Digital by default - what's the scoop ?

'Digital by default' is a term you will hear bandied about by Government and other organisations - but what does it all mean ??

Its about removing the queues in public offices, going online to lodge forms and making our dealings with Government and other organisations ‘digital’.

Hey - its about time.

Banks are well onto this concept - they understand we don’t want to go into a branch. In fact I personally will actively avoid it. I will deposit cheques into the ‘smart ATM’ rather than queue and talk to a human. Why? Its quicker and more convenient - any time of the day or night. When I feel like it and on my terms. Nothing personal but my time is finite.

Have you noticed that newer bank branches now look more like hotel lobbies - they have concierges rather than tellers. When you approach them you feel like you are sitting at their personal desk rather than standing in line behind a rope talking to a teller in a booth behind glass. The banks realised that people usually only come into the branch to talk to a human - when they have to - and usually this does not involve cash. So they took away the glass screens and brought the staff out the front - leaving 1 lonely cashier tucked away behind bulletproof glass to dispense the cash - just in case - almost as an after thought.

Banks will actually have an employee standing in the vestibule guiding customers on how to use the machines - to do what machines do best and accurately. I often bank cheques into clients accounts on their behalf. I don’t have a card to their account and invariably this meant I needed to get to a branch in business hours and queue to deposit. Now at a ‘smart ATM’, I can use careless deposit to enter the bsb and account number, deposit the cheque in the clients account and get a receipt with a printed cheque image on the back ! All at whatever time it suits me.

So why has it taken government so long to jump onto the ‘digital by default’ bus?

Complex legacy systems and policy seem to be the answer.

The Government also have the privacy of our information to guard. Look at the experience of the recent Census. Whether the website was compromised or not - it created doubt and fear in the minds of the public about ‘going online’ to complete the Census.

They are making steps in the right direction. When you call the ATO you can leave a ‘voiceprint’. So next time you call you don’t need to go through the tedious steps of identifying yourself - the computer reads your ‘voiceprint’ and advises the ATO that you are who you say you are. Pretty cool use of tech.

It will be slow progress for the Government to catch up to what we can do as small business. We can make rapid decisions to take on new technology - we can be nimble. Compare an Accounting Practice to a Bookkeeping Practice - systems in an Accounting Practice are well established and expensive and there are usually more staff. Changing their internal systems can be more complicated and time consuming than a Bookkeeping Practice with less staff and newer systems. The organisation is flatter and I can make decisions to take on new tools at will. So too many small businesses have this opportunity.

So as a business you should rejoice in the Digital by Default model - it is going to make your interactions with Government, Banks and other businesses more efficient.

You should look internally at your practices and determine where the current inefficiencies lie.

One big efficiency I like to share with all my clients is digitisation of their paperwork and receipts. The app on our phones can snap photos of receipts and send them to Xero in seconds - no more shoe boxes of paperwork required.

The bills emailed to you can be forwarded to a special email address in Xero to add them into Xero so you no longer need to keep the email of bills.

Hey using Receipt Bank we can even ‘enter’ some of these receipts for you!

No more paper, no more printing, no more files and files of paper.

Its not about taking the human away from the process - rather it is about us providing better value so we can do the jobs the computers can’t. Its about automating the easy and boring and us being able to advise you on the more complex aspects of your business. Ask us how we can help you be ‘Digital by default”.