2019 Customer Conference – Top 5 Takeaways

1. Attendees from near and far
It was so fantastic to see 18 interstate customers make the effort to come to Melbourne for the conference. Every state and territory, except NT, was represented by someone. Special shoutout to Laura from HLB who came all the way from Fiji! Thanks to all those interstate attendees for the special effort.
2. Engagement of attendees
This variety in attendee background made for great engagement and interaction throughout the whole day. I had many great discussions with people and it was great to see almost everyone stick around for the final technical session. This resulted in many questions being fired at Sarah and David during that session, most in regarding Xtend and how to use CaseWare as an audit team.
3. Webcasting works
We tried something new this year by streaming most of the conference via a webcast. This was a resounding success with most saying that it was a good substitute for not attending. We had over 40 viewers at one time with most watching the entire webcast of the conference. We will definitely continue to explore this option more in future and hopefully make it a more seamless experience for our viewers.
4. Absorbing panel discussions
In another conference first for us, we decided to run an expert panel on the topic of the future of audit and how we can work together to navigate change. It was one of the highlights of the day with some fascinating discussions on; parliamentary inquiries, data analytics and recruiting models. The panel was chaired by David Stevens and our panellists were; our own Dwight Wainman, Amanda White from the University of Technology, Matthew Zappulla from the AUASB and Melanie Scott from the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand. Having input from these industry influencers was invaluable so thanks to all involved.
5. Industry developments
The buzz around the room could be attributed to the exciting developments surrounding the audit industry. This was very clear in the panel discussion. This was summed up well by Dwight during the panel discussion:
Thanks again to everyone who was involved in attending and organising our 2019 conference, we hope to see you again next year!]]>“We're in a wonderful area of AI and data analysis. We're going back to our roots with this, that's what our profession should learn and understand. But we have that other thing that no other profession has; we understand independence, we’re sceptics. All of those things an engineer doesn't have.
So I think the future is both learning and understanding, but now the question is how do we get over there?”