Article: Tech Radar

Thomas G. Stephens, Jr., CPA, CITP, CGMA

Technology’s never-ending march to “faster, cheaper, and smaller” shows no signs of slowing. As a result, today’s successful organizations must embrace a technology plan that offers premium performance, supreme security, and amazing adaptability – all on a tight budget. How can we accomplish this task while operating within the confines of tightening budgets? This article addresses the items that should be on your tech radar to help you and your team succeed in an ever-changing environment. Specifically, we will address five technologies that should be on your tech radar today.

Automation Everywhere

In an era of labor shortages, automation is a critical technology that virtually all organizations must embrace. Automation tools allow team members at all levels to use technology to automate rote, repetitive tasks. A handful of the many examples of automation tools that are ready for “prime time” today include:

• Scanning accounts payable bills directly into accounting software
• Using tools such as Power Automate to automate approvals and routing documents throughout the organization
• Creating “digital plumbing” pipes to integrate Cloud-based applications from different publishers
• Linking client’s accounting software applications directly to tax software to automate data entry into tax returns

The benefits of automation should be obvious, including time savings, improved accuracy, faster processing speeds, and freeing team members’ time for more valuable tasks. So, if your organization has been slow to embrace this technology, now is the time to get on board!

Everyday Productivity Tools

Standard, everyday productivity tools such asMicrosoft 365, Google Workspace, andZoho One offer tremendous opportunities for improved productivity. Yet, most team members remain unaware of many productivity-enhancing features of these services. For instance, most Excel users remain unaware of critical tools such as Power Query and Power Pivot, both of which have been available for over ten years. Further, newer functions and features such as dynamicarray formulas, XLOOKUP, TEXTBEFORE, TEXTAFTER, TEXTSPLIT, and TEXTBETWEEN remain unknown to most Excel users and, therefore, unused. Likewise, many Google Workspace subscribers don’t know how to take advantage of the communications features in the platform.

Similarly, many organizations using Zoho’s Books accounting platform have not enabled the customer and vendor portal solutions available with the service. Adding insult to injury in these three examples is that subscribers already pay for these features. Yet, failing to use the tools causes the ROI on their subscriptions to be depressed. Of course, the remedy to this situation is understanding your productivity platform’s features and implementing the tools that make sense for you and your team.

Artificial Intgelligence

Perhaps the most talked about technology today is artificial intelligence (AI). While many questions still abound regarding AI, there is no doubt that embracing AI is a critical consideration for almost all organizations today. However, much of what is labeled “AI” isn’t 
 AI, at least not if your definition of AI means that computers are capable of “thinking” and “reasoning.” Nonetheless, if your AI definition includes “machine learning” (ML), AI is alive and well today.

With the AI tools available today – such as Bard and ChapGPT – you can easily find answers to questions, learn how to perform specific tasks, and even write computer code elements. Moreover, you can even use these tools today to help you craft responses to tax notices and prepare engagement letters. AI users can also create music, novels, and movie and television scripts with today’s AI tools. Soon, look for AI to help with situations involving more creative “thought,” such as optimization scenarios and income tax planning. Also, look for Microsoft 365 Copilot to assist you with tasks such as creating replies to email messages and generating more compelling PowerPoint presentations. All told, AI might be the most exciting technological development to appear since the PC. Of course, security and privacy issues need resolution, but these should be manageable and allow business professionals of all types to improve productivity with AI.

Security and Privacy Tools and Strategies

Beyond the security and privacy issues that may exist with AI, “traditional” security and privacy concerns remain. In sum, we can’t realize all the benefits of today’s technologies if we can’t manage data security and privacy. Of course, many of the traditional tools and approaches remain viable and necessary – passwords, anti-malware tools, encryption, etc. However, newer tools and strategies offer elevated security and privacy options and, equally important, ease of use at the end-user level. For example, Zero Trust Security Models continue to gain traction as more organizations move to Windows 11. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is now mainstream and eliminates over 99% of authentication risk, according to Microsoft. In sum, while security and privacy risks continue to evolve, effective responses to these risks and preventive measures also continue to grow, helping us to mitigate risk to prudently acceptable levels.

The Cloud Rules!

And finally, Cloud-based services and applications continue to grow in stature and subscribers. Imagine a day in the relatively near future when you will log in to your Cloud-based subscriptions to gain access to all your applications and data. Of course, this would mean no more local servers, no more software installed locally, and no more headaches associated with managing a local IT infrastructure. In this scenario, you and your team can work well if you have a reliable and reasonably fast internet connection.

Not only does this scenario offer potentially reduced costs and improved reliability, but it also addresses and embraces work-from-anywhere strategies. The reality of a Cloud-ruled IT environment is probably much closer than you may already realize. For example, consider the number of Cloud-based tools you already use – accounting, tax, workflow, collaboration, business intelligence, customer relationship management, etc. In fact, there’s a good chance you complete 50% or more of your daily work through Cloud-based tools already! As that number approaches 100%, think about the cost savings and simplicity offered by not having to install, maintain, and secure a traditional server and local area network!

Summary

Our tech needs continue to change, driven by market conditions, technology innovation, business needs, and team member preferences. As businesses moved from mainframe computers to individual PCs to devices connected to local area networks, they will change in the future, too. Therefore, we must ensure that several key technologies are on our tech radar screens today. Among the critical tech tools that should be on your tech radars today are automation, productivity tools, artificial intelligence, security and privacy technologies, and the ever-growing presence of the Cloud.