Embracing digital transformation

Looking back to his earliest influences, Paul Robson has always been surrounded by business and technology, even from a young age.

“I grew up in a small business; my father was an insurance broker, so holiday work was helping him with filing and administration,” he recalls. “He had a very early car phone and listening to him speak with customers was a great education at an early age.”

After graduating university with a Bachelor of Commerce, Robson entered the world of business, too, embarking on a stratospheric career working for Phillips Electronics, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard, where he became the youngest Vice President in the company’s history.

By 2011, Robson was looking for his next move and, excited by the potential of the cloud and software as a service (SaaS), joined Adobe.

“Adobe was the first company globally to make a pilot subscription software as opposed to selling disks in a box, and I oversaw the global pilot for this change here in Australia,” Robson says.

“It was a phenomenal journey for me professionally and for Adobe, which became one of the fastest growing companies on the planet.”

After a series of international postings, Robson became President of Adobe International, an organization covering 166 countries, which generated half of Adobe’s revenue.

“I ran Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, including through the COVID-19 pandemic,” he says.

After 10 years at Adobe, Robson was on the lookout for the next big trend, which first led him to biotech R&D company Benchling.

“Scientists conduct very detailed experiments, but many of them still capture that data on paper or in Excel. It’s really inefficient,” he explains.

“We took this opportunity to improve their processes by offering the only biology-first platform for scientific data, collaboration and insights.”

Homegrown opportunities

After 18 months of successfully building Benchling’s global team and community, Robson and his family felt the call of home.

“Like many Australians at that stage, the pandemic had happened, and my wife and children were anxious to come back to Australia,” he says.

“So I worked with the founders of Benchling to pass my role onto the people I put inside the business, allowing us to move back to Australia in May 2023.”

With this move, Robson was offered the position of CEO of MYOB, the popular business management software provider and Australia’s first unicorn. Thinking back to when he used to help his father, Robson sees this move as coming full circle.

“I’ve known MYOB for my entire professional career – my father, uncle and grandfather all used MYOB software,” he reveals.

“As a lover of technology, of change, and as someone who grew up in the environment of a small business, I’m deeply humbled and honored to lead the organization.”

Having been in the role for over a year, Robson likes to keep busy as an advisory council member of the Australian Industry Group, which lobbies the Australian Government on behalf of industry, and serving as a non-executive director for TechnologyOne, Australia’s largest enterprise SaaS company.

These experiences give Robson a broad perspective that he feels all businesses can benefit from.

“The world of technology knows no borders, and having a global mindset, even when you’re running a company that is focused on Australia and New Zealand, is super important,” he says.

“It helps with things that may seem obvious such as market trends, but also things like evaluating talent, thinking about the competition and having a broader mindset beyond just the local market.

“The wonderful thing about the tech industry is that it’s constantly disrupting itself. In many cases that disruption comes from areas that you don’t expect. So, the wider your lens, the wider the aperture you have, the greater likelihood you have of staying abreast of market trends and driving the right outcomes for your company.”

Embracing change

Robson’s career is the story of how technology has changed the way we live and do business. From paper filing and car phones to cloud computing and AI, these changes can seem inexorable in retrospect, but for many businesses, change remains difficult.

“I am a big believer that change is inevitable,” Robson points out. “You either embrace it or you fight against it, but I feel like fighting against it is trying to hold back the tide. Once you accept it, it makes you think about things differently, it allows you to disrupt yourself, and it makes work more mentally stimulating.”

Adopting this mindset doesn’t come naturally to everyone. It requires spending a lot of time reading and staying up to date with what’s happening, not only in your industry but across all industries.

“In many cases in my career, I’ve seen executives hold on for too long to a strategy and continue pounding the pavement with a product that no longer fits the market,” he says.

“You’ve got to be able to see what’s going on around you and avoid tunnel vision. That’s the role of a CEO, to think about the next three-to-five years from now, not just about the current quarter.”

However, Robson admits that the current situation in Australia can make tunnel vision hard to shake, especially for those operating small to medium-size enterprises (SMEs).

“Right now, the country’s experiencing some tough times economically, particularly for SMEs,” he says. “So fighting hard for revenue and growth is really important, but you still need to think about the investments you’re making for the future. After all, you don’t see the winners in the short-term, you only see them in the medium to long-term.”

Robson also notes that accepting the importance of digital innovation isn’t enough on its own to action it within an organization.

“History is littered with examples of technology that can be a driver of efficiency and cost reduction where it has not been taken up by an organization, and it’s important to explore why that is,” he says.

“In some cases, it’s purely a short-term financial issue, in others, it’s because an organization doesn’t have the right muscle around change and change management, and a third issue is culture.”

Back when Robson was at Adobe and the business was transitioning from desktop software to cloud-based subscription, there was initially lots of resistance from people whose jobs would be impacted.

He feels these naysayers could have disrupted the company’s plans if it hadn’t been for the leadership team staying focused on the strategy, the opportunity and driving the outcome that led to Adobe’s phenomenal success.

“What’s interesting is that leaders who embraced change became part of a growth business and saw a significant impact on their careers,” he notes.

“We saw people who were quite junior be the first to embrace the change and ride the wave to career highs they could never have imagined before.”

Supporting small businesses

SMEs are the backbone of Australia’s economy, with 2.5 million small businesses generating one-third of the country’s gross domestic product. Yet according to MYOB’s first SME Performance Indicator, the small business sector is waning in comparison to the national gross domestic product.

Drawing on more than 17 million observations of 200,000 anonymized businesses, the indicator reveals there’s been a deviation between SME performance compared national gross domestic product, which has been negative since the end of 2023.

“Our research reflects the challenging economic environment SMEs are currently operating in,” Robson says. “Economies require successful startups to employ people, invest in capital equipment and drive the economy.

“If we don’t allow SMEs to flourish, it will ultimately impact the health of the nation, certainly from an economic perspective.”

Robson believes the solution lies in making running a business easier for entrepreneurs.

“Starting a business is a leap into the unknown; it’s very hard to take a dream and move that to reality,” he confirms. “A lot of that is the mystery of the financial management of running a business. Entrepreneurs have got the passion, but often lack the knowledge of how to run a business.”

Case in point, fewer than eight percent of SMEs in Australia are started by people under the age of 30.

“It’s really important to make it easy for them. I think the quality of technology today should encourage more people to take that leap of faith and set up a small business rather than just dream about it,” he says.

“When I speak to entrepreneurs, almost to a person, they say, ‘I wish I’d started earlier, I love what I do and I love that I’m living my dream’. In many cases, taking that step enabled their passion and they’re doing a job they enjoy more.

“It’s not false to say that it leads actually to happier people, happier families and better mental health. I truly believe that the bridge between the dream and the reality can be technology.”

MYOB: The trusted experts

Thanks to MYOB’s business management platform, it’s never been easier to start and grow a business. It is the only provider in Australia and New Zealand with a comprehensive range of products to support a business’ entire life cycle. With features such as finance, supply chain, project management and more, MYOB is designed to make business life easier.

“We work with a phenomenal dance teacher in Queensland who just loves kids and teaching dance, but she doesn’t understand how a profit and loss statement works,” Robson says. “Giving her a tool like MYOB, with its wide range of features, unlocks that dream and passion.

“Our purpose has not changed since the day we were founded, which is to help Australian and New Zealand businesses start, survive and succeed. We support everything from a micro business startup with a single employee through to organizations that have 10,000 employees.”

Having served the market since 1991, MYOB’s payroll system pays one-in-two Australians. Robson attributes this achievement to long-term customer loyalty, MYOB’s commitment to delivering great technology and its focus on Australia and New Zealand.

“We firmly believe that our focus on these two markets is a competitive advantage for MYOB. There’s no more regulated sector than the taxation regimes that exist in different states, territories and countries, and if your accounting software isn’t written for your specific market, your product isn’t fit for purpose,” he explains.

“By focusing on the Australian and New Zealand markets, we don’t have to worry about writing code or features for other countries. We want to be first to market with any changes, and our focus allows us to do that.”

Keeping customers satisfied

MYOB has also won Canstar Blue’s Most Satisfied Customers Award for Small Business Accounting Software for the second year in a row thanks to its ease of use, functionality and value for money.

“MYOB helps eliminate manual administrative processes such as onboarding new employees, checking qualifications, sorting out bank account details or superannuation choices,” Robson says.

“Not only are these processes time consuming, but it creates a bad ongoing experience and there are also lots of opportunities for mistakes. We’ve digitized that entire onboarding journey now and provide this service to our customers free-of-charge as part of the technology platform, reducing mistakes to almost zero, saving time and unlocking efficiency.”

MYOB is also incorporating new technology to make administration even easier for business owners.

“We’re using AI in things like receipt recognition, meaning you can take a photo of a receipt and have that land in the right ledger and be aligned to the right expense category automatically,” he adds.

“This means when it comes to doing your accounting, your bank statement is accurate and not as time-consuming as it may have been in the past.”

It’s often said that time is money, but Robson believes that freeing up time is also important from a family perspective.

“MYOB is full of people who grew up in a family that operated a business. One of our team members grew up working in a newsagency. She’d come down for breakfast in the morning and wouldn’t get to see her parents because they were busy wrapping the newspapers and doing the delivery,” he says.

“She says if there was more technology that could have freed up time and allowed them to have more meals together, have the occasional weekend free or go away for a holiday, it would have been invaluable.”

Thinking back to his own experience helping his father’s business, it’s stories like these that drive Robson to encourage SMEs to embrace digital transformation.

“Right now, SMEs are experiencing a tough economic environment, but they live for their passion every single day,” he says.

“MYOB will continue to make sure they’re supported with software that enables them to spend more time delivering on their passions as well as more time with their friends and family.”