Well, this will be my last article in the Fremantle Herald before I ride off into the retirement sunset. I have truly enjoyed composing every one of the 300 plus articles I’ve written over the past six years. Doesn’t time fly?
This week my forty-year accounting career comes to an end. It feels like yesterday that I showed up for my first day at Francis A Jones as a pimply 17-year-old.
On my brown woodgrain desk was a Commander telephone, an adding machine with paper roll, assorted stationery and much needed Liquid Paper. There were no computers on desks, and the internet, mobile phones and emails were unheard of. Office memos were typed, photocopied and hand-delivered to each desk, and when we had a client query, we rang them. Weird hey?
When we hand-wrote tax returns, we put carbon paper between two tax forms to produce an instant client copy. If you accidently put the carbon paper upside-down, as I often did, you scribbled crazy back-to-front text all over your original. We used to calculate estimated tax refunds with long-hand maths and tax rates stored in our memories.
It’s fair to say that technology has progressed somewhat since then, with emails and internet even seeming a bit old fashioned these days. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the latest development, and its rapid evolution is mind-boggling. AI is becoming to business what the smartphone became to communication – starting as a novelty, quickly becoming essential, and now completely reshaping how we interact, operate, and deliver value.
Businesses that don’t adapt to changes are likely to fail. At FAJ we cautiously adopt new technologies after careful testing, as we are currently doing with AI.
The imminent challenge for businesses is how to maximise the benefits of AI without sacrificing customer service. This is about directing AI toward low-impact customer interactions and repetitive, low value tasks, so that your team is more free for complex issues that need judgement and care.
At FAJ, we have a slogan “where people count”. We adopted this catchphrase 25 years ago, because it reflected, and still reflects our long-held belief that people are the most important element in our business. Each time we make decisions, including about technology, we assess how those decisions impact our ability to deliver on our brand promise.
I sometimes yearn for the simplicity of the good old days, without the clutter of emails, the distraction of social media, and the disarray of devices, however that’s just not how business works now.
But guess what? Retirement brings the chance to slow down, switch off, and return to life’s simple pleasures – and I’m very much looking forward to that.
by MARK DOUGLAS
FCPA
Managing Partner of Francis A Jones
www.faj.com.au