When I first heard the term “disruptive technology” I asked the speaker why they were being negative about the subject being discussed. It was then patiently explained to me that disruptive meant a game changer – something that was going to disrupt the norm and alter the way things were done.
An excellent example of this is Uber – love it or hate it – and ignoring for the moment whether its an app or a taxi service – there is no doubt it has changed the way that we travel and – from the consumers’ point of view – facilitated the whole process of ordering a cab. The other day I was in a London taxi which I had ordered using an app called Gett. Basically the app is “Uber” for black cabs and again benefits the consumer as well as the taxi driver.
In discussing with the driver how the app is benefiting him the conversation naturally got onto the subject of Uber and how they were impacting on the black cab trade. I pointed out that if it wasn’t for Uber there probably wouldn’t be Gett – disruption at work!
The same applies to the Cloud in general and Cloud accounting in particular. Applications such as Xero and Reviso (www.reviso.com) have changed the way accounting is now handled. For many years Sage Line 50 was the standard but they have now given up that position to cloud based applications and of course, on the basis of “if you can’t beat them…join them” launched Sage One to get their foothold in the cloud accounting marketplace.
So Disruptive Technology – revolution or evolution? I suppose the first example of this was the Gutenberg Bible … and look how that turned out.