Introduction
Every day across Australia hundreds of rooftop solar panels are installed, and every day the available market for incumbent electricity generators shrinks. Inexorably.
Similarly every day individuals, organisations and practitioners sign up to use free accounting software such as Wave and Mclowd, and every day the available market for incumbent software vendors shrinks. Inexorably.
Our journey towards zero marginal cost is even showing up on Wall Street, where the major players are displacing their $20,000 p.a. Bloomberg terminals with their own solution.
The concept of ‘prosumer’ (a consumer who is also a producer) is at the very heart of the Third Industrial Revolution, and while equity markets will take some time to grasp this new micro-economic reality, the displacement of incumbent balance sheets has now begun in earnest, and will accelerate rapidly over the next few years.
Accounting Platform Update
Version 3.1 is now live, including:
- Allocation of tax to Members at year end
- Multi-Fund login (allowing unlimited client accounts to be managed with no software licence fees payable)
- General ledger drill down
Mclowd now supports the full life cycle of an SMSF, so if you’re a practitioner looking to future-proof your career click here to get started.
(Release notes, including details of version 3.2 can be viewed on the website).
Product Marketplace
As flagged in the September Newsletter product providers can now list their investment and insurance offerings in the Marketplace.
We have seen an immediate response to this extension of the Community and I would like to welcome the following new participants to Mclowd:
- Bullion Capital
- Bellmont Securities
These product partners have come to one simple realisation: the net return to their client from accessing the relevant product inside the Mclowd Community is inevitably higher than if the client were doing so in conjunction with an incumbent platform.
Click here if you would like to start promoting your product to the fastest growing SMSF Community in Australia.
(While organisations such as AMP need to spend millions of dollars in marketing to trigger migration behaviour, Mclowd is achieving the same outcome through governance, and at zero marginal cost).
Postscript
Recent comments from former Class Super CEO David Smith and Taxpayers Australia regarding the challenges facing the accounting profession mirror those that have been made in the Mclowd Newsletter over the last two years.
While it is a harsh reality, accountants – like all of us – are on a journey towards zero marginal cost.
This process is irresistable, irreversible and inevitable.
Per unit price deflation of 50-70% will be commonplace over the next few years, driven by automation and new work practices that will see tasks undertaken at a globally-defined cost.
Practitioners who remain wedded to their expensive city offices and are determined to support the billion-dollar valuations of incumbents such as Xero and MYOB face rapid disintermediation by a new breed of clients who are empowered by technology and the transparency it provides.
In that context a small group of professionals have come to the realisation that building a practice inside the Mclowd Community is one of the best ways to address this disruption, and in doing so manage their careers while leveraging these trends to the benefit of their clients.
Mclowd will do everything it can to support these practitioners by providing access to:
- A free technology platform (which will eventually support multiple entity types as well as geographies)
- Crowdsourced resources and the practice management tools required to manage online workflow
- A transparent and competitive market for related products (insurance, investment and data)
Kind Regards
Ashley Porter
Managing Director
Mclowd Pty Ltd