iscoverNew exclusive research has shown that, for accounting tech, the discovery process is driven mostly by seeking peer input and attending events over direct vendor contact.
Accountants choose tech ‘by credibility and community’
25 July 2025
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9 minute read
Market research agency Agile Market Intelligence has provided Accountants Daily with the interim results from its 2025 Agile Market Intelligence Accounting Tech Review, which has collected survey responses from 501 accountants and bookkeepers across Australia since March 2025.
The report aimed to benchmark platform performance across private practice and in-house accounting professionals, and capture perceptions around functionality, service quality and platform features.
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As reported earlier this week, tech adoption in the accounting space has been slowing, with one in two (49 per cent) professionals and their firms noting they had not adopted any new accounting tech in the last five years, with only 14 per cent of those surveyed having adopted a new platform in the past year.
How accountants choose their tech
According to the findings, half of accounting professionals learnt about new tech through conferences (49 per cent) and peer recommendations (48 per cent), which suggested that influence was driven by trust and expertise.
The next most popular ways that respondents made tech decisions were webinars (45 per cent) and online research (44 per cent), showing that accountants were utilising their education to support purchasing decisions.
For accounting tech, “the discovery process is shaped by credibility and community”, the report read.
“Accountants favour peer input and events over direct vendor contact, suggesting that influence is driven by trust,” the agency said.
Learning about new technologies was also not a passive process, as webinars and training, and online research were also leading channels. Events and peer input may help firms and businesses identify what to explore, while webinars and active research were used to validate options and understand features in context.
Michael Johnson, director of Agile Market Intelligence, said: “Buyers are doing the legwork. By the time they speak to a vendor, they’ve often already shortlisted based on peer feedback, online research or webinar insights.”
Who makes purchasing decisions?
Agile also found that approval power for tech spending was heavily concentrated in those in senior leadership positions, with nine in 10 (89 per cent) of respondents saying the final investment decision was made by a partner or business owner.
Committee-led decisions were made by just 10 per cent of firms.
Having senior leaders make decisions “might support speed and accountability, depending on firm size, but also reduces the opportunity for collaborative evaluation”, Agile noted.
There were a few more steps between discovery and final purchase approval, with influence distributed across different roles, the agency said, yet unless that influence reaches the partner level, it rarely shaped the final decision.
“Tech solutions must address both operational value and partner-level business cases to close the loop between interest and investment.”
Johnson added: “Most firms are still running top-down decision processes for tech spend. That creates clarity, but also risk, especially if the partner does not engage deeply with the operational side of the tools.”
Which firms are driving tech spend growth
Elsewhere, the interim results found that tech spend scaled with organisation size, as did the complexity of the buying journey.
In the coming year, three in four mid-sized to large firms expected moderate increases in tech spending, and 72 per cent of large firms expected moderate to significant increases.
According to Agile, larger firms were more likely to involve multiple roles from discovery through to evaluation, even if final approval still sat with a partner, resulting in longer timelines and more structured procurement processes.
Smaller firms, however, “remain a vital part of the market”.
Their spend may be smaller, the research agency said, but their decision cycles were faster and more direct. With final decisions resting on partners or owners, smaller firms could bypass internal bureaucracy and move quickly when the value is clear.
“Smaller firms are agile and commercially focused. They might not spend as much, but their buying journey is faster, and they represent a large share of the market. You cannot overlook them,” Johnson said.
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