Ron and Ed welcome John Dierkhising of Bottom Line Accounting Services and returning guest Shannon Kaiser of Summit for a conversation at the intersection of accounting, technology, and service. John brings the perspective of a practitioner who supports businesses using Sage and other accounting technologies, while Shannon brings deep experience in application hosting, cloud infrastructure, and managed services. Together, they explore how the right technology environment can remove friction, improve support, and allow firms to serve more clients without adding unnecessary complexity. Expect a practical discussion about Sage, hosting, scalability, reliability, and what accounting professionals should really be looking for from their technology partners.

About John Dierkhising

John Dierkhising is the owner of Bottom Line Accounting Services, a Minnesota-based firm providing accounting, bookkeeping, and financial software consulting. John and his team specialize in helping businesses get more from systems including Sage, QuickBooks, Crystal Reports, and related technologies. A longtime Sage practitioner and consultant, John brings a hands-on perspective on how accounting technology, support, and hosting can help firms operate more efficiently and serve clients at scale.

About Shannon Kaiser

Shannon Kaiser is General Manager of Application Hosting at Summit and a veteran technology executive with extensive experience in cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, application delivery, and managed services. He has led engineering, operations, and technology teams and today focuses on helping organizations build secure, scalable technology environments that support growth while reducing operational risk. Shannon previously joined TSOE for Episode #590, “Security, Scale, and Trust.”

SHOW NOTES

Segment one

What’s the biggest implementation gap today? John has seen over the last few years (after the rush to the cloud) has been the ability for long time business owners to come up to speed on existing technology. Which is where Bottom Line Accounting Services helps.
The emergence of AI in the SMB space is an area of opportunity that Shannon sees in the space today.
John’s team uses an agnostic tool to reach into Sage 50 and Sage 100 data, layer over a SQL mirror, and use AI to ask questions in real time.
Are there still misconceptions about the cloud, critical business data, and security? “Oh my goodness.” —Shannon Kaiser of Summit

Segment two

What’s the biggest accounting profession problem today (outside of technology) according to John Dierkhising of Bottom Line Accounting Services? Being real time with the clients and helping with succession planning
John had a great answer to “Should we work with a fewer number of customers?” during segment two of the show today. Mostly, yes but his answer was about the nuances of more vs less.
“Technology Agnostic, Outcome Obsessed: A New Rubric for Evaluating Infrastructure” by Shannon Kaiser https://summithq.com/new-rubric-for-evaluating-infrastructure/
From Shannon’s article, “In a recent Accenture study, only 20% of AI tokens used were tied directly to business outcomes. The rest? Experiments and tech for tech’s sake.” https://summithq.com/new-rubric-for-evaluating-infrastructure/
GREAT question from Ron to John today in segment three: “Do we rally have a talent shortage or do we have a shortage of companies offering jobs to young people worth doing?”

Segment three

Regarding AI in the ERP space from John Dierkhising: “You don’t see as much on the customization side where you would need to worry about some of the growth later.” EXACTLY. AI provides much more flexibility (editor’s note: but not necessarily scalability)
Regarding AI in the ERP space from Shannon Kaiser of Summit: “Customization becomes less and less of a need [as a result of AI] because you can then ask for ad hoc reports.”
What about a Quickbooks replacement that is completely vibe-coded? “That’s definitely in play. I almost feel like migration to the cloud 3 years ago was big. […] And now coming off a legacy system, you will be going to an AI system.” —John Dierkhising of Bottom Line Accounting Services
John Dierkhising of Bottom Line Accounting Services called out a pretty important challenge related to AI adoption in a typical accounting business customer base: “I don’t see how it solves the issue on the client side where it’s hard to get clients move and change.”

Segment four

What KPIs need changing as a result of AI? The standard costing side, work in process, production control - just to name a few from John Dierkhising
Does agentic AI cause the whole concept of a software stack to disappear? “If I had to put my money on one bet, that would be it.” —Shannon Kaiser of Summit
A big THANK YOU to John Dierkhising of Bottom Line Accounting Services and Shannon Kaiser of Summit for joining us today!

Bonus Content is Available As Well

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