Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/103334
Q&A Question time Tim Reed Chief Executive Officer, MYOB Q What makes MYOB a great business to work for? A It comes down to a few things. First, we're a business with a great vision. Our vision is 'making business life easier' and I think it's a really important function to play. It's not easy to own or run a small business and I think, for our team, coming in here every day with the united goal of making it easier for business owners is a really unifying force. Second, we're a values-led organisation. Everyone understands the core values of the business. We discuss them and we reward people and recognise efforts based on those values. The really important thing is it builds confidence. It gives our team confidence in how people will interact with them and also what they will be assessed against. People are free to operate and perform and they know their intentions will be well received if they're in line with our values. Third, we've been a very successful organisation and I think the people here enjoy the hard work and the challenge, but they also enjoy the success and celebrating that success. One of our values is 'love your work' and we make sure we live that in lots of different ways. For example, we run a short film festival every year where team members make a short film and we hire out cinemas in all of the cities where we have offices and show the finalists. We also have half-yearly awards and we do a lot of team-based activities, so we make sure that every time we have a success we really celebrate it. 56 Q How has MYOB evolved since it was launched? A We've expanded the breadth of companies that we support. We've moved from offering desktop products to offering cloud solutions and we've moved from just having accounting solutions to offering payroll solutions and now also website solutions for our customers. Q How are you harnessing the power of social media to grow the business? A We have a Twitter presence where we update clients about what's happening or share information that we think will be important to them and we also respond to service calls and requests on Twitter. We have a LinkedIn group and people can subscribe to that to discover what's happening in the business. We have a mix of things on Facebook; some are socially oriented and more fun, like brainteasers, and some contain important information about business or MYOB. We also have a blog called 'The Pulse' and we have a lot of guest bloggers who blog about business topics and things that are pertinent to SMEs. Q How do you stay on top in a constantly evolving industry? A I think it starts with staying close to your clients, making sure that you understand the trends they're seeing, the challenges they're facing, their areas of increased pressure and so on. It's also important to have team members – and we encourage this – who embed themselves in professional groups. Particularly for technologists, it's really important to learn about the latest tools that can help them improve their own productivity, and to learn different approaches or different underlying infrastructure and architecture. businesses Q You encourageis it secure? to use 'the cloud'. What is it, and A The cloud effectively enables access to a computer program over the internet, so instead of installing the software on your desktop, it runs on a server in a data centre