Digital Automation – Can It Help Your Business Prosper?
Agribusiness has suffered from the post-Covid people shortage just as other industries have. Finding people is tough. We’ve seen the dairy industry move to robots, an increased reliance on migrant workers, and the use of H-2A workers is blossoming in places like Central Illinois and Southeastern Iowa.
Believe it or not, there is also an accountant shortage. Per the Society for Human Resources Management, more than 300,000 accountants and auditors left their jobs in the past two years – a 17% decline in employed accountants and auditors from 2019…and job opportunities are expected to increase by 6% (or 136,400 jobs) between 2021 and 2031. There is also currently a reduction in college students enrolled in accounting programs.
Many agribusinesses are having the same struggle in the front office, with people spending time in monotonous, block and tackle tasks, that no one really enjoys. What if the some of these processes could be automated using digital technologies and the people that you have can focus on more high value activities like analyzing performance and identifying opportunities? What if your data from multiple systems could be combined together to give you visual, real-time information that can be used for decision making, instead of using reports from three different systems and trying to meld them together in your mind?
It is possible and valuable. Recently CLA was able to serve Co-Alliance Cooperative to do just those things above. Co-Alliance identified a pain point where their accounting staff spent countless hours just processing invoices…which was remedied by a digital solution that did not interfere with their existing software platforms. The full testimonial of Co-Alliance’s CFO can be viewed here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q4Debztt6E
The world seems to be changing faster than it used to. Utilize your people to the highest degree possible for high value tasks and take advantage of technology where it is able to help…just like what’s been done with robots in dairy and food processing, drones, or precision ag technology.
Kelly Jackson Hardy is a certified public accountant and business advisor specializing in income taxation, accounting services, and succession planning for farmers, privately-held elevators and supply dealers, and cooperatives. Kelly is a principal with CliftonLarsonAllen in Princeton, Illinois, as well as a regular speaker at tax and estate planning seminars. Kelly was raised on a hog, row crop and cattle farm in central Illinois and has been involved in the ag industry her entire life. Kelly, her husband, and two sons are active in 4-H and operate a small feeder calf operation and pumpkin business.
Comments are closed.