Woah, take a step back, that is a bit of an outlandish statement, but its 100% true, and i'll tell you why.

I've been living in the UK now for just over 3 months, i've been forced to make my way into a branch of my bank more times than i can count on my hands, and on top of that i've lost count of the number of times i've had to call up on the phone, then there's the issue with needing a printer, paper and providing documents with wet signatures!

Australia doesn't have a thriving fintech community because it doesn't need one, our banks are doing a great job on their own, and there's no reason for a fintech here. The Australian banks are doing a better job than any fintech could. They've got loads of great motivated people implementing loads of great ideas AND they have the financial backing of some of the country's (and world for that matter too) largest institutions.

In the UK however, is an entirely different story, their banks are useless, well and truly archaic and tragically incompetent. Theres no wonder they have so many fintech companies starting up to fix the myriad of problems they have. It's as easy as eating cake coming up with things the UK Banks do poorly and starting a business up around that premise.

Take for example the very straight forward and common task of updating your home address.

An Australian Bank

The experience with CBA (my Australian bank of choice) is as follows. Login to internet banking (i use One Login to manage my passwords but it would be just the same if you were using something else such as one password or Bitium etc, i click on the CBA Bank icon and it securely logs me in to my internet banking, not typing anything, it does it all for me. In 0.5 of a second im in, i click on my contact details and it pops up and asks for an SMS code sent to the internet banking app on my phone, i hold my thumb on the thumb scanner on my iphone and it unlocks my phone to show the code, i key it into my browser and keep going. I now add my new address details and click save, voilà, i'm done, and in under 2 mins, simple and easy. If my bank absolutely needed to post something to me (think a replacement card, because anything else they would just email and notify me) then it would be sent to my correct address from that second onwards.

Enter the UK Banks

The Lloyds login to internet banking is a joke, their systems are prohibitively complex to begin with so it's login wont allow a password management system log you in, i have to do this manually every time.

Not only that but i have to remember 2 separate passwords, so instead of using a super secure, unrecognisable password that my password manager just inputs for me i have to use very unsafe simple passwords i can easily remember off the top of my head.

Mission 1 accomplished, now i'm in, only to find after 5 mins of searching that i cant do it online, looks like i'll have to ring customer support, 20 mins on the phone later and having been transferred 3 times, been security checked and answered the same 5 questions about my account to verify its me to every one of those 3 people and then finally told, "oh you have to fill out this form and then take it to a branch", Can i complete it in PDF form and email it in? No it has to be completed with a wet signature. What do i do if i don't own a printer? Well it looks like you can't change your address then sir. So you know my address is wrong and all the statements you send to that old address will not reach me, but you will persist in sending them anyway??? time to find someone with a printer...

After a day or so i manage to find a friend who can secretly print off my form at their work and fill out the form with a pen, It feels like i may as well have found a piece of stone and chiseled my details in using a hammer and pick.

I jump on the tube and head to my nearest branch, sit in the branch for 15 mins, be called up give it to the friendly person at the counter and pass them my form, "oh this should be pretty quick to get updated sir, should only take 5 business days and it'll be all sorted for you" What!?!? so if i have anything happen in the next 5 days it'll go to the wrong place, great.

So this has taken up about 3 hours of my time, an hour of my friends time, 3 hours of employee time at the bank (assuming my form is going to be pushed around the office a few times before it actually reaches the correct person then they're going to have to input the change manually) and over 2 weeks in overall time since i moved and wanted to update my details and now i they can finally start sending mail to me at my correct address.

CBA = 2 mins
Lloyds = 2 Weeks

And people think we have a problem with our banking sector because we "don't have a thriving FinTech sector in Australia like London & the UK"

I call bullshit on that sentiment, Australia doesn't have a thriving FinTech sector because it doesn't need one.

If you're not an accountant then i can forgive you for not being quite as excited about 1 July as i am but that doesn't mean you have to fear it like the grinch coming to steal christmas... or should you?

If you're currently an expat Aussie living overseas and still have a HECS debt waiting for you when you get back home, maybe you should.

As you're probably be aware, since the last government budget, in May this year, your HECS debt is no longer going to sit there and wait for you to return any longer. It's going to come and find you wherever you are in the world.

The Government has announced that from 1 July 2016 you will be required to make repayments towards your HECS, FEE-HELP, VET FEE-HELP or TSL debt based on your worldwide income. This means that if you have a HECS, FEE-HELP, VET FEE-HELP or TSL debt and are living overseas you will need to lodge an Australian tax return for the year ended 30 June 2017 onwards. In this tax return you will need to declare your worldwide income, which means income from all sources, be they employment, dividends, rent, interest, etc from anywhere in the world, even if you are not a tax resident of Australia.

If you fall into this category (you have a HECS debt but are classified as a non-resident for tax purposes) which is becoming quite common these days. You will not need to pay Australian tax on any income earned outside Australia but your world wide income will be used to calculate your mandatory HECS repayment.

And i know what you're thinking, how can they possibly catch me all the way over the other side of the world? Well the ATO have stated that they are data matching with all major overseas tax authorities, singling out and specifically mentioning HMRC in the UK, the IRS in the USA, and IRAS in Singapore. So if you're planning on 'running the gauntlet' you have been warned, you will be caught.

Given the way in which this mechanism will operate it will result in a tax payable amount to the ATO for all people in this situation. Therefore you'd be wise to begin setting aside, in a personal savings account, the amount you will owe so that you can pay this to the ATO when it falls due.

Depending on how much you're earning overseas, and how this converts back to Australian Dollars, those earning in the range of $50,000 AUD - $150,000 AUD can expect a HECS bill anywhere between $2,000 AUD and $12,000.

As a 100% cloud based Australian accounting firm, with offices in London, Sydney & Canberra we are well positioned to assist Aussie expats living in the UK or anywhere else in the world, with these changes, so if you have any further questions or would like us to prepare an estimate for you with a savings schedule so you don’t get caught out come 30 June 2017 don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

In addition you can also get in touch with us come July 2017 and we can assist you in preparing and lodging your return back home for you too, to help take some of the pain out of this and make the impact as minimal as possible.

It's been more than one full month working remotely from London and we've well and truly found our groove. Routines are well adapted to, systems are working as they should, and all that is left to do is get stuck in and complete all the work that needs to be done.

That being said there are still new things we are learning everyday from this experience that are positioning us as a business and employer of the future.

In person or using technology?

Let it be said, there is no substitute to being there in person. Whether it's face to face meetings with clients or just being able to have you staff members come over to your desk to go through a complex problem. Regardless of the many ways in which you can manage to get 99% of the way there with combinations of video conferencing, screen sharing and phone calls, it will always be just that, only 99% of the way there.

While you may be able to "manage" relationships from afar, you can't build the same type of rapport that comes from being there in person. So from time to time, regardless of the fact you may be able to get all the work done remotely, it's great to see your clients and staff in person, whether you make a big trip to do so and it's only once a year or if you're relatively close by and you can see them more frequently, make sure you do so.

Community

People are social beings and as the rise of co-working has shown us, even remote workers, solo-preneurs and small teams crave being around other people. Being a part of a co-working space lets these people and small teams feel like they're a part of something much larger, expanding their social network. It's not just about improving your sanity though, co-working spaces are filled with other businesses and opportunities to attract new clients so it can also be seen as a way to grow your business as well, by being an active member in one of these thriving communities.

Businesses of the future

Although the future will be full of flexibility and opportunities like never before, it wont be a place where everyone works remotely or from home 100% of the time. Our prediction is that it will be somewhere in between, where people will work from the office a few days a week and from home the rest, potentially taking sabbaticals for 3, 6 or 12 months living in a new city or a foreign country, but always returning to be with their clients and workmates.

Businesses will have smaller teams, but more of them, and they'll be dispersed all around the world. There's something very appealing about having that small family like feel but at the same time being apart of something much bigger that you can still tap into if needed. You want to really know the people you're dealing with and have that family like feeling of being looked after, that they've got you back when you need it most. You don't want to be just another number in a sea of other people.

It seems like such a long time ago i was sitting in Sydney Airport, all my worldly possessions packed in 4 bags bursting at the seams, pushbike included, but not quite the kitchen sink, full of nerves and excitement, eagerly awaiting my flight to London to start this crazy next chapter.

Despite this feeling, its only actually been 2 weeks, but that being said so much has happened in this short amount of time!

From battling the other commuters on the famous London Tube to unpacking all my belongings into my new home to crunching through bucket loads of work. Everyday there are new challenges and funny differences, from the way their banking system works, to what side of the footpath they like to walk on to what food's available in their supermarkets.

One thing has remained constant though, and thats how we get all our work done. Thanks to everything we do being cloud based & paperless i've been able to move over here and continue working seamlessly, it's almost like i'm still working from Australia. Which is what we were aiming for. All the preparation and work behind the scenes in building our business the way we have, has enabled us to gain this flexibility while still providing the same consistent service to our clients without any disruption.

To achieve this my schedule has had to change a little but one of the things with routine is that once it's created it becomes very easy to maintain, so here it is a day in the life of the remote worker, working in a timezone that's the complete opposite to that of all my staff members and clients:

05:00 - Wake Up

All that fun getting ready in the morning stuff...

06:00 - Calls & Videoconferencing

I'll make all my staff & client phone calls using dialpad using my laptop and on my local Australian landline number, and videoconferencing using appear.in calling at this time means i get to call my clients from 15:00 (3pm) onwards Australian time, so i get them within their standard working day.

09:00 - Breakfast

I'll have breakfast with my housemates as they get ready to leave for work (That's one difference i've noticed coming to London and thats their late starting work day, while most people in Australia will be at their desks working by 08:30 the average Londoner wont actually be at their desk working till 09:30 - 10:00! that being said they definitely seem to make up for it with a culture of working back ridiculously late)

10:00 Check & Respond to Emails

This has been one of the greatest productivity hacks i've loved in moving over here. Due to my clients being in a different timezone they'll send all their emails during their working day and they'll just be sitting there waiting for me. I'll then get no new emails from anyone until the next day, which means i have less distractions to deal with, WINNING!

12:00 Siesta, Lunch, Walk

You'd be surprised by what a short 20 min nap can do for your energy levels in the afternoon, so before i have lunch i'll have a quick 20 min nap, i'll then hook into my packed lunch or meet up with a friend somewhere. I make it a habit to get outside every lunchtime, even if its freezing & raining, i'll still go, the walk gets blood pumping and i fee much more refreshed once i get back.

14:00 Number Crunching

Here's where i get all my technical work done, its a great solid block with no distractions that i can really get stuck into getting everything done.

17:00 Finish Work

Relax after getting all that super fun tax work done

23:00 Get some ZZZ's

Time to hit the hay ready to do it all again the next day

So there you have it, the first 2 weeks in London, working remotely from the opposite side of the world, and it went off without a hitch.

It's probably quite apt that i'm writing this, late at night, from the comfort of my bed given that content of this post.

There's exactly two weeks left until i leave on my Remote Year and things couldn't be more busy. Lots of friends & family to see before i move away, soo many last minute things to do whilst still in Australia, like renewing my drivers licence so it doesn't expire while i'm overseas, booking an extra checked bag to take with me on the plane (got my extra bag sorted 15 minutes before i wrote this, so i can check that one off the list) and a whole host of other things.

Although as planned as one can possibly be, it will always be a last minute scramble to get everything done, and make sure nothing is forgotten before leaving. I wont have a single dinner at home from now until i leave, and now all my lunches are filling up fast as well with all the amazing people i want to catchup with one last time before i leave, so it'll be goodbye to those relaxing lunches on the MCA lawn overlooking Circular Quay until i return in 12-18 months time.

That being said there'll be no such scrambling in our business, given we'd put in place all our processes ahead of time and have had them working well for quite a while now, all that's left for me to do from a work perspective is to stroll out taking nothing more than my laptop, leaving everything else in the office for when i return.

When will i pack my bags...

I think i might need to do an express pack the morning of...

Just kidding.

I've got that all scheduled in, and if you're planning on doing something similar i'd recommend you do so too. I've replaced my to-do-list with a calendar, so that not only am i making sure i'm ticking everything off my list, but i'm also making sure i'm going to be able to find time to do it all without needing to rush around like crazy on the day of my flight, which has made me think, now that i've done it i don't think i'll ever go back to normal to-do-lists.

Booking in the time it takes for all the things you need to do has opened me up to the understanding of how crowded our lives are and why we sometimes drop the ball, or at least feel like we have even if we don't. When you see your day mapped out in blocks of time and all the things you HAVE TO DO it's no wonder you get a little overwhelmed, especially when there's literally no blank spaces left, every waking moment (or moment you are awake that you should really be asleep) you've got somewhere you need to be or something you need to be doing. So having it all mapped out has helped me make sure i've managed my time well in these last few weeks, to get the most amount of things done with a minimum amount of stress.

So not only am i looking forward to experiencing a new continent and the many countries and cultures that this brings, and the challenges that working remotely has in store for me too, i'm also looking forward to nights at home on the couch with just me, relaxing, and not always having some place to be :)

So in preparation for moving to the other side of the world and working remotely for a year we thought it might be best to try this out a little closer to home first. For this little exercise in finding out what works and what doesn't i decided to spend a week in Byron Bay visiting a good friend of mine.

It was to be an almost exact replication of what i would be doing in London, just not for as long, not as far away or with a time difference.

I would be working during the day, but have to call or video call in to talk with staff, i'd have to run my business from my laptop and smart phone.

The Issues

• Reliable Internet - If i didn't have this i would have been unable to do anything, luckily for me that was all sorted.
• Being used to working on a small little laptop screen - Now for some this wont be an issue, but for me as someone who likes their dual screens, a full sized keyboard and separate mouse a little laptop with a trackpad wasn't quite cutting it. I felt terribly inefficient, and slow but i did manage to get some work done. Note to self, if i'm going to be doing more than replying to the odd email or doing a small little tasks i might need to find a regular spot to base myself out of and have my screen and keyboard hooked up to a docking station
• Distractions of working at home - Now i know there is a lot to be said about the flexibility of working from home, less commute time, working in the comfort of your own home, wearing whatever comfortable clothes you want, but i found that i was far more susceptible to distraction and procrastination whilst not in the office. While not impossible i believe it makes it more difficult to focus working from home. For me personally i think i'll be checking myself into a co-working space, just to give that separation between work and home.

The Benefits

• Being up in Byron meant that after work i could head on down to the beach and soak in the local culture: everyone walking around in bare feet, shorts and t-shirts (or no shirts), a far cry from the serious suit wearing people i was used to seeing in the Sydney CBD.
• Finding out things we need to change before i move all the way over in London is also a great advantage, it means we can tinker with our processes and get them all humming along nicely before i leave so that come moving day there'll be far less issues, as most of the kinks in our processes will be ironed out already

All in all it was a great test to see how we'd fare and even with its challenges our processes held up well.

So you’ve been thinking about taking a remote year. You’d love nothing more than to travel the world, see it all, experience cultures vastly different to your own, see places you’ve only seen in movies and magazines. All your friends are doing it all but there’s just one thing getting in your way… You run a small business and you’re tied to the one spot… or so you thought…

I was one of those people, i’ve walked your exact same path, i was once so tied to my little business that i couldn’t take so much as a 2 week holiday for fear of what i’d built would collapse into nothing by the time i got home.

It’s taken two years of hard work to get here but we’re now finally at the point we set out to get to when we started.

So here are the steps i’ve taken in preparation for my remote year, i hope they help you address all the things in your business that need to be covered off before you can leave the country and feel safe in that you can manage everything successfully from the other side of the world.

IT Systems

First and foremost you need to have your IT systems and processes all down pat before you go, they need to be 100% cloud based and paperless and they need to have been working well for at least a little while prior to your leaving. Snail mailing documents from one side of the globe to the other is a very slow and costly process and not at all efficient, so being cloud based and paperless is imperative. Having them operational for a while before leaving is also essential, as troubleshooting an IT issue is difficult enough when you’re right there with everyone, from the other side of the word it becomes an entirely different problem.

The systems we use and recommend are:

• One Login (Password Management)
• Xero (Accounting)
• Receipt Bank (Paperless Payable Invoices)
• CBA (Internet Banking)
• eWay (Online Payments)
• Google Apps (Email, Calendar, Document Storage)
• Slack (Internal Communications)
• AppearIn (Video Conferencing)
• Switch (Telephone/PABX)

Staff

The next most important area to address is your staffing, you’ll need great people you can rely on, not just average Joe’s. You’re going to be (in an absolute worst case scenario) a 24 hour, and not in any way cheap flight away and you’re going to want to be able to trust your clients openly in their hands so you’ll need to make sure you have an absolute all star team.

Clients

Most business owners will incorrectly start here as they’ll get worried their clients will all leave them if they try to do something like this. Our approach was a little different, we felt that if they weren’t on board with us doing this then they weren’t the right clients for us. We love innovative and creative businesses and business owners and as a testament to the calibre of our clients our experience has been quite the opposite to the fears we secretly had. All our clients have been resoundingly positive in our doing this. They’ve actually been more interested in learning from our guinea pigging ourselves in this experiment so they can learn how to do this in their own businesses too, without as many mistakes…

In my last guest post on the Xero Blog we alluded to 2016 being the beginning of even greater innovation and changes at Beanstalk Accountants. But how do we do this when we’ve already been recognised as the firm to look to as having already achieved the 100% cloud based & paperless title?

It’s quite simple really. We use the new found freedom this success affords us, to do the things traditional accounting firms can’t.

For everyone this might mean something different. For me, as a partner in a 5 staff accounting firm, this means moving to London in April of this year to live for 15 months, running our firm completely remotely from there. I couldn’t have chosen anywhere in the globe further from where we currently are, an absolute opposite time zone and a 24 hour flight away.

This will be the first in a series of articles over the course of the next 18 months detailing our experience. We’ll go into all the preparation, execution, and returning to the status quo. The successes and stumbling blocks, things that worked well and things that didn’t. You’ll be able to see first hand not just that it can be done but why it should be done. Becoming paperless and cloud based isn't just something you should feel obligated to do, it’s something you should feel compelled to do because of the opportunities it grants you.

The move to cloud based & paperless isn’t just a passing fad, it’s something that will benefit your business in more ways than you realise, you just need a little bit of perseverance to push through all the initial implementation hurdles and the naysayers to change.

For now we’ll just let that little seed of inspiration settle, let your mind wander as to the endless possibilities available to you if you were to successfully move your business (or accounting firm) to be 100% cloud based & paperless.

It was June 2012 and I was attending a Xero Roadshow in Canberra. I was the newly appointed Xero champion for my firm and I was excited to get all the latest updates to take back to the partners. I thought with all the tangible evidence I now had, they would surely jump on board with Xero and other cloud-based tools this time around.

I had been receiving a lot of push back from them. They assumed technology and the cloud wouldn’t have an impact on their business or clients. I was determined to find a way to prove to them it was the way of the future.

I remember telling this to one of the Xero Account Managers at the event. Her very casual, nonchalant response was just “go out on your own and do it”. I was quite taken aback and surprised, what did I know about starting an accounting firm? I’m too young, excuses, excuses, excuses…

Fast forward 12 months. I’d just completed my CA qualification and all the other things required to go out on my own. I was just about to jump in, when I realised that my contract had both restraint of trade and non-solicitation. I should have really checked that out sooner… oops.

Making a leap of faith

Not deflated in the slightest, I made the jump. I thought to myself, I’ll just go and get new clients, I don’t need to take my existing ones with me. How hard can it possibly be?

In early July 2013, with only $1,000 in my pocket, I carefully budgeted how many new clients I needed to have the business pay me enough to feed myself (and at what point I’d have to resort to 2 min noodles). I went out on a mission to implement all the amazing cloud technology I’d been pitching, this time in my very own accounting firm.

I’ll never forget the comment I got from one of the partners of the firm the day I left, “I needed $300,000 to start this business, you’ll be back here looking for a job in 12 months.”

Then I did the numbers:

Old school – Cloud based

Server = $60,000 – Google Drive = Free

Office Rent = $40,000 – Cafes and client’s offices = Free

MYOB = $60,000 – Xero Practice Manager = Free (On the proviso I got to 25 clients)

Receptionist = $40,000 – Having no office and no paper to print and file = Free

After two months I’d reached 25 clients, giving me access to Xero’s Practice Manager for free. And after six months I’d already reached my 12 month revenue target, had clients in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, and more importantly, I hadn’t had one meal of 2 min noodles!

Growth in this manner had only been possible with Xero and all the cloud technology we used in the business. We didn’t and still don’t have a filing room or a printer, and our meetings are mostly online or over the phone.

Time to scale

By January 2014, only six months in, it was time to get some help. Our first employee was by far my scariest moment in business. Would I have enough to pay their wage each month? Would I have to forgo my own wage to pay theirs?

Not only has this never been an issue, but we’ve put on more staff since. We’ve doubled client numbers, staff numbers and revenues every year for the last two years, and we’re on track to do the same for year three.

We moved into our first office in July 2014, and also brought on a partner in Canberra to head up our local presence there. Being cloud based there are no dramas about where files are kept, no calls asking for files to be sent over. Everything is just where it needs to be, in the cloud, accessible anywhere, anytime.

Our profitability is also well above the industry benchmark. Our total expenses, other than wages, make up less than 10% of gross revenues.

Obstacles to overcome

All this hasn’t been easy though. There are many challenges unique to being 100% in the cloud. The main one is staff training, the second passwords. With all paper-based processes being replaced with apps, this means new staff have a huge learning curve when they start working for us. What app does what, how do I get the app to do this? It takes a little longer than in most traditional accounting firms for our staff to be all trained up. But once they are, they’re far more efficient and productive.

The password problem was solved with, you guessed it, another app. This app houses all our firms passwords in an encrypted portal. Employees can access all the programs they need to use, with just one set of login credentials.

Time to push the boundaries further

This year is poised to be another year of innovation thanks to being 100% cloud based. Watch this space for more of what we have in store this year.

What do the most successful accounting firms have in common? A great team? Strong leadership? Good systems and processes? Outstanding client service?

As important as these traits are, they will only let your practice grow so far.

For your firm to take the next step, maximise profitability and ultimately reach its potential, it is crucial that you have an ability to scale; in other words, you need to ensure the that traits make you successful will not break as soon as your client base expands. So where do you start?

We asked Scott Lynch, Director at Beanstalk Accountants, what he would look at in order to build a scalable practice. These are his top 5 secrets to success:

1. Know the way you work

Find the process that works for your practice and make sure everyone in your team knows it inside-out. You must be able to track — and stay on top of — each client’s job at any time. The worst excuse for losing track of a job is not even having a standard process to begin with.

2. One source of the truth

Do you use Xero Practice Manager, Practice Ignition, PracticeIQ, or something else? You might use a combination of systems to cater for different purposes. This is normal, but due to the the rather high incidence of double up when using multiple systems you must pick one and make it your central place for key information. Your team must know where to go to find a certain document, check the status of a job or find the last time a client was contacted by one of your team.

3. Know your clients

Your clients are the lifeblood of your practice. You need to know as much about them as possible, and use this information to your advantage. Know which clients you need to send reminders to on the first day after the end of the BAS period, and who will be ready on day 1 without prompting. This will let you plan which activities need to be done, and by when, for your different clients.

4. Train your clients

Do you want information to come in as soon as it’s ready, even if it’s in multiple batches? Or would you prefer to wait for it all at once? Train your clients well in the way you operate, making sure they know what to do to make your job easier. Most will be happy to cooperate when they know they will be the one to benefit. If you want one big email with all information in it rather than 10 emails over a 3 week period, let them know!

5. Train and treat your staff well

Not even the most sophisticated system can replace well-trained, enthusiastic and hard-working employees. At the end of the day, it’s your staff that run the processes, so in addition to having great automated systems you need great people to operate them. Spend time hiring the right applicants, train staff well, and keep them happy!

As guest posted on the Practice IQ Blog here

It seems like a buzz word for when everything and anything goes wrong, be it in our personal sphere with romantic, family & social relationships or our work sphere with internal (co-workers) or external (clients & customers) relationships. What is it do you ask?

Communication

Something went wrong?
Chances are you didn’t communicate effectively enough, somewhere along the line was a breakdown in communication.
Everything’s fine and dandy?
Chances are you’re communicating well.

So how is this influenced by the changes we’re seeing with technology? We’ve got access to more "Social" media than ever before but are less connected and authentically social than any generation to go before us. How can this possibly be?

As technology changed through the ages and people started to change their communication from mostly face to face, to hand written letters, telephone, email, text messages and now in app notifications. As this has progressed things became less personal, more short hand and with this, more likely to be misunderstood. We now like on facebook, tweet on twitter, heart on instagram and send snapchats, but don’t actually sit down face to face, put away all our distractions and really connect with the people around us.Communication breakdowns are now more common than ever, although this isn't to do with our lack of literacy skills, it comes down to the way humans communicate on a biological level.

Scientifically communication consists of:

• 55% Body Language
• 38% Tone of Voice (They Way You Say Something)
• 7% What You Say (The Literal Meaning of the words you say)

So with this in mind its no surprise as we've evolved over time we've become worse and worse communicators and are finding more issues with miscommunication.

But surely technology should help make things better not worse?
Well it has, sort of, but theres still one thing that hasn’t seemed to get as much traction as one would have assumed would be the case 10 or so years ago:

Video Calls

So why aren’t video calls more commonplace?

It often surprises me how infrequently we use video conferencing, in both business and personal communications, why do we always just stick to the standard old voice call? Communication is so much more than just the words you say, and more than just the pitch and tone of your voice, its your facial expressions and body language that also play a major role in communicating and these factors are far too readily dismissed.

Why don’t we do it more often then?
The technology available is quite frankly atrocious, Skype, GoToMeeting, Citrix, all the front runners in video conferencing botched the whole industry by doing such a terrible job, and now they’re about to get left even further behind.

Enter Appear.In

Not only can you create instant video conferences with up to 8 people, you don’t need to download anything, making things super easy for all your attendees, just type in a random meeting name through their website and you can create a video conference in seconds, all through your browser, or smart phone, send this link to anyone you want to join your meeting to click on at their end, and like magic they Appear.In front of you, everything just works.

For personal communication there's FaceTime and Facebook chat, these services are already built into our existing communication channels so there’s no need to be downloading anything new either and they work surprisingly well too, much better than any of the services providers who are supposedly leading this industry forward, I often wonder why people still waste time trying to deal with Skype, when to me its like flogging a dead horse.

So there you have it, next time you think of picking up the phone and calling a family member, friend, client or customer, try saying yes to that FaceTime button or using Appear.In instead.

Everybody's talking about it but hardly anyone is actually doing it. Thats right, i'm talking about being truly paperless.

There are soo many businesses out there claiming to be paperless when, although they may be implementing some really great paperless processes, they still use paper regularly in their business.

How do you achieve what seems like the impossible then?

You give people no choice. We took this hardline approach by doing one simple thing. We didn't buy a printer. Thats right, we're an accounting firm that doesn't own a printer.

But how do you do... i hear you ask?

There are many things people THINK need to be done as a hard copy on paper, when in actual fact they can be done just as effectively with technology on your computer, tablet or smart phone. By not having a printer it forced us to think creatively to find solutions that avoid the easy way out of just doing it the way they always have been and reverting back to using paper.

Our employees don't get the option to print, so they don't, because they can't.

Now i'm not denying that it wasn't a challenging prospect and that we didn't and still don't have issues as a result of this, but it's definitely worth all the hassle because every time we put new paperless processes in place the efficiency gains are always noticeable.

So what do you do with all the paper you receive from clients, suppliers and anyone else in your business? Scan & Shred.

The mantra we have whenever we get bombarded with paper, Scan & Shred, Scan & Shred. Any paper that enters our office is scanned using the NeatDesk Scanner and uploaded to our cloud based storage system and then promptly returned to the client or shredded. The Fuji Scan Snap is equally as good but at the end of the day its not so much about the technology you use, when it comes to bridging the gap between being semi paperless and 100% paperless, that is just a mindset game.

Remember the good old days of email being the hub of your communications, everyday you’d be flooded with more useless cc’s and bcc’s, random internal company memos and info, lol cat videos from your friends and co-workers. Brace yourself for the end of this constant and unending interruption source of distraction.

Enter Slack, internal company communication for the new age.

Slack replaces what we commonly think of as information topics into channels, every staff member necessary can then be invited into these said channels to both read and/or post. There can be a channel for all important company updates and announcements, another for lol cat pictures and videos, if you’re in a dispersed team you can have a specific channel for just the people in your location.

Why do this and how is it any different to email?

The channel is a constant steam of information, so think back to the day you started work, your emails were empty, only after years of work do you have folders of past history at your disposal, now imagine you’ve just come into a business thats been using slack for 5 years and you’re a complete newbie. You’ll get access to the company announcements channel and all its history, so you can see back till the day they started and get a good understanding of the culture and how they operate.

You can also mute channels, think the lol cats pictures and videos, you still have access to go back and look at them all when you want but you don’t constantly get notified every time someone posts a new video.

The same applies to client channels, if you start your first day in a new role with the company’s existing clients you now get all the entire history of how to deal with this client, their idiosyncrasies, likes, dislikes, all from the word go, no needing to learn from scratch.

Slack also links in with all your other systems so you can share a link to a google drive document that will take you out of slack and into google drive, right to the document you wish to view, want to have a meeting with everyone working on a particular client, just create an appear.in video conference from directly in slack.

This is only just the beginning but it is signifying one thing, the end of email as we know it.

Whats the one thing on your desk at the moment that would also have been just at home eon your desk 50 years ago?

The humble office phone

What if i was to say this is all going to change soon, and it’s all going to be for the better. Switch and other cloud based PABX replacement systems are slowly making their way into the marketplace and are soon going to be commonplace. Gone are going to be the days when you had a dedicated phone at your desk. And not only is it going to make things much more efficient but its going to be are cheaper, as a direct result of the reduced amount of hardware needed to run everything.

Soon everyone will just use their own personal smart phones, when the business receives a call (of which will be automatically routed to the receptionists mobile phone) they’ll be able to re-route this to whoever else in the business is the intended receiver of the call and they’ll answer on their personal smart phone.

No more carrying around multiple phones, you'll only ever have just one, and you’ll be able to receive calls from multiple numbers as if you had two phones but without all the hassle.

There’s already been a massive decrease in the number of people with old school landline house phones and businesses are next. To achieve this though there are a few things you’ll need to do first. And thats to get your business a 1300 number.

This will not only give you Australia wide coverage with one number but can be routed where ever you want. No more needing to change your business phone number just because you decided to move office locations. And you can also have calls received from certain states divert to different numbers, so all your NSW callers are answered by the NSW office receptionist and QLD callers are answered by the QLD office receptionist.

So if you’re thinking of setting up a PABX system for your new business or replacing all your old system with a newer version of the same old dead end technology look into cloud based PABX systems and Switch. You’ll save yourself wasting a lot of time and effort and resources on something that will be outdated before it’s even installed.

If you’re anything like i am then you’ve probably caught yourself writing list or two… or two hundred, detailing all the things you need to do. Partly as a prompt to make sure you don’t forget to do it. Partly to get the intrinsic reward and satisfaction of crossing it off your list once you’ve completed it

But just as important as a to do list is a Not To Do List.

Things that don’t need to be done, that just waste your time like all good forms of procrastination, making you feel busy without actually achieving anything. How i do this is to apply the mantra Avoid, Automate, Delegate, Do

Avoid

Does it need to be done, if not then don’t do it, don’t waste another second of your precious brain power thinking about it.

Automate

Once you’ve decided it needs to be done the first step is to find a way you can set it up to do itself, putting it on autopilot. This is more the case for repetitive tasks but is often my favourite because it often involves finding an app or some other piece of technology to perform the task in the background while you sleep.

Delegate

If there are still parts to the process that need to be done manually and can’t be automated with technology you can opt for the next best thing, automate with people, delegate the task to someone who will do this every time it needs to be done

Do

If you’ve exhausted all the above options and you really are the only person that can perform the specific task then this is your last resort. You will just have to get down and dirty, and do it yourself, so add this one, and only this one to your to do list.

When it comes to making your list and using technology to do so, if you can name it I’ve tried it, from old fashioned pen and paper, spreadsheets, apps and post it notes. So when i stumbled across Trello recently i was intrigued, i finally found something that worked well for me.

It is great at making lists and also has a myriad of other features too for those of us who like to add extra details for later.

So next time you catch yourself making a list, be sure to re-read this post and see if you can reduce the amount of work on your list, how much ongoing effort is required to keep all your tasks done and keep as many of them in the hands of others, not you, and if you do want a great bit of tech to help you do this then be sure to check out Trello, it’ll change your list making life!!