitant to adopt new technologies, no matter how many SOC compliance certifications or media publications the company has! The reason we don't choose options quickly in the accounting profession is because of the risk that comes with uncertainty. It's also the reason many of us stay in public accounting longer than we desire — the path to success is straightforward, predictable and nearly guaranteed.
What we are left with is being paralyzed by infinite directions to go in, and no clearcut solution.
If there's someone who understands paralysis from analysis, it's me.
It's sort of par for the course when you're a jack of all trades, master of none. Good at everything, the best at nothing. It leaves an endless list of options on the table.
So what should you do, as an accounting professional, aware that you need to make a choice, yet being unsure of which choice is right?
Reflection
It starts with looking inward and recognizing where you and your company are currently. You can't be afraid of asking tough questions about what the trajectory of your role, department and company will be.
- Are you a small business with lots of flexibility or are you an enterprise with rigid protocols that are tough to get around?
- Will you be looking at global expansion in the upcoming years?
- Are you settled into your role looking to get through until retirement, or are you envisioning the future of the company under your management?
- Is the company leadership excited by the idea of downsizing headcount while expanding operations?
- Are the regulatory requirements that you'll be facing going to be different based on where you're heading?
All of these answers can help you anticipate what your needs will be, which will help you filter out products that don't meet those needs.
The needs of corporate controllers, fractional CFOs, bookkeepers, tax practitioners, firm owners and start-up team builders are all vastly different — yet most marketing material identifies "accountant" somewhere in your title and throws everything they have at you, regardless of applicability.
The goal is understanding what is most important to you.
Research
Now that you know yourself, what is important to your team and company, and what you want that will make you more successful (however that looks in your eyes), you need to be proactive.
If you wait for the inbound calls, they'll go exactly as you expect.
Some young salesperson — likely one who never made it as deep into your career path as you — giving you a pitch on how you could do your job better. Oh, the irony.
This is of no disrespect to salespeople — they hustle in a relentlessly difficult field — but selling something highly technical to deeply technical professionals cannot and should not be as easy as convincing someone to buy something they don't need. Unlike the selling rule of thumb, which is "people buy off of emotions," in accounting, there are not emotional buyers — it's logic-based decision-making.
There is plenty you can learn from the fintech company website, from talking to a salesperson, and booking a demo. They know their product and they know the benefits it has. But as the good professional skeptics we are, we also know that anybody doing outbound sales at a company is going to have a natural bias — that's why the best salespeople don't try to oversell.
So that's why research becomes important (and why I always advise companies to simply make information available, rather than to shove it into prospective customers' faces).
- Does the technology need to have certain compliance requirements?
- How long have they existed and is there a major risk of the startup running out of capital and no longer being able to support the product?
- How easily can it be implemented, and can it be done at the same time that you're using your current system?
- What are the credentials of the people actually building the product and company, and can they be trusted?
Since you've reflected, you know what you're looking for. You know the questions to ask. You know what the needs of your job, team and company are, and you'll be able to enter conversations from a point of leverage.
Flip the narrative so you have the power. You're not getting sold to — you're looking for something to buy.
Treat the comparison analysis like an audit. Don't just consider the benefits listed on the packaging, but understand the short-term and long-term implications of every scenario.
Peer community feedback
We care a lot about what other people think. Not just about how they perceive us, but about how they perceive other things.
Generally speaking, an estimated 93% of buyers consider reviews when making purchases.
When someone leaves a product review, they really have nothing to gain from it, other than informing the rest of the world about their opinion (people love sharing opinions). So you're likely to get more authentic, honest feedback.
Similarly, our personal and professional networks are powerful tools, and they offer us the best form of marketing that exists: peer-to-peer word of mouth.
Think about it — you need the siding on your house done. You can just look online or wait for an ad to appear about a local shop … or you can ask your colleagues who they've used and how satisfied they were. It's the same with fintechs. Having reflected, you also know what specific inquiries to make about their experience.
There are enough comparable business operations out there that you can easily find and connect with someone at that organization who is actively using the product(s) you're evaluating. You can bond over shared struggles and discuss the things that are important to each of you for your job functions.
This is the main selling point of conferences, by the way — meeting with other professionals in similar jobs as yours, and getting direct, trusted, authentic and genuine opinions from open, honest and transparent discussions. It's not the person onstage who you blindly follow (although the information is great); it's the conversations you have afterward that move the needle in your decision-making process.
I encourage everyone to maintain a strong community in their job realm or areas of interest because this is the best and most useful way to understand what making a fintech choice will look like for you. Again — and I can't stress this enough — being able to pinpoint your questions based on your reflective exercise maximizes the clarity you'll have on if a solution is right for you.
The right technology choice is built on trusting it has done and will continue to do what you need it to first and foremost.
The takeaway
Ignore all of the noise that your social media is flooded with, and evaluate the technology based on functionality and durability.
Nobody would ever argue that saving time and money by implementing a new piece of technology, objectively, is not worth whatever the investment cost is.
What is mission-critical in accounting functions, however, is that the technology will do what it says it will do. Period.
So don't get bogged down by pricing or sales negotiations. Eliminate all of the distractions and focus your attention on identifying the solution you can first and foremost trust. The rest will make itself clear.
