We all know that these are tough times. Low levels of growth in the UK with even China not performing as expected. But what can we do about it?

Twinfield Invoicing from Twinfield International N.V. on Vimeo.

A couple of weeks ago I was presenting at the annual CCH conference. Unless you are an accountant this probably won’t mean much to you. It is an industry only event, albeit one run by a very large international organisation. What made it fascinating was that much of the talk was on areas that benefit all services businesses.

Topics included social media and networking together with understanding and keeping clients. All good areas for any service business to sharpen up, but the conversations I had together with the other presentations left me thinking more and more about a quite different area.

I was struck by how technology was being used to automate service tasks. Whilst the PC has been mainstream for over two decades, it is not until the rise of internet connected smart devices that we’ve seen the real potential to automate services. A trip to the airport now does not require a queue for a boarding pass – your mobile boarding pass is all you need – taking out and automating a task that was once completed by a check in assistant. The same thing is happening with the internal accounting for service companies. Take a look at the new video from Twinfield for sales invoicing in this post to understand more fully.

Our own experience backs up the video. We’ve been using cloud accounting for over 6 years and found it to be extremely reliable and easy to use. The approach gives a more efficient and better way of doing things. Times may be tough, but with these new approaches we have the tools to make any service more efficient, improving the service for the client and making the work easier for the provider.