How Accountants Adapt to New Technology with Farooq Raja

Episode 90. In today's interview, "How Accountants Adapt to New Technology with Farooq Raja." Farooq Raja is an investor and architect of AIRPA, an integration and automation platform for accountants and their clients. The mission is to give accountants and business people time back to from routine processes to use their skills and experience to better serve their customers.. He trained as accountant in the National Health Service (NHS) and then moved to commerce with British Telecom (BT) as financial controller and Unilever as Head Office Accountant. He then worked with Coopers and Lybrand in management consulting before setting up a technology implementation consultancy called Mokum which later sold to PWC. For two decades, he started and ran multiple small businesses learning about different industries, processes and the fine line between success and failure in business. Key takeaways from this episode include: ➜ what early businesses looked like when technology entered the workplace and fell to accountants to master ➜ how the accounting game has changed over the years, even though the fundamentals have remained the same ➜ the most important changes in technology that are impacting accountants and their business clients ➜ why cloud software does so much more than enabling remote working for accountants and their clients ➜ how technology trends are shaping clients requirements for their professional advisors like accountants and CPAs ➜ the barriers facing accounting firms in change their technology mindset to adapt to the new environment ➜ who is leading the technology charge in business innovation and questions accountants are being asked as a result ➜ explaining the resistance to change in accounting and they can do better in adapting to new technology ➜ how the accounting marketplace is dividing into different cohorts or groups around ow they embrace cloud and technology ➜ what is on the horizon for accountants and accounting firms with future technology and how it will impact our working lives ➜ how the AIRPA integration helps accountants make better choices with technology suites and best of breed platforms ➜ why accountancy is a superpower and should be recognised by accountants themselves as genuinely valuable to business owners and clients Outside work, Farooq has four children and a large extended family. His hobbies are games and puzzles, reading autobiographies and painting. I have four children and a large extended family and my hobbies are games and puzzles , reading autobiographies and painting. https://www.linkedin.com/in/farooq-raja-5021b6/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/airpa www.airpa.ai ◤━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◥ Follow Accounting Influencers on Linkedin - we'd love to keep you informed on latest interviews, episodes and behind the scenes goodies from the Accounting Influencers Podcast and events. Just go here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/accountinginfluencers ◣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◢ NOTE TO LISTENERS: The Accounting Influencers Podcast is a CPE-accredited daily radio-style show with four segments coming out every Monday which are repeated on the other 4 weekdays as standalone episodes, plus a bonus 'from the client's perspective' episode on Saturdays. On Sundays, listeners get a short min trailer for the coming week's episodes. Every Tuesday the show gives you a relevant news topic from the accounting and fintech world with a direct application to accountants, CPAs and bookkeepers. Great to stay informed and build your commercial acumen. Every Wednesday and Friday, we feature an uncut interview with top authors, leaders, thinkers and performers in the accounting and fintech world. Every Thursday the show gives you a practical 'here's what works' tips concerning a key challenge, need or strategy for accountants, CPAs and bookkeepers. Great to stay current and keep your skills topped up. Finally, every Saturday gives listeners a bonus episode which focuses on the...