About the Audience

The Sleeter Group's Accounting Solutions Conference attracts top experts from around the world in accounting software consulting, accounting and bookkeeping, tax preparation, and integration of add-on software and hardware into accounting systems. The Conference is the premier event of the year for the small- to medium-sized business accounting consultant and add-on developer community. Attendees come to learn best practices, learn new technologies and practice management techniques, network with colleagues, and to "stay ahead of the curve."

Nearly half the audience is a CPA, and over 60% of the attendees say that their top reason to attend The Sleeter Conference is to either "meet new companies, see new products, learn about cloud computing, get an accounting technology update, or learn new ways to grow their practice."

Our attendees' firms employ over 5,000 tax and accounting professionals who provide services to over 500,000 business clients — all of whom use QuickBooks and other accounting and business management products. These clients are small- to medium-sized business owners who rely heavily on their consultant’s advice to determine which software and hardware solutions they should purchase, and the consultant acts as the outside partner for keeping the business systems running smoothly.

This conference has developed a platform, in the context of a live event, that highlights technologies, companies, and products to help them "cross the chasm" between finding early adopters of their products and helping those early adopters become mavens, or evangelists that promote these products and technologies to their client base. This "chasm" concept, first developed by Geoffrey Moore in Crossing the Chasm in the early 1990s, defines a model that "represents a pattern in market development that is based on the tendency of pragmatic people to adopt new technology when they see other people like them doing the same. This causes them to hang together as a group, and the group's initial reaction, like teenagers at a junior high dance, is to hesitate and watch." The Sleeter Group's mission is to help the audience evaluate, navigate, and adopt technologies that benefit their client base. And we're seeing more success each year.

Many audience members concentrate on software consulting only, while some also prepare financial statements and tax returns, and a growing number of attendees also help with hardware selection and installation. In fact, our attendees' firms installed over 50,000 software systems last year. While many of our attendees turn to outside firms to assist their clients with computer support and IT issues, a growing percentage are also in the business of IT consulting.

2/3 of our attendees:

• Are women with over 12 years' experience in the accounting profession
• Are an owner, partner, or principal
• Work in firms of 10 or fewer staff
• Are QuickBooks ProAdvisors who use and support clients who use SaaS accounting applications
• Own a smartphone and/or a tablet computer
• Nearly 80% are musicians!

Other Interesting Statistics

Most of the audience works to maintain several professional certifications, underscoring the importance they place on credibility, and developing their "most trusted advisor" status.

Although learning about specifics of software products such as QuickBooks is high on the list of reasons to attend, when asked to rank the top 5 reasons to attend the conference, this chart shows that learning about other products and technologies are at least as important, and that learning ways to grow the practice is one of the top reasons for most of audience.

We're seeing near ubiquitous ownership of smart mobile devices. Apple dominates, but Android devices and Blackberry are very prominent in the marketplace. This chart shows that from a sampling of 360 members who answered the question, Apple iPhone and iPads are very popular (both in current ownership and people "considering" purchasing). Also, the audience overwhelming own Windows laptops, but Mac laptop are gaining popular

Software as a Service (SaaS) technologies are crossing the chasm of market adoption. The chart below suggests that our audience is adopting and recommending SaaS technologies.

A critical requirement for broad adoption, use, and recommendation of products, is the availability and quality of technical support. This chart shows that most people like the high-touch methods for finding answers to their questions. They love phone support, but recognize this is very expensive for the vendors, so they have developed many alternative "sources" for answers to technical questions. Peer recommendations and answers is highly valued, and often the peer recommendations can give more depth than the vendor support reps can give.

Social networking is now mainstream among the group. Many of our members have formed their own social networking groups that attract thousands of participants who rely on these groups for advice and answers to specific questions. For example, a longtime Sleeter Group Network member and speaker at the conference, Michelle Long, CPA has a Linked In Group with over 9000 members.

Paperless technologies continue to thrive, and gain adoption, but as this table shows, there are still opportunities for firms to learn about and adopt the right paperless technologies. From scanning paper, to adopting secure, efficient, and affordable document management systems, there is still huge opportunity for growth in the paperless arena.

A significant trend among this audience is that nearly two thirds of them provide some type of business "mentoring" services for their clients. This suggests that beyond just helping clients with the technology and bookkeeping systems, they are also finding that clients need and want help with interpreting the numbers and managing to better business outcomes.

We believe web based training technologies are quite effective for product overviews, marketing, and training. But as this chart may indicate, people are not attending webinars nearly as often as one would expect. We believe this is because live events such as telephone support, live chat, forum-based support, and live training/conferences provide attractive ways for this audience to learn. Perhaps because live events provide opportunities to network with peers, including learning from audience questions. Webinars are growing, but we thought they would have taken over completely by now, so this is somewhat of a surprise to us.

Here are a few ways people have fun in our group. Notice the high percentage of musicians!