MYOB looks to the future with general release of new AI innovation

Successful pilot sees general release of MYOB Advisor to accountants and bookkeepers, providing more value for MYOB partners and their clients.

Following a successful pilot, MYOB Advisor was today launched to thousands of accountants and bookkeepers.

The groundbreaking artificial intelligence (AI) technology makes giving business advice, and scaling advisory services, easier than ever.

Advisory services simplified with unique technology

MYOB Advisor is integrated into the platform that partners currently use. The use of artificial intelligence – featuring natural language generation (NLG) – means MYOB Advisor goes beyond visual dashboards, charts and tables to provide meaningful information to help their clients.

The technology provides natural language descriptions of a business’ financial position. These can be customised by accountants and bookkeepers based on their knowledge and experience with their SME client.

Unique technology gives partners a simple way to start conversations

David Weickhardt, MYOB General Manager, Product, says MYOB Advisor has already helped hundreds of partners scale their advisory services. Over 300 partners signed up for the pilot.

“MYOB Advisor allows the partner to start a conversation with their client,” Mr. Weickhardt said.

“The type of insights provided by MYOB Advisor include a visualisation of cash flow, so that the advisor can help their client see where their cash is going, or provide a view of top customers to help clients better manage their high value relationships.”

“It’s the technology paired with the partners’ knowledge and expertise that makes MYOB Advisor so valuable.”

Trevor Harrison of MRL Group, agrees that MYOB Advisor is a useful tool to start and maintain conversations with clients on their business performance.

“You can really just jump in and with a few clicks you can generate a report in five minutes – but if you want to add feedback and comments, you can do that too,” said Mr. Harrison.

“It gives you a nice package which you can attach to an email or upload to your portal. We may even get the client in on a quarterly basis to run through the report, but I see it much more quickly deployed and used as a conversation piece to help the client.”

Partners and their clients embrace advisory services

MYOB’s own research uncovered that seven of the top 10 unmet needs of SME were related to business advice. MYOB Advisor provides welcome information to help partners start advisory conversations with their clients. More than 40% of SMEs see their accountant as their main source of business advice, suggesting they are in the preferred position to provide advisory services beyond compliance and transaction needs.[1]

“Our research shows that accountants and bookkeepers want to provide more advisory services, and that their clients are eager for their advice,” Mr. Weickhardt said.

“MYOB Advisor is already proving to be enormously successful in this regard.”

“With this product now available to all of our partners we expect their advisory services to grow significantly.”

Features and advisory insights available via the platform include:

• Automated management reporting and a reduction in reporting time.
• Ability to easily create a snapshot of a client’s position.
• Deep integration between MYOB Advisor and the MYOB platform means that there is no need to switch between two separate platforms.

MYOB Advisor is now available to all partners via the existing MYOB partner platform.

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For further comment or other information please contact:

Selina Ife, Media Relations Consultant, MYOB

M: 61 488 044 237/ E: selina.ife@myob.com

About MYOB

MYOB Group Ltd (ASX: MYO) is a leading provider of online business management solutions. MYOB makes business life easier for approximately 1.2 million businesses across Australia and New Zealand by simplifying accounting, payroll, tax, practice management, CRM, job costing, inventory and more. MYOB operates across three core segments – Clients and Partners (business solutions to SMEs and Advisers); Enterprise Solutions (larger businesses) and Payment Solutions. It provides ongoing support via many client service channels including a network of over 40,000 accountants, bookkeepers and other consultants. It is committed to ongoing innovation, particularly through its Connected Practice Strategy and through the development of the MYOB Platform. For more information, visit http://investors.myob.com.au/Investors or follow @MYOB on Twitter.

[1] MYOB research 2017