Game on

At the age of 19, he went to the UK for what was supposed to be a six-month working holiday and ended up working in sales at APS, one of the forerunner companies that became Reckon. He returned to Australia some years later as office manager – with a staff of four – when APS set up shop in Australia, eventually becoming the chief executive of APS, which by then was a subsidiary of Reckon.

Along the way, his personal development has been very handson, through business coaching, mentoring and short business courses rather than a formal education. “In my career, that’s been hugely beneficial,” he says.

Shaped by mentors

Very much a one-company man, Allert has been mentored and influenced by the people who hired him – and that has proven to be a winning approach.

“The CEO who recruited me out of London, Brian Armstrong at APS, was a great mentor from a sales background,” says Allert. “He showed me that it was very much the relationship aspect that was important. He also taught me that if you really understand the business need or the need of an individual and you happen to have a tool or a product that will solve that, then everyone wins.”

Allert also pays tribute to a weekend with motivator Anthony Robbins as having a lasting and positive influence on his career. “That was a unique experience – it showed me I needed to know who I am and what my skills are,” he says. “We all have strengths and weaknesses, and we need to play to those strengths. It’s about self-awareness.”

And, of course, there’s Reckon director and group CEO Clive Rabie. Allert said Rabie, ever the astute businessman, showed him the value of analysing the numbers to make business decisions, not to operate solely on gut feeling. “He showed me how to stop and think about the costs   and other impacts to the rest of the business, and the effect on cash flow from my decisions.”

Competing on numbers

So it’s no surprise, when asked how he plans to compete with the likes of Xero, MYOB, Intuit and other close rivals that already have a strong cloud accounting offering, that Allert defaults to a strategic view.

“We are already running a profitable company and, yes, we are late to cloud accounting software. But that’s given us a couple of benefits,” he says.

“We can see what works and what doesn’t. We can take market feedback and come out with a very simple-to-use product that is local to Australia, and price it to what we believe is competitive.”

This question of price plays a key role, notes Allert. Because Reckon has developed its software entirely in-house, he says, it has greater control over costs and how much it needs to charge its clients while still leaving a profit margin. Or, as he puts it, “We have the lowest starting price point – plus add-ons.”

Then there is the loyalty factor. In essence, Reckon is banking on retaining its large customer base, transitioning all existing customers to cloud accounting systems.

“Our strength is that we work with over half a million businesses and with 6,000 accountants,” says Allert. “We have clients ranging from the likes of big four firms down to sole trader accounting firms, and business clients ranging from a stay-at-home mum with an interior design business up to government bodies like the navy. “They are all using on-desktop, on-premises software … by taking them into the cloud, we are helping them to connect with their clients.”

Diversity factor

The other point that Allert is keen to make is that Reckon is not dependent entirely on its accounting software for revenue. “We have other revenue lines, from practice management software and compliance software to our document management software,” he explains. “While Reckon One and Reckon Accounts make up a big percentage of the firm’s revenue, it’s not the only revenue.”

This means that Reckon does not need to rely purely on the prices it charges for its accounting products to make a profit, he says. “We do business software for accountants and we do accounting software for business.”

Beneficial as it may be for product offerings, diversity is no longer the basis of Reckon’s business structure.

“We had two lines: the accounting group and the business group,” says Allert. “Looking back five years, there were four or five brands within Reckon. We were APS; we were Reckon Docs; we were QuickBooks. It was not uncommon for an accounting practice to have three Reckon staff there in the same week – not competing, but it did appear to be disorganised and not the best way to run a business.”

So, when the former managing director of Reckon’s business group, Pete Sanders, left to head up the accountants division at Wolters Kluwer, CCH (formerly CCH Australia), that cleared the way for a restructure to combine the leadership aspects of both lines and create the role that Allert now occupies.

“We were always heading down the path of having one structure within Australia and New Zealand,” he says. “It makes a lot of sense … now just happens to be the right time.”

Apart from streamlining the Reckon business, what else will be impacted by this new approach?

“The future will see all products being run on the same Reckon One platform, but with many more add-ons being offered,” reveals Allert. “For instance, a document management system slots nicely into an accounting package.”