All publicity is good publicity the old adage goes – however I was a little surprised by the response of some commentators – namely Adrian Pearson and Denis Howlett – to the recent announcement by E-conomic of the launch of their accountants’ club.

I must at this point declare my interest in that in my role as a consultant to E-conomic I was involved in the discussions that resulted in the launch of the Club. However in spite of this  the views that I express now are my own.

One of the points raised by Adrian in his blog is as follows….

“Accountants are being used as a free proxy for a traditional reseller channel by the accounting software vendors.  They provide access to their client base and make volume on-boarding of new customers a possibility; saving the vendors a fortune in marketing effort.”

But isn’t this missing the point…by rather a wide mark. Yes there is a benefit to any vendor in getting accountants on board in the hope that they will roll out the application to their client base. After all, it is a numbers game and I don’t think anyone can disagree with that. But in adopting Cloud Computing – it doesn’t matter whether its E-conomic, Twinfield, Kashflow or Xero or the many other offerings now available – accountants should appreciate the immense benefits that their practice can achieve by working with their clients in the Cloud.

To suggest as Adrian does, that accountants are acting as unpaid vendor channels is disingenuous in the extreme. And this is the problem that the industry is experiencing at the moment.Professional practices are failing to appreciate the advantages of the Cloud and are getting stuck in the dark ages as a result. It is their clients that will eventually lead the way in this as today’s generation of entrepreneurs will expect their professional advisors to interact with them using today’s technology. Those that don’t will fall by the wayside.

As for the vendors. what is wrong with giving their professional clients a small incentive to get on board with the Cloud. After all if they get clients using online accounting – which will be to their advantage as well – they can easily recover any of the costs involved in joining the Accountants Club in the first place. To talk about training as being a lost cost to the accountant is simply not correct.

I should at this point add that Adrian has recently joined David Terrar and myself as part of the Cloud Advocates and I have high regard for his input and opinions. I just don’t agree with him in this instance.

I think the following extract from some of E-conomic’s recent marketing material sums up the position quite nicely:

At E-conomic, we are not altruistic. Obviously we’d love you to be using our system, however whether you opt for us or one of our competitors, our avowed aim is seeing the accounting world put itself online, lock stock and barrel.

…and if they can provide a little encouragement along the way, what’s wrong with that?