Case Study
What makes a successful cloud consultant?
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Robert King has gone from accountant to cloud integration consultant with his company Integration Kings. Now achieving significant success as a technology influencer, recommending suitable software solutions that will help organisations clients run and grow their business, we ask Robert about his approach and why he believes it’s the future of accounting... A
s businesses increasingly look to cloud technology and cloud innovators continue to disrupt the rapidly ageing on-premise and hosted software market, the role of accountants is changing. Where once the focus was on tax and compliance, there’s now an increasing need for a better understanding of business processes and the technology that can help companies manage their processes more efficiently. Companies like Integration Kings are achieving significant success by becoming technology influencers, recommending suitable software solutions that will help their clients run and grow their business. We speak to Robert King about his approach and why he believes it’s the future of accounting. The journey from accountant to cloud integrator Although his background is in accounting, and he’s still a chartered accountant, Robert King prefers the term Cloud Integrator. His company, Integration Kings helps small businesses move to cloud-based applications so that 36 / Issue 14
they can run more efficiently, streamline their processes and ultimately improve their bottom line.
the data for sales, operations, reporting and accounting so that they can make decisions about their business.”
It’s an approach driven as much by personal motivation as it is business focussed: “To help someone transition out of what sometimes feels like chaos when I walk in, to fairly standard processes and best practice, is a good feeling,” says Robert. “You know that they can leverage or scale their business, to get ready for sale or other things.”
What skills do today’s accountants and bookkeepers need?
Realising the potential for working more real-time with clients, Robert started working with Xero in 2011, before starting Integration Kings in 2014. He’s always been quick to understand the changing world of business and how new technology can help: “When I was a younger accountant, I thought I was really helping a small business by getting their tax and compliance and financials together,” he explains. “My perspective now is to get to the crux of a business, to really understand it so that I can recommend the right tools to do the job successfully, and also to collect
So how do accountants and bookkeepers offer great service to clients now and in the future? Robert says: “You have to have good understanding of how to operate a business to be able to sit down and do an assessment. Over the years I’ve done a lot of reading and learned from a lot of other good business owners about what you need, the processes to run a business.” He points to one recent example, working with North Group surveyors, a business with around 30 staff who were paying around $2,000 AUS a month for a large on-premise system to manage their accounts and job costing. This represented a large overhead for their business and wasn’t returning the level of reporting they needed. After reviewing their systems and processes, Integration Kings
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