All things AUDIT! Intelligent Automation with Vidya Peters from Datasnipper

[00:00:00] Listen, I went to this exhibition earlier, the gallery was like the history of beauty or

[00:00:05] something from different cultures. It's really about how Beards had come back into

[00:00:09] fashion at some point. I was just a video from the 60s of this man going into this

[00:00:15] barber experience and then they hand stitched some sort of beard together with hair from

[00:00:22] women from India and fully made a beard from and stuck it on his face.

[00:00:27] Is this not like some sort of like spine movie that you're watching?

[00:00:29] No, genuinely. And it was all about actually beauty in the cultural kind of relationship

[00:00:34] and also like generally your history. It was fascinating. Everyone should go to this at

[00:00:37] the World Cup collection in Houston but it is really interesting because it then talks

[00:00:42] about even the objectification of women over history and different women from different

[00:00:47] cultures and how beauty and scene and how it's evolved.

[00:00:51] And Danny London, a week and a month, so I might see if I can get to.

[00:00:54] Along for an hour, might learn a thing or two and see how your beard can be made up from

[00:01:00] India's hair.

[00:01:01] This is entirely laziness because I was kind of on the chavine. I wouldn't class this

[00:01:04] as beard, I'd class this as just rugs.

[00:01:07] You look a bit more rugged with it. You definitely look like more, just I don't care anymore.

[00:01:12] I've got to like full of hope. Stick with it. See where it goes.

[00:01:15] Well, hopefully it'll go outwards. It goes inwards. You have some problems.

[00:01:19] It goes up like over my eyes. I've got one of those dogs in my beard.

[00:01:23] I was like hair clips. Let's get in the hair around the rise.

[00:01:27] Welcome to today's episode of digitals in a cruel world. Today we will be joined by video

[00:01:32] peters who is the CEO of data sniffer to talk to her about their latest raise and valuation

[00:01:39] on what they're looking at in terms of their business, the growth in the next year.

[00:01:42] We've also covering app news and a little bit of news from our sponsor Advanced Track.

[00:01:48] If you haven't come across Advanced Track before, they provide off-shorting and outsourcing

[00:01:52] services for resources. So give them a little look up just before we head on to app news.

[00:01:57] I'm just my co-host, John Tune and Ryan Piercy. How are you, Ryan?

[00:02:02] How's your week been and also how have you been post fab, which was this week?

[00:02:07] Fab was fab. Fab was great. It was smaller. I'd say not exclusive but definitely more personal.

[00:02:13] There were some really great talks really looking forward and less pitches from AppVendors

[00:02:18] more interesting insights into the future, especially around AI.

[00:02:22] So yeah, I enjoyed it. We enjoy the question out everyone.

[00:02:24] You're going to have a few apps to look at post show.

[00:02:28] Yeah, talking about AI. Is our AI extraordinaire, John Tune? How are you?

[00:02:35] Yeah, very well thanks, Cindy. I think reflections on Fab are similar to Ryan really. It was a really good show.

[00:02:41] I think the focus on bookkeepers in particular helped them to attract a slightly different audience.

[00:02:46] And the AI chats all seem to go down really well as well as the usual stuff around tax and bits and pieces.

[00:02:51] I saw the talk by Dan Needle late on the first day, which is really interesting, very fascinating guy for anyone who's not aware of him.

[00:02:57] And yeah, given the sort of the doom and gloom that maybe surrounded that event,

[00:03:02] I think they really pulled it out of the bag. Congratulations to the guys and weapon and sift and everything else.

[00:03:07] So very good. How are you doing, Indy?

[00:03:10] Dium and gloom. What do you mean, Dium and gloom? I think there was a bit of negativity around whether or not it would be busy

[00:03:16] and whether or not the vendors would get decent numbers through the door and stuff like that.

[00:03:20] I think like I really tried our talk as well, talking about the future AI and how firms could prepare themselves,

[00:03:26] even though we wanted to do a bit of an intimate roundtable event,

[00:03:30] have we were flooded with people, which is really good just meant we had to think on our thing and still seem to get a lot positive feedback

[00:03:36] and an endless cure for people asking us a bit more information on it. So yeah, really good.

[00:03:41] And Indy, how was your weekend? My weekend was very good Ryan.

[00:03:44] It was just a nice bit of recovery from fab, just what I needed actually.

[00:03:48] Lots of rest and relaxation. Absolutely the ticket for it Ryan.

[00:03:53] Absolutely. I had a brilliant weekend. Thank you for asking me.

[00:03:58] Should we jump onto Apploos? Yeah, let's do.

[00:04:01] Cool. So I'll kick off App news this episode.

[00:04:09] Guess as expected, maybe but unfortunately there is an end to zero go it is being retired in September 2024 so late this year.

[00:04:19] And now it's probably about a year ago, I believe.

[00:04:22] Was it on C-R-Cut in London? Yeah, what was that? Was it last year?

[00:04:25] Two years ago. Two years ago.

[00:04:27] But last year we covered it again because of M-T-D.

[00:04:32] What are we saying? What is it? It's just been parked and sunset all together because it's.

[00:04:37] There's no traction. There's not really been talked about for quite a while.

[00:04:40] It's a free tool for micro businesses to be ready for making text digital didn't get really anywhere near enough traction.

[00:04:46] And they've decided to basically get rid of it businesses though on it can upgrade to latest version allow them to download the data and.

[00:04:55] Use it in a different solution or if they want upgrade into the start and standard plans.

[00:05:00] What does this mean by an for businesses that had come out with these versions of M-T-D really simplified skinny but keeping software's.

[00:05:10] So coconut was the other for M-T-D and obviously they were required.

[00:05:15] Yeah, text and a version didn't they say which Quickbox all right something?

[00:05:20] We're just saying that these software's are just irrelevant not needed and necessary and therefore it's just best to go.

[00:05:28] With a proper software application and through the accountant anyway.

[00:05:34] I think there's a lot that was released in short period of time.

[00:05:37] I mean when she released this there was a lot of question marks.

[00:05:41] I mean we talked about it on the podium what actually impact it would have.

[00:05:44] Sage still have this Quickbox still has something for small self-employed businesses. I don't think those will go.

[00:05:49] But it became too busy in the space and I think that we're seeing what we'd expected to see.

[00:05:54] And we talked about it at the time that a number of these vendors would disappear.

[00:05:57] I guess I'm not that surprised zero goes one of those.

[00:06:00] I think also with the M-T-D agenda being delayed and defeated they kind of anticipated sign up to these products whether they were free or not.

[00:06:08] It's just not happened doesn't quite clear that for the kind of micro businesses the sold trader type small businesses that were going to be caught by M-T-D.

[00:06:17] They just don't see any real benefit of value moving to software currently.

[00:06:22] No matter who it's from that's the sort of the nail in the coffin and I guess from a product point of view from likes of zero and others is maintaining a free product with certain attributes and the technicalities and stuff that come with it clearly.

[00:06:35] It's not a priority for them and I can question why a freemium model works for these kind of players because I don't think it should and I think zero kind of comes back inclusion.

[00:06:44] I've got something else on zero which is a little bit of a rumor so there's nothing official out here but I have spoken to a few people at zero about this.

[00:06:52] There are rumors afoot that zero are going to be launching a payroll bureau product probably towards the end of the calendar.

[00:06:58] So it's not something we're going to likely see eminently although I'm fairly certain that given that we have zero come coming up in what is that three months time until that that will see some announcements around payrolls, probably some improvements with the main payroll products for anyone that's familiar with zero payroll.

[00:07:12] It's had a sort of slightly tortuous lifetime certainly in the UK at least because it was a product that built from the ground up and it was launched lacking quite a few features in the early days.

[00:07:22] It's probably become much more functional but it still has some disadvantages particularly when you've got a sort of a larger more complex payroll compared to other bureau products around the market.

[00:07:31] It'd be good to see some improvements there also we've got the whole payrolling of benefits requirements are coming in in two years time I think it is which are going to affect every bureau perill

[00:07:41] rather up and down the other UK so there's going to have to be some changes irrespective.

[00:07:45] But yeah it sounds like they're spending a considerable amount of time on looking at our products and improving them.

[00:07:50] So I look forward to hearing what they have to announce at zero commerce even if I can make it and say there's a potential bureau product in the pipeline for the end of the year.

[00:08:00] I mean that is good news because I got the end of my tether with zero payroll it's not really moved on for the last three or four years we've been using it and in the end we've actually moved a number of our clients off into another bureau product so great that's coming out probably partly as a response to what quick books just recently released with their power bureau product

[00:08:20] and what sage have done building their cloud version out made sense to zero have one so be really excited to see what comes from.

[00:08:27] And hot of the hills of our AI chat this week zero at their inaugural investor day announced a release of their AI jacks that's going to be released into the product.

[00:08:38] So they've got some sort of generative AI support that were really released onto zero web pages that will expand the tools functionality.

[00:08:47] So they haven't really gone into a lot of detail the focus will primarily be on payments and cash flow reporting so there'll be like automation or streamlining of repetitive tasks.

[00:08:57] So things that might be in terms of chasing overdue invoices or payments or following up on missing time sheets for payroll runs etc.

[00:09:06] I haven't actually released it yet it's still in its sandbox model and they're saying that it's due for release later in the year I believe but no words on whether it will be a chargeable service.

[00:09:17] So I think it follows a stream of news that's come out from the other big platforms sage and quick books on the release of their co pilots for different a eyes.

[00:09:27] And we obviously covered a little bit of the apps that we have seen that also done a good job of releasing AI as a cool part of their software tools this week.

[00:09:37] So we mentioned a couple silverfin and a couple of others John in the talk remind me.

[00:09:42] We've got silverfin we've got digits over in the US who has pixie here in the UK and practice management.

[00:09:49] Yeah, so there's a fair few tools around isn't that.

[00:09:52] Yeah, yeah.

[00:09:54] And I think the name actually brought on a better ones as well jacks just ask zero to probably I think that's actually the main positive news or positive response or LinkedIn was the fifth one like the name not to be confused with Jack by Genesis which is an AI tool as well and so go to us all platforms but yeah, Jack.

[00:10:12] So what was pretty cool now?

[00:10:14] I'm going to say I wonder if how Nikolai's feeling at Genesis now that zero release jacks and he's got a product called Jack anyway doesn't most problems to have right being confused with someone from a huge competitor.

[00:10:24] Anyway, I have something unexactly the same vein from sage can you believe it so you seem like the other week that it was co pilot announcements galore from all of the major product and there's so sage have announced a co pilot which is going to sit across the vast majority of their products apparently it's going to sit within

[00:10:43] the cloud based products at the moment and then it will be implemented and rolled out across things like sage 50 and some other products in due time.

[00:10:50] It will be a paid for feature so it's currently in beta and it is free at the moment of time but once they rolled out and entered it will be pay for now I think that's an interesting angle from zero.

[00:11:01] I'm not sure quite what zero do with jacks but so I think sage proposing to charge more for this is not in line.

[00:11:08] I don't think with most of co pilots who are seeing another products at the moment with the exception of this obviously of Microsoft co pilot which is additional fee but everyone really expects that you have that down in value over time.

[00:11:21] I think it's going to be interesting to see how sage implement this and roll out it is along the same lines as most of the sort of gen AI stuff that we've already seen in other products so you're going to have to have compositional prompt and ask questions about information and data within the wider thing.

[00:11:34] And obviously for sage at least this is not the first time that they've been into the whole chat assistant kind of world because they did have peg back in the day which didn't last too long was drawn some people including myself rather mischievously called this peg 2.0.

[00:11:49] I want to say if it lasts a little bit longer surely it has to be peg 2.0.

[00:11:53] If they don't call it that or peg returned peg with a vengeance something like that so it should be I've got something else from sage not as exciting as AI but they they have acquired mid matrix which is an estimating tool.

[00:12:07] It is focused on the construction industry and it's helping to transform the sage estimating sweet they've got which sits inside sage construction management which is a curve made a project management solution built for the same kind of work.

[00:12:18] The management solution built for the entire of the construction industry and also sage intact construction once again as a sage intact is called native is also an element or I guess a facet of the sage intact product focused and designs specifically for the construction industry so that acquisition of mid matrix is helping to enhance those solutions further.

[00:12:39] And it's quite obvious that sage is trying to take over that entire industry and be the dominant software vendor in that space.

[00:12:45] A bit of news from QuickBooks who confirm FRS 102 and personal tax filing so there was a QuickBooks conference that get connected in London and they're saying they're going to release a few more products that will make it more accessible.

[00:12:59] It's sort of a fast forward to some of the products they announced last year with QuickBooks online with FRS 105 annual accounts and CT 600 filing capabilities so it's making it more realistic and more achievable for accountants.

[00:13:14] To manage client data in quick bits online and make the adjustments in the work paper area and then push the data into its protests tool for FRS 102 and personal tax filing.

[00:13:25] There was a couple of other announcements made with the QuickBooks ledger which was a new plan that sits below the current simple start subscription it seemed to have some reference to making task digital for income tax self assessment.

[00:13:39] I'm not sure how this is going to compare and compete with the zero ledger product that's in the market, but they do say that QuickBooks ledger will have CSV import functionality and offer the capability to switch between cash basis and a cross accounting.

[00:13:53] It won't have invoicing or billing capabilities and there's some features included in there such as automated bank feeds, bank records, and liation financial statements and the ability for accountants to push data into QuickBooks online work papers and tax preparation tools.

[00:14:07] So some advancements made for the QuickBooks product, not sure if we've had any other QuickBooks representative talks about it.

[00:14:17] Have we spoken to Aaron Johann or Eriona about this and maybe this is something that we should try and catch up with them on guys.

[00:14:25] I did briefly speak to Aaron Favre actually about this because he would mildly tease me about it and I wasn't in the QuickBooks event.

[00:14:32] They said they're going to go full FRS 102. So I think that takes them a step ahead of most of their competitors in terms of functionality.

[00:14:38] It'll be interesting to see if they get it right because I think moving to full FRS 102 account is actually a big to big lead, there's not many cloud products that do that as it happens.

[00:14:48] I've been talking with other mid-sized firms in particular on the challenges of trying to transition away from these on-prem solutions to cloud-based solutions.

[00:14:55] The challenges around account production in particular are a big one that needs to be solved by the vendors if they want to compete with the incumbents because the complexities and the requirements that larger firms have around things like full FRS 102 but also charities and other sort of something more nuanced accounting requirements, just something that is not replicated in the market at the moment.

[00:15:14] As soon as somebody gets there, there's going to be a big shift I think in the market.

[00:15:18] John, and speaking of incumbents, it's like you're teaming up for my news which is what does Clua have announced that they are getting one step closer to offering their sweet cloud accounting products.

[00:15:29] I guess they've been talking about this for ages but they're getting products in the UK for practice management and compliance.

[00:15:33] It's literally what you've just said.

[00:15:35] Nicole and CCHI firm.

[00:15:38] Now this isn't live as of now. The base is that this is coming. I guess they've been doing that for years but now they've got a name to it and they've got a bit more structure around what's going to look like understated is going to come in the next couple of months.

[00:15:51] Of that, there are a few products that are becoming out straight away.

[00:15:55] One of those is CCHI firm AMLs and team money laundering.

[00:16:00] They're doing all the checks, based to help that onboarding process to get in the CCHCentral.

[00:16:04] You're getting accounts production and you're getting personal tax and then I firm Vada date as well which is looking at bank confirmations for audit software which is using blockchain technology.

[00:16:16] So I've been interested to see what that would look like when it comes out.

[00:16:19] The main benefit of CCHI firm is that if you're already using the practice management so you can manage stuff on premise solution while connecting into the cloud native tools they're releasing.

[00:16:30] So I guess they're doing something after 10 years to talk about it and be good to see what it looks like fully when it's released.

[00:16:37] It's good to see, I'm glad to see we're getting this hot off the heels of those infamous red t-shirts and account tax last year.

[00:16:44] So it's good and I'm told with the exception of the AML product is they're expected to start releasing in May.

[00:16:50] They're going to do the basics of first and build out the functionality of that product over time.

[00:16:54] So yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what it's like.

[00:16:56] I've seen a few sort of screenshots and screenshots of some of these products.

[00:17:00] My one immediate covenant is that they don't look much different from their traditional products and that's disappointing.

[00:17:05] The design requirements and their usability requirements are completely different and I think just replicating your existing product from the desktop to the cloud is not acceptable.

[00:17:13] And it'll also be interesting to see how they decided to process because you can access the CCH API for about 15 hundred pound a year.

[00:17:20] So you can actually connect products into CCH Central if you want to turn you've got the capability of doing so and you're willing to pay for that API access which is a mild being my bonnet.

[00:17:29] And in terms of the AML product, they have released that that is available.

[00:17:32] It's a standalone product as well.

[00:17:34] So it is available to non CCH customers if they want to use it.

[00:17:38] They've done a lot of work on this product and have worked out that there's significant time savings to be made from doing this.

[00:17:44] I think they're anticipating that they'll bring in things like biometric checks over time and some other additional functionality to make it a little bit more seamless.

[00:17:52] This is not too different from what Iris have already done, what Bright had been doing.

[00:17:56] I think I've like again, my question is why build a product like this when you've got really good products like summer and then check which already further ahead of these products that they are in the market.

[00:18:04] I know you want to tie people into your product suite and everything else but ultimately for me, they've got to be seamless experiences and they're going to have high grade functionality.

[00:18:12] So I think accountant some book keepers out there who have AML concerns and issues which all of us do because it's highly regulated problematic area is that you should go for a product that really serves peps as a cross the board.

[00:18:24] I'm not just because it built into your product.

[00:18:27] You also got products like summer tech out there that are building the integrated directly into CCH already so they've solved that problem.

[00:18:34] I don't understand why they've gone out there first maybe because that was the easiest thing to build because it's completely different.

[00:18:40] They have to replicate anything and I understand your point of building something that cloud needs to operate differently by, I guess a big frustration of those that were using the traditional systems from a finance perspective moving into the cloud is that it felt completely different.

[00:18:53] So they were scared of it and my gut feel is they're trying to make it at least look the same to help with that change management transition.

[00:19:00] As long as the functionality is built to work in the cloud I'm not necessarily against that just if they've pulled back on what they could do to suit those that are reluctant to change that's where there will be a really disappointing.

[00:19:11] I do get that point but I would say this vein and as silly as this sounds people do buy products based on how they look and feel and how they interact with them.

[00:19:20] I could give you an example of two products in the market that we've looked at with our team and I think the functionality and the capability of one of the products is better than the other but when we send our teams out to look at this do the reviews, do trials etc.

[00:19:32] The overwhelming feedback was that the product that looked better it was easy to navigate was something more modern in terms of its look and feel was the product that they went for even though I would say on balance the functionality of you the product was slightly better.

[00:19:44] And I think that's the market we're in now, we are used to using mobile technology on our phones or your browsers and stuff and we're just unwilling to use an interface as it hasn't changed since like the late 1990s or early 2000s and the break.

[00:19:57] Complexity is key on that note apron who we will have the pleasure of being joined by Bogdan Uzbekov on our next podcast have also released some additional functionality that has removed a bit of complexity.

[00:20:14] So they've served up an invoice capture tool using their OCR technology it can read and process documents capturing line by loan totals taxes and descriptions from invoices so it's all with a view to help with the automation around reconciliation.

[00:20:31] And that's because most of the documents if they're kept in a separate place very difficult to reconcile with the payments that are being made they're saying it's in a bid to become more an end to end accounts payable automation platform.

[00:20:43] So it makes it easier for accountants to review all of the data in one go assign comments in batches tag the clients and then also the client can be notified if there's any missing documents or even applies it's a kind of firm step forward to try and marry up the payment side of what they're doing with the invoices and also add some additional automation in their around chasing of invoices.

[00:21:11] It looks quite slick very user friendly and as you're saying it's the way forward for most of these softwares is if they're able to hit not just one two or three agenda points in like the payments flow.

[00:21:25] So again the invoice being captured for a range of different technologies including what's that it could be sideways it could be upside down still recognize still post everything into the right place that needs to be posted into reconciles it chases it can add notes to it looks like a really nice release.

[00:21:44] We had to invoice capture tools moving into the payment space for now got payment tools moving into invoice capture space I guess this cut and aligned with my predictions for the year that we just go year consolidation right you've got lots of these kind of taking over a complete area as they've grown out.

[00:21:58] And I would not be surprised if we see some acquisitions on mergers in certain spaces where they start to be kind of cut it and as well I would be surprised we see decks going to the payment space in the mid mid to near future.

[00:22:10] Yeah moving on to a complete tangent then is can you believe that mtd for it's a his pack having seemingly got kicked down the road for a while HMRC we're at the festival account in bookkeeping.

[00:22:22] And they were talking about the mtd agenda and the fact that there is a private beta that is going to go live from the 22nd of April they're looking for approximately 1000 taxpayers to join that so it's not a huge number but it's I guess it's the start of something.

[00:22:37] And there are also confirmations at the timetable for mtd for income tax is not going to change which I'm sure given the fab audience were everyone's completely disappointed about that because they get the angry old men on the canning web.

[00:22:51] And you can find out more of the HMR website and stuff but yeah it'll just be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few months and whether or not we're getting more announcements and a widening of the betis.

[00:23:01] I think that's probably the key thing is that we've been involved in some of the betis for previous versions of mtd where there was BAT and obviously the early days of income tax.

[00:23:09] And it's helpful for firms I think to get involved but it has to be useful and functional and the last one for it so was a bit of a car question.

[00:23:17] Yeah it's good it's moving forward and that there's a big enough testing period I think that's the risk that we had before they delayed last time.

[00:23:24] On moving us back slightly towards invoice capture plio have made some small changes to their app across multiple different areas I'll run for a few of these now.

[00:23:34] So firstly invoice approvals can now be done in the app itself you had to do this via email historically which was a bit backwards for a car based system but we've now released the ability to do it directly inside the app.

[00:23:47] We should make that a lot easier they're also in invoice statuses so you can just hover over what where an invoice is and it will tell you where is an approval flow who's approved it etc.

[00:23:58] Which aligns very closely now with their changes to approvals.

[00:24:02] Employees can now also reimburse themselves on the web but they had to do this via the mobile app previously so a little more flexibility in how that works and they've also enhanced their fetch feature for invoice capture by bringing in a receipt inbox so it will bring it all into one area that can then be moved directly into the main area of plio.

[00:24:21] Extra which a new use from plio was an underpricing plans extra read all about it plio's pricing plans effective from March the 15th which was a few days back.

[00:24:33] Plio's advance plan starts at 99 pounds a month and includes new releases such as spending budgets, SaaS vendor cards and higher overdraft limits cash rack contracts require minimum of 12 months commitment with upfront payment

[00:24:47] and new bolt on packages that help clients customize that plio subscription including additional 0% FX tiers invoices and new and cheaper reimbursement only uses just a little bit extra on pio there.

[00:25:03] And how do we feel about plio at the moment because they seem to be very quiet in the UK after last few months you know they are a very active team very active community and group of people that were out there on LinkedIn going to events and stuff

[00:25:16] or just haven't seen them on top of each other.

[00:25:18] I think they've gone through that transition from raising lots of finance throwing a lot of money at growth to now having to transition into becoming profitable and so because of that they've had to pull back we see them less but the product is still developing.

[00:25:32] I don't think there's anything negative about it it's just just less visual because they don't have the huge marketing budget from raises to throw through events

[00:25:40] I still like the product we still have clients using it. I think it sounds like they're making the pricing a little bit more complex for what you just ran through but hopefully it's something that still works really well for our clients going forward.

[00:25:54] And then I've got something to finish on and I've left this to laugh just personally because I love it and I'll be waiting for it for so long.

[00:26:00] And that news all about AI and huge advancements it now does not feel as big as I have first the vision is that but light year the I guess invoiced automation system have brought in the ability to deal with employee expenses.

[00:26:14] It's always been a frustration of mine that it's not been in the product they have never released it employees can use the app take pictures of their invoice how it automatically extracted and push through the approval process to see complete visibility of how that's going on how it's moving through.

[00:26:27] And then get built and push straight into the funds software in the back end. Now light year is that brilliant mid tier advanced invoice capture approval tool that sits usually above the lights of Dext and and PLEO etc that talk for today I'm like it's buzzing that they've now got employee expenses because it was always a pain of mine to solve those two problems with two different apps when I really wanted to bring light year in.

[00:26:50] And that's not even so quick news.

[00:26:52] You think they're taking the product to infinity and beyond that right now what's they bringing payments then it's to infinity beyond the B will be a there'll be a strong buzz around it john.

[00:27:02] Hey, I think this is great move from light year and it follows off the back of some of the stuff that Sabia was saying I think when we interview him at Dext things like expenses you're becoming more core to so the long standing players in this market.

[00:27:17] So I guess maybe we'll be waiting for Sahara to move next on this so they don't have expenses yet in their products. So maybe they'll follow.

[00:27:29] Is that how it normally goes down? Wow.

[00:27:33] It's not snorkeling.

[00:27:35] It's a bit like Jordan's moustache which we realized was like.

[00:27:42] I mean that's got particularly isn't it.

[00:27:44] Yeah, there's vagina velcro as we've described it.

[00:27:48] Why do you call it vagina velcro? What is that?

[00:27:52] You stuck down there.

[00:27:54] What? How does that work?

[00:27:58] You understand how velcro works.

[00:28:00] How does it stop?

[00:28:02] So basically john's in prime at the hooks can't believe I'm trying to explain this.

[00:28:06] This is what happens when you smooth down there you're like a billion pull aren't you? That's the problem.

[00:28:10] You are comparing them with that to genitalia and some.

[00:28:14] No, I'm not comparing it. It's like a match made in heaven. It's velcro.

[00:28:18] I know what velcro is my.

[00:28:20] It's velcro to me.

[00:28:22] I don't know what you mean by velcro.

[00:28:26] So when he goes down he then can't get back out again because it's stuck in the...

[00:28:32] What?

[00:28:33] This is all the record I'm having to explain how it's worth.

[00:28:36] Why?

[00:28:37] I'm going to get a doll.

[00:28:39] Jordan just did it straight away.

[00:28:41] So that's how long it is.

[00:28:43] I thought he looked very handsome and I thought he looked cool but I'm now like really confused.

[00:28:49] Is that the thing?

[00:28:51] That's not that pretty much.

[00:28:53] It's not what?

[00:28:55] No, I don't know.

[00:28:57] Let's move on. There's no charge.

[00:28:59] You can have the porn star and you can have the handlebars.

[00:29:03] Well, I wasn't there in the middle of crisis.

[00:29:07] What is that right exactly?

[00:29:09] Pretty pure best of boy.

[00:29:11] Matches I can do.

[00:29:12] Squeeze it all out.

[00:29:13] Somebody had to say it in your ass, John.

[00:29:15] I can't remember the last time I had sex.

[00:29:17] John's got the equipment to do it.

[00:29:21] I'm like, can smooth down there.

[00:29:23] John's down stairs looks like my upstairs.

[00:29:25] That's how I do it.

[00:29:27] What made you love the door?

[00:29:29] What made?

[00:29:31] That's why we could never 69 ride it a bit too confusing.

[00:29:33] Like what she said in Barbie, just saying you know we have no genitalia.

[00:29:37] Nothing because I have the genitalia.

[00:29:39] So there's trademark down there or something?

[00:29:41] Does it?

[00:29:43] At least.

[00:29:45] Yeah.

[00:29:47] I'm really glad to welcome back Fiffle Chef from Advanced Track to talk a little bit more about what it is they do.

[00:29:55] And this time around, we're going to be talking a little bit around audit services

[00:29:59] and then we'll have a spoke to Biffle.

[00:30:01] This is something new that Advanced Track are moving into.

[00:30:03] And I guess Biffle, you know over to you, I mean why is audit so important to you?

[00:30:09] I guess the driver for us was customer need but also development of our own people.

[00:30:15] We've got bright young men and women within our business.

[00:30:19] What we're looking to do is see how we can deliver more value to them.

[00:30:23] And also to attract a new group of people who perhaps

[00:30:27] we hadn't looked up in the past few.

[00:30:31] They're probably the main reason that we looked at audit.

[00:30:35] We know that the demand for audit services in the UK for audit firms is still very high, but of course you know there is a staffing resource crunch if you like.

[00:30:45] And so I guess an opportunity time for someone like yourself to step in and try and help to ease that burden a little bit.

[00:30:51] Yeah, very much so. I think the biggest thing that we're conscious about is training quality and the two go hand in hand.

[00:30:59] You mentioned as well there's an opportunity for you in terms of your people to help move them along and give them a different challenge as well.

[00:31:05] I mean how important is that for you?

[00:31:07] You work in a large firm, John. You'll know once you get good people you don't want to lose them.

[00:31:13] And the challenge for us as a business is we've all been there.

[00:31:17] I was young once. And as we go through you get to a place where you get bored.

[00:31:23] Whereas if you are given a new challenge, you think you know what I'll hang around because that gives me something new to work on it.

[00:31:31] Something else that I can do.

[00:31:33] But part of that challenge for us is how do we pay them more?

[00:31:37] If it's more demanding higher paid work. Of course we can pay them more.

[00:31:42] At some point they may turn around and say, Bipple, thanks very much.

[00:31:46] I'm off but let's hold on to them for as long as we can and give them the opportunities that we see for us as a business.

[00:31:54] And for them is professionals within it.

[00:31:58] What are the challenges that you've seen mid-sort of size firms and maybe not as familiar without sourcing audit work?

[00:32:05] What challenges have you seen people affect to sort of overcome or what do they need to let go of in terms of trying to make it work and be effective?

[00:32:13] Change management is the big thing.

[00:32:16] It's like putting in a new piece of software. I'm sure you've seen that people who've got used to whatever you've had previously.

[00:32:23] Oh God, having somebody next to me who I can talk to, that's always the best thing.

[00:32:28] And I'm not saying it's not.

[00:32:30] Well, I think COVID really showed the value of even working remotely.

[00:32:37] And I think that's often forgotten that we are not where we were in 2003.

[00:32:42] Now what's happened is firms like yours and others are using these tools on a day-to-day basis because not just collaborating between colleagues.

[00:32:52] It's actually collaborating with your clients, getting them to share information at the appropriate juncture and it follows the process through.

[00:33:02] Agreed. With a lot of your team based in India, you give us the opportunity of having that time zone overlap as well.

[00:33:08] So you've got a wider range of time to be able to do work.

[00:33:11] You're adding extra capacity almost by consequence of that idea.

[00:33:16] Yeah, very much.

[00:33:17] We do a lot of academies work for a lot of firms. The fact that our guys are online five, six hours before the UK opens, it means that overnight we've produced files, we produce sections and carried out all the work in advance of the UK teams arriving at their desk.

[00:33:40] And what that then means is they've got everything lined up ready to go. So they've got a much more efficient day planned for them.

[00:33:50] You mentioned an area of specialism there. What other areas of specialism do you delve into? Because all it is very broad-ranging but within that, there are very much a number of niches which require more specialist scale as well.

[00:34:01] We do a lot of commercial audits which is bread and butter for most firms, but we do teach suspension.

[00:34:08] We do independent examinations for a lot of charities. There's a whole range of things which our guys are just used to doing day in, day out.

[00:34:18] And academies, it's just because there is that crunch. All of those academies need to be delivered within a very short window when we started audit.

[00:34:28] It seemed a natural place to start because we had a group of people who'd already had a lot of experience in that area.

[00:34:35] Are you able to work to different methodologies? Because obviously again broad range of methodologies available in the UK marketplace and lots of firms will be operating in different ways.

[00:34:44] How do you assimilate that into your team to make it work really effectively?

[00:34:47] It'll depend on a firm's demand. What we will typically do is work with them and say which methodologies are you using?

[00:34:55] What training do we need to do or can they provide some training to the team that they've got assigned?

[00:35:03] Because we work on the dedicated and block based approach when it comes to audit.

[00:35:08] So if you're a let's say a mercies for what we'll do is we'll identify what the training needs are and will have completed that with the firms help.

[00:35:20] Clearly some are very popular programs and a lot of our accounts team will be very familiar with some of those products.

[00:35:28] What do you see as the opportunity really for firms that maybe are looking to take advantage of the increasing size of the audit market and making the best use of their business like yours to help bridge that gap.

[00:35:40] The big firms are shedding audits which is really creating huge opportunities for the mid-tier firms but what you've also got is the smaller firms giving up audits.

[00:35:52] So you've got work coming from both sides and firms would love to take advantage of those opportunities but the restricting factor is talent in the audit market.

[00:36:05] What we're creating is capacity and the thing is good people are good people.

[00:36:11] I think what Covid has shown us all is doesn't really max it where they're based and that's the big thing that I find amongst our team is they're hungry to learn more and that's always a good thing.

[00:36:22] Agreed. Well thank you for that.

[00:36:24] I'm excited times I think in the audit space and particularly if you can sell that resource staffing issue because definitely the limiting factor I think for our firms at the moment.

[00:36:33] I think we should say that there's nothing wrong with a bit of fun from growing.

[00:36:42] I'll get my bet my best clean bet you have to write just that down there didn't we boys.

[00:36:50] You don't see nothing wrong with it right there's nothing wrong.

[00:36:56] Just add there's nothing wrong with the grind.

[00:36:59] And one's anaconda don't want to come and let you got a bun sandwich.

[00:37:04] We should do these as if we're just reading the news so we just take the dead and

[00:37:11] Detabler anchor John to water sports I am pure sea local news app news with a little bump and grind and in this episode we have

[00:37:21] John to and a condo don't want some and there's you got my mic rod Becky look at her butt.

[00:37:31] And I was over to run on the streets. Oh yes, I've been interviewing people today and I found out that there's absolutely nothing wrong with a bit of

[00:37:41] bump and grind according to be which audit. And in other news I want to lick you up and down.

[00:37:50] You think what over to the weather.

[00:37:53] The weather across the UK is going to be generally moist.

[00:38:00] Flooding flooding in certain areas.

[00:38:10] I am delighted to say that we've got Fidget Peter's joining us from data snippet fairly recent appointment as CEO there and obviously gone through significant investment round in recent months as well.

[00:38:21] Taking the company to a billion dollar valuation so I'm sure there's plenty of things for us to talk about.

[00:38:26] It's a great to have you on the podcast and I wonder if you could give us a little bit of your background.

[00:38:31] You've had some very interesting roles at some very significant companies in the past so plenty of experience to bring to this new role that you find yourself in.

[00:38:38] John, thanks for having me. It's great to be here with you on your show and yes, happy to tell you a little bit about myself a little bit about data snipper.

[00:38:47] And of course talk about our recent announcements so a little bit about me.

[00:38:51] I started my career baning company as a strategy consultant worked in Chicago and then in Southeast Asia for a couple years in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and India.

[00:39:00] And as is typical of the program went back for graduate school to the dual masters and business and public administration from Kellogg and Harvard and then spent about seven years at Intuit.

[00:39:10] I was eager for operational experience and it was probably my first time getting a very deep understanding of the account and life and small business accounting at pain points.

[00:39:22] And it probably is some of that early experience that then brought me full circle today to snipper so I'll touch on that a little bit later.

[00:39:30] But Intuit gave me a really good understanding of just how underserved accountants are and how painful and tedious their day to day work can be without the use of technology and software.

[00:39:42] And from Intuit I joined me also spent a little over four years with them and learned everything about enterprise technology and APIs and everything in between.

[00:39:52] And then did something entirely different went into the fintech space and spent about three years at Marquetta in the payment card issuing infrastructure space.

[00:40:04] But during that time I also moved to the Netherlands for personal reasons my husband is Dutch and we've always talked about raising our children here and spent almost three years working, barrier hours from Amsterdam which was in and of itself quite an experience especially in the middle of a pandemic.

[00:40:20] So I was absolutely delighted when data slip or came along there are few things that stuck out to me one is what a simple and elegant product the founders Kai Marti on a set built to address what I would say is almost the first time I've seen it.

[00:40:33] The way is almost the forgotten customer and it took me back to my Intuit days. We think of auditors and how manual and how long the hours that they work are and how few solutions there are to make their work easier.

[00:40:48] Data Snipper was solving a very large pain points in a very elegant way and it was so dropped at easy to use I remember downloading the product and immediately feeling within a few minutes of gosh could I be an auditor.

[00:41:00] And that's a very dangerous feeling to have for someone who's never studied accounting as a degree.

[00:41:06] But I knew that they were doing something very special but second I saw opportunity for this to be so much beyond audit when you looked a little bit closer at who they were serving it did have a large portion of auditors but it also had customers and oil and gas and health care and insurance and mining and everything in between because of the heart of it everyone every day is trying to

[00:41:29] match and connect data and make sense of it. And the founders are absolutely delightful and the culture that they built was something that I was super excited to be a part of so that's how I found my way to date this number amazing.

[00:41:41] I know I wanted to just wind back a little bit in terms of obviously you started out and consulting and moved move to Intuit and started to learn how scary a world is to work in the accounting space and things but what was it that convinced you to move from that consulting role and consulting space and so into moving to Intuit and dealing with it.

[00:41:58] What is a huge product in the US, a particular but also internationally and as you say moving into learning more about accounting and small business environment as well.

[00:42:07] I think it was my hunger to move from theory to reality because I think consulting gives you a great framework to look at challenging problems with a very analytical mindset and break them down into very logical questions that you ask.

[00:42:23] And of course you ask those questions and you mine data and you come up with some great insights and hypotheses but that's where largely the work ends and there's something very unsatisfying about that.

[00:42:33] And I wanted to own the outcome, I wanted to see whether my hypotheses actually moved the needle for the business, whether they actually prove themselves out because there's a lot of intellectual prowess that goes in theory and there's a lot of humility that comes from trying to do something the real world.

[00:42:50] And I realized that thinking you may know the answer is about 20% and 80% is about figuring out the nitty-gritty details of what it takes to actually implement that in market doing it fast enough, doing it in an elegant way and actually seeing whether the customer accepts or rejects your solution.

[00:43:09] And that is in and of itself a whole learning. It is the learning that once you experience it, it's pretty hard to go back to the theory.

[00:43:18] It's a little bit like to read something versus writing something on your own. They're both enjoyable but I think everyone will agree that writing in original pieces is a lot more challenging.

[00:43:29] So I was inspired to see that reality in action and honestly I never went back.

[00:43:35] It was quite challenging from a mindset point of view and also to get accepted within it to take that theory to application.

[00:43:42] I think there's only one word for it, it's humbling. It's humbling for you personally because you realize how little you know and you realize how few the skills that you actually need to make something successful in the real world you have.

[00:43:56] And there's a vast valley between theory and reality of what happens. So that's one but there's also the second you realize that while people may respect your analytical abilities, it's a whole different thing to earn the respect of having to own the numbers and to deliver results and outcomes for the business.

[00:44:14] It was a transformation that had to happen making that entire skill change.

[00:44:18] So even now actually when I have so many colleagues and team members that come up to me that are early in their career and say, yeah, I really wanted to go into strategy.

[00:44:26] I think strategy has an enormously elusive sort of elite prestige euphoria about it.

[00:44:33] And I always discourage them and they say, that's a great foundation. It's fine. Go do it for a couple of years.

[00:44:39] But then compact and actually own the execution. That is where the learning lies. That is where the hard work needs to be done.

[00:44:47] It's that all that is of getting on the shop floor right in terms of learning our business runs from the nuts and bolts.

[00:44:53] That's exactly right.

[00:44:54] There's always these things that you see on LinkedIn like you have the top five business books you should read. There's always topics of discussion around your strategy theory, hypotheses, things.

[00:45:04] What enabled you to say what you had already learned into that practical application? How do you break that down so that you could say, now I'm going to go and test that theory and try and get it into this business and make it work.

[00:45:14] Yeah, I would say there are a few wonderful strengths that strategy teaches you one is it helps you cut through the noise and see the signal.

[00:45:22] The second thing is it allows you to approach any situation with a sense of courage because you don't have to know the industry.

[00:45:30] You don't have to know that problem set in order to ask a logical set of questions and break them down.

[00:45:36] Peel the onion to where the nuggets are and there's tremendous goodness in that it gives you a great set of tools to approach.

[00:45:43] But again, that's only the approach and once you've done your analysis and you've formed your points of view, you've cut through the noise, you've been able to work through tons of data, ask the right questions and develop ideas on where you think the nuggets of value are then comes the experimentation then comes the roll up your sleeves.

[00:46:00] What does it take to get a product and market that addresses that pain point, what does it take to release an absolutely new customer experience?

[00:46:07] What does it take to blow the socks off your customers feet and be absolutely wowed by something that no consulting can teach you.

[00:46:14] You've got to figure that out on your own.

[00:46:17] Another learning I had was just motivating and building great teams as anyone on your podcast will know is that no job is a one person show.

[00:46:25] You really need to have an amazing team working with you with complimentary skills, really rally behind a mission to go build something amazing for your end customer to deliver an amazing experience.

[00:46:38] And I didn't quite learn that until I got on the shop floor to use your words and the reason is in consulting you're working with very like minded people and you're all cut from the same cloth but the truth is

[00:46:49] that you build great customer experiences. You want people from very different backgrounds and skills so that you're building a complimentary skills that and how do you figure out how to motivate inspire and get everyone rally behind the same goal when they come from extremely different backgrounds and experiences, diverse points of view.

[00:47:06] And I think that's the beauty. That's the real magic of when you do something great when you can make that happen.

[00:47:13] Those people skills that are to a degree are not stuff that you learn in consulting either those are sometimes things that you just have to learn on your own right.

[00:47:20] You absolutely do because when you're in consulting, you're speaking and working with people that come from similar universities and similar educational backgrounds and motivations.

[00:47:30] And they're all cut from the same cloth in many ways. It's not a very diverse place and I just don't mean diversity by skin color or gender, I mean by thinking mostly because of what they recruit for or what they look for.

[00:47:42] But my first operating job into it was selling telephone support plans for declining desktop product. That is not a great product.

[00:47:51] But first of all, the to catch a teeth on one of the best learning experience in my career.

[00:47:56] But you're sitting on the floor with cold center agents in Tucson, Arizona and then you come back and then you're working with sales people and then you're meeting with retail agents from brick and mortar stores where your product is going to be sold.

[00:48:10] And then you're working with accounting, product managers who've been steeped in the accounting ins and outs.

[00:48:17] And then you go, okay, how do I get this entire team to work together to design something incredible that customers will love now?

[00:48:23] That's a whole different skill set from anything I learned before. So no consulting to not prepare me for leading great cross-uncle teams.

[00:48:30] What's the silver bullets and making a team really work if you had one number one it starts with hiring. You got to ensure that you are hiring a great team.

[00:48:38] And by the way, nothing else can make up for that.

[00:48:41] How does that work though if you're coming into an organization?

[00:48:43] Because obviously you can't come in and change the team overnight. That's almost impossible.

[00:48:47] What you will learn is you can pick and choose your players.

[00:48:50] And so you may not be able to hire but you can make the case over time of forming the team that you would like.

[00:48:56] And I think that's super important. So remember one, ensure that you have the right people on the boat.

[00:49:00] And no strategy and no product will make up for not having the right people around the table with you.

[00:49:06] The second, I can't tell you the amount of hours or weeks months you will waste because the team is going to want to pull in different directions.

[00:49:14] In order for any team to be effective, you have to be razor sharp on what it is that you're solving for together and what it is you're not solving for.

[00:49:21] So saying no is almost more important than saying yes.

[00:49:25] Defining what that success looks like in very clear terms so that it's not just a subjective but we want to build something great.

[00:49:31] Now what does that mean? What are the outcomes that you want this to deliver for the customer and ensuring that you're bringing a very lean mindset.

[00:49:38] I think the teams that do really well are the ones that don't have these massive project plans that go into weeks and months to figure something out.

[00:49:46] But hey, can I build a lean prototype? Can I put this in front of the customer? Can I see if this resonates and then make the case for more resources to go from there?

[00:49:54] Those are exactly the kind of skills that consulting doesn't necessarily teach you. It teaches you how to analyze historical data.

[00:50:02] It tells you how to read the time for something that already happened. It tells you how to explain something.

[00:50:08] But these are some of the skills that I learned at Intuit the Hardware which help you craft some of the future.

[00:50:14] I always find it fascinating when you talk to people who have worked in different places because I think that ability to draw up different ideas and thoughts and things really helped people in their career.

[00:50:25] Particularly in our world, if you get into a county and you're really 20s and then you don't leave until you retireing really.

[00:50:31] And I think sometimes we are a little bit blanking in our world and we don't draw on enough outside business information which is ironic given that our role is to talk to businesses and to understand what entrepreneurs and business leaders and not for profits are doing.

[00:50:43] Do you think that broad experience has really helped you get to where you are now?

[00:50:48] John, it depends who you ask.

[00:50:50] Who should I ask that video?

[00:50:51] I believe that for any team to be successful you want a combination of experiences on the team.

[00:50:57] You want the people that have the tea which is they are super deep on a domain and then you want the people that also bring the breath and perspective across industries.

[00:51:07] For me, because of how my career has shaped up not by design, not by intent but because I've chosen to follow people and I've made my choices based on people that I've been excited to work with has ended up much broader than anyone could have architected no one architects a career and says, hey, I'm actually going to hop around a few industries and see how this goes.

[00:51:28] But if you had seen me at Marquetta, the number one concern people always raises, but she doesn't have payments background.

[00:51:34] She doesn't have the payments experience. I always believe great teams are a combination of people that bring the depth of experience and those that also bring diverse perspectives and exposure to variety of different concepts.

[00:51:46] So that's why I say it depends on who you ask.

[00:51:48] I think you made a very interesting point that you just slipped it in was that you followed people you're interested in working with interesting good people.

[00:51:55] How do you figure that out from the outside when you're going into a new role?

[00:51:59] For me, it's three guiding principles. Number one, the interview is a two way process just as they are getting information about you.

[00:52:06] It's imperative that you are also taking the time to understand them asking them questions about their motivations what excites them, what keeps them going, one of the challenges they face, understanding their values. That's number one.

[00:52:18] Number two, spending a little bit of time researching and understanding their past experiences.

[00:52:23] Maybe looking at their interviews where they may talk about hiring or building high performing teams. What is their philosophy?

[00:52:29] What do they tell not just you in the interview, but what do they share in public?

[00:52:33] And last but not least, I always pick up the phone and talk to people that we may know in common to say, hey, what does John tune really like?

[00:52:39] Should I do this podcast interview that he invited me to and then we have a colleague in common mouge who says, now you must absolutely do it.

[00:52:46] But John has been a great supporter of all of our work. And so this is these are the three of my guiding principles to make sure I'm choosing to work and spend time with people that I will enjoy growing with.

[00:52:58] Thank you for the flattery, but that was very appreciated. Obviously now you're with data, isn't it? Tell me how that sort of opportunity came about and the process was like for you in terms of joining an audit tech business because the audit tech space is not that big and across the entire world. There aren't that many opportunities and roles.

[00:53:13] John, it's just a little less than a year that I joined data snipper and it started with a call from the founders. So marty jones and kai reached out to me through somebody we know in common and shared a little bit on data snipper and my first understanding was more around the product and company.

[00:53:31] It was intriguing as I mentioned given my experience into it.

[00:53:35] I knew that they were building something very special and solving a real pain point for auditors and I wanted to learn more.

[00:53:41] When I got on the phone with the founders, I think what I really appreciated about them right off the bat was number one, their passion for building great products. This is not about having their name on big bull boards or making a truckload of money.

[00:53:54] They just are intrinsically really motivated about solving a problem in a very elegant way for customers.

[00:54:01] Number two, it's their humility. So I think it's quite rare to find founders who are starting a search themselves for the CEO. This was not in master led. This was not by anyone else but them.

[00:54:13] And for them to recognize that hey, we really want to bring someone else in who has seen scale whose operational was deep operational experience and can help take data snipper to the next level.

[00:54:26] And for me, that was critical because I wouldn't want a situation where I work very closely with the founders here are very talented.

[00:54:33] And so I loved that they wanted to bring someone on and that in and of itself sets a great tone as a partnership with me running the company but me leveraging them for all of the talents that they bring to the world.

[00:54:46] And so we continue that. So actually from the first call to when I started a data snipper, it was 45 days. It moved incredibly fast because that's how sure I was a team and of the prospect of joining this company.

[00:54:58] And I continue to work very closely with the founders for those listeners who are operating in the audience base of which we definitely have a few. We should probably expand on what data snipper does precisely why it's been such a success in the market.

[00:55:09] Obviously given the recent valuation in particular, a billion dollar valuation is still failure usual for someone new into the market and they have really taken the market by storm up.

[00:55:19] Yeah, a little bit about data snipper. So if you think about at the heart of what auditors do it's taking a lot of client data whether it's structured or unstructured from PDFs handwritten notes, bank statements invoices contracts.

[00:55:31] And you're trying to match them to a sample list. And that has usually been a process that has taken hours if not days to work through particularly as you get into busy season and data snipper took at the heart of it, that problem and made it absolutely automated.

[00:55:47] You can bring in any document and bring it into Excel with just the click of a mouse and will automatically match those documents for you, but we will also make it easy for you to cross reference. So anytime you mouse over any piece of data on your spreadsheet, we will immediately pull up the supporting documentation, the original document will also work with your financial statements will find anomalies discrepancies from your data allowing you to again focus on what you do best instead of trying to match date or for the next day.

[00:56:16] We're trying to match date or find errors really focus on where the high level vulnerabilities are for the customer and advise your customer and how to address them.

[00:56:24] Also, we just announced data snipper for Excel online so you can collaborate in real time. We have co authoring if you're teaching someone on your team, you can work with data snipper and real time with your team members.

[00:56:35] We just launched a web snip which allows you to bring any data from any website, customer RP, any sort of web solution directly into data snipper again for your audit procedures and we're also working on whole set of new AI products more to come on that.

[00:56:50] We're super excited about this funding round. To be honest, it's been less about the money. Data snipper has been doubling year on year while being profitable but it has really been about the expertise that we bring to the company to accelerate our product decision to accelerate our geographic expansion so we can deliver more great experiences for our customers in market.

[00:57:09] My first been using date snipper for just over two years now and I think if it's I think it's the one product that if we took away from the audit team that be mass risk nations or a riot or something because it is so highly and has had a huge impact on a huge impact, I think on an area that doesn't really add a huge amount of value to the audit per se although it's a sort of a necessary vehicle if you like.

[00:57:32] It's also an area that is fairly mundane in terms of the teams that do that kind of work. It's not hugely engaging it is robot work for human beings unfortunately you guys have taken so that pain away so very much appreciated by our team.

[00:57:45] So happy to hear that John and that's exactly what we want to do is we want to ensure that auditors can do what they do best and do the work that they join this profession to do no one joined auditing to look through a means of people working to match it not the Monday not that so crushing work.

[00:57:59] Let data snipper do that allowing auditors to again focus on the most important risk analysis aspects of business for their customers.

[00:58:08] You mentioned that date set was being doubling in size almost every year and the growth that they've had has been incredible really when they've gone about that growth in terms of you haven't spent a huge amount of money on direct marketing in countries, they've not been doing a lot of events up until fairly recently.

[00:58:25] A lot of fairly good real time marketing in terms of the stuff that you see on LinkedIn and the word of mouth, obviously which is hugely valuable and important. How has that come about because most people think I've an audit tech or an accounting tech products needs some kind of level of direct marketing to get into people's thoughts and minds before they go and try it out.

[00:58:43] I think that's a beauty of data snipper is that there was no real paid marketing effort until even just a year ago. There was no sort of sales development team until a year ago so a lot of it is very new and green field and I think it's a testament to how much word of mouth and virality there has been for the product.

[00:59:01] If there's something I remember for my time into it is that auditors listen to only other auditors that's most helpful and rightfully so it's a much more credible group to listen to your peers who actually use the tool and understand the applicability and usefulness about rather than to see something on a billboard.

[00:59:20] And so we've really focused then our marketing on allowing that community conversation to happen whether it's on LinkedIn or whether it's specific blog posts about customer experiences and we didn't actually start any paid spend.

[00:59:35] Even if you look at our marketing spend it's very modest. It's very modest for our company of our size and skill and we take pride in that because again, we want to mostly allow auditors to speak to other auditors about their genuine experience and get out of the way so that they can do that as genuinely as possible.

[00:59:52] And is that one of the things that's contributed to the profitability of the business because as you said again unusual I guess for a business of this kind of age to move so quickly into profitability and I wouldn't drift things like the real or 40 or top of mind year in terms of thinking how are you move forward over the next years.

[01:00:09] Yeah, I'm full credit to the founders. They've always been very lean in how they built this company and very thoughtful in how they've hired and I think what you're not going to find is a lot of bearer tech hubris here which is let's go higher.

[01:00:23] Let's write as many checks as we can as quickly as we can. And so the founders have really focused on building this business as sustainably as possible.

[01:00:31] And I've tried to keep some of that discipline and spirit since I've joined the company.

[01:00:35] Yeah, just moving into your role we've spoken to a few CEOs in the past who've moved into roles where they have essentially taken over from the founders who may be one many different hats and there's always a challenge there.

[01:00:47] And then bring someone like yourself into a much more focused role.

[01:00:51] I think it's an indication of maturity for a business but it's also a good opportunity sometimes for founders to get out of their own way in terms of not trying to either spread themselves too thinly but also give someone else the mantle to maintain the sort of the strategic growth focus for a business while they just maintain the interest and that the enthusiasm they have for the core product.

[01:01:10] Is that how you saw it when you came into the business?

[01:01:13] What is the one where I could bring in some of the operational experience I had developed from working at these amazing world class high growth companies.

[01:01:23] But I could never bring some of the passion that Marta has for product that Kai has for the development of the products that Jonas has for the customer experience having been steeped with auditors for years.

[01:01:36] And so to me it was just a perfect compliment where we could really work together and build something amazing by really taking the goodness that each of us brought to the table to help data snipper in this next chapter.

[01:01:47] Yeah, and that next chapter was that was that sort of when you came in was that revolving around an additional funding round or was that something that just happened as a consequence of timing and everything else?

[01:01:57] It was not on the agenda. I was not looking to raise but there was so much inbound interest and because we've been profitable it wasn't a case that we needed the funds.

[01:02:09] But given the inbound interest one of the conversations the founders and I had is could we use this as an opportunity to bring on another set of skills onto our board, another perspective.

[01:02:21] Could it help us expand our network help us expand to far reaching markets that we don't fully understand.

[01:02:27] For example, we're now making our first hires in Japan. It's a market that we don't have experience and this is where our venture capital partners can really help us.

[01:02:38] We just made our first hires in Mexico City. And so these are completely questions that we lean on our partners to help us find great talent to help figure out what does it take to be successful in these markets?

[01:02:50] And so these are some of the questions that we thought they could help us answer. It was not about the money it was really about the expertise that they would help bring to the table.

[01:03:00] And I guess that you say those access to those networks just helps to accelerate growth doesn't it? Just makes things a little easier.

[01:03:07] Certainly from my experience when I deal with vendors particularly coming into the UK, for example, people do value having local experience having boots on the ground as it were and that can be challenging in itself particularly if you spread yourself way too thinly without something.

[01:03:19] 100% and that's what you get from having great partners is a playbook, a network, a set of great referrals access to talent access to expertise.

[01:03:30] And that just ensures that you're making fewer mistakes as you're expanding and growing into new territories.

[01:03:36] You touched on AI which I think is inevitable now for almost every tech business. Someone's going to drop that into the conversation.

[01:03:42] Where do you see AI coming more into the product clearly? You've already got it because we've got extraction technology in there. Are you going to be exploring things like large language models, are you going to be exploring other elements of the AI technologies to enhance the product and what would that potentially look like without giving anything away?

[01:03:59] Absolutely. AI is at the heart of almost every new product that we're exploring every new feature that we're developing.

[01:04:05] And I think the possibilities are limitless. We just announced the advanced extraction suite last week, which allows you with one click to automatically extract the most common fields of data based on the forms you've uploaded.

[01:04:19] So whether it's an invoice or a contract or a receipt will use AI technology to automatically detect what type of document it is and says, OK, John, that looks like a receipt.

[01:04:29] I'll give you the vendor name, the amount and the date because we know that's the most commonly extracted information. It would be different for a contract or a different for an invoice.

[01:04:38] And so that is a classic example of the use of AI and we already find that since we announced it auditors are saying, hey, I need that now. I'm widening the middle of busy season and this could save me hours of time just dealing with extraction alone.

[01:04:53] I think it's safe to say that every product or feature that we're working on today, the eyes of the heart of it. And so there's definitely going to be more in the coming weeks and months.

[01:05:02] And does that pose a challenge for you as an organization in terms of is it a challenge in terms of build your own or maybe large language model, for example from elsewhere or how do you strike that balance between I and build?

[01:05:16] We're not building our own LLM. There's no way that would be a good use of our time or resources, but building great applications that leverage the best of LLM is what we're focused on.

[01:05:27] And so we have to always be very cognizant of where we can add the most value, where we can add the most value is our understanding of the problems that are customers face auditors and how we may potentially solve them using LLMs.

[01:05:40] But we love to leverage best in class technologies when they're already built and build on help them.

[01:05:46] One final question, what else does the future hold for data? Would acquisitions be on the cards or would you potentially branch out into other parts of the accounting audit space tax, payroll, etc.?

[01:05:58] What do you think the direction trouble might be?

[01:06:00] Today we already serve customers beyond external audit or customers are in tax internal audit financial control government audit and advisory.

[01:06:10] My focus is to solve as many problems for audit and finance professionals as possible.

[01:06:15] And I'm just looking across that entire value chain and saying, okay, what's the next most painful area?

[01:06:20] What can we do to make that easier for our customers?

[01:06:24] It's a very important thing to do because it's such an underserved market job.

[01:06:28] There's too much manual work and there are too many point to point solutions.

[01:06:32] And so the more problems we can solve in an integrated way, I think the more we can delight our customers.

[01:06:37] I think whether we build it or we acquire it or we get through a partnership is a natural follow on question that comes out of that.

[01:06:44] And I don't know the answer yet. It depends on which part we decide to solve and what makes sense in terms of the best solution.

[01:06:51] Thank you very much for your time. It's great to see another woman, if I could say in a high profile position and a high profile technology business.

[01:07:00] I think there's not enough theme or representation in our tech sometimes that I wish you every success over the next few months and years.

[01:07:07] And yeah, let's see what brings the table.

[01:07:10] Thank you, John. It's been a pleasure.

[01:07:12] Thanks for joining us in this week's digitals in a cruel world.

[01:07:16] Please remember if you have not done so already to join our community and the be of the digital disruptors.

[01:07:24] We've got quite a good little community vibe building now, and we're also doing a few more in real life events,

[01:07:31] which if you want to get the jump on the tickets to make sure that you join us ahead of the digital accounting show in London in about a month's time.

[01:07:41] John, remind us of the date.

[01:07:43] Oh, funny how the 15th is our event. So that's the Monday, 15th April.

[01:07:48] 15th of April, if you really want to join us at that event, John, what are we doing?

[01:07:53] So we are going to immersive game box in shortage for a couple of hours of games and a bit of food and a couple of drinks I'm sure and we'll see what else the night takes us.

[01:08:02] What's the capacity again, John?

[01:08:05] I think we've got around about 90 to 100 available get online you'll find the links on our socials and bits of pieces and you can book your tickets and when they're gone they're gone.

[01:08:13] They're gone, they're gone.

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