A bookkeeping subscription does not do the bookkeeping. Somebody still has to. Every piece of software ever sold to a small business carries that unwritten line, and for 20 years the industry's answer was to sell more software.
On 16 November 2021, SmartCompany published an article I wrote called "Flipping SaaS on Its Head: Introducing 'Service as a Software'". Australia was coming out of lockdown. Visory was a few months from being in full operation in Melbourne, and the article set down the idea the company was built on and the bet we were making underneath it.
The insight
Technology has always been about doing more with less, but only when it is paired with the right human skills. Small businesses could not get those skills. They scaled hire by hire, and a finance team built that way took years. Another subscription did not help, because the software still needed someone skilled to run it.
That gave us the one insight everything at Visory rests on. Small businesses and their accountants do not want more software to operate. They want the work done.
Our core company insight
Small businesses and their accountants don't want
more software to operate
They want
completed work outcomes
The thesis: service as a software
"No longer is software as a service enough," I wrote. "For a business to thrive in today's environment, they need service as a software."
Flip the model. Bundle the expert delivery with an intelligent platform and sell the two as one engagement. The customer plugs in a whole function, and the work arrives done. The finished work is the product, not a set of tools the customer logs into to do it themselves. For Visory, that function was the finance function: bookkeeping, payroll, accounts payable, and accounts receivable.
The thesis is also a statement about the size of the prize. In 2024 the world spent about US$675bn on software. It spent just over US$6tn on professional services: accounting, legal, contact centres, recruitment, healthcare administration, consulting. Work that has always been delivered by people, at nearly 10 times the size of the software market. Package the work as a product and services become addressable technology spend.
Our thesis since 2021
Software as a service.
Service as a software.
The finished work is the product. Not a set of tools the customer logs into to do the work themselves.
Services have become addressable technology spend.
Accounting, legal, contact centres, recruitment, healthcare administration, consulting: work delivered by people, now prepared by AI with people checking and signing it off.
The bet
A services business has a problem software never had. Every new customer adds headcount. Cost rises in a straight line with revenue, and margins never scale.
In 2021 we bet that this was about to change. The AI models were improving fast enough that, within a few years, machines would do the processing in the middle of a finance function. If that happened, a services business could trade linear labour cost for the cost of compute, with human verification and sign-off on top. Software margins on what used to be labour spend.
The bet
The old model
Linear labour cost
Every additional customer adds headcount. Margins don't scale.
The Visory model
Cost of compute, plus human verification
Delphi AI prepares and checks the routine work. The team verifies and signs off. Headcount no longer moves in step with the work.
So Jordan Bevans and I did not start a software company, and we did not start a bookkeeping firm. We hired bookkeepers and payroll specialists onto staff and built every workflow from direct observation of their work, so that each process would be ready for the models when they arrived. Every great company is a bet on the future. Ours was that the models would arrive.
The thesis is playing out
The AI agents arrived. The way Visory delivers the work has changed three times since November 2021. In 2022 the expert layer was people, wrapped in software. In March 2024 Delphi AI, Visory's own AI, began working inside those workflows, preparing and checking the routine work with the team overseeing every step. By 2026 your team runs your finance function and Delphi AI handles the repetitive parts in the background. The people still own the ends of every engagement: the relationship, the context, the review, and the sign-off. The work in the middle is what changed hands.
The thesis did not. The article I published in November 2021 describes the business we run in 2026: the customer plugs in a finance function, the work arrives done, and a person they know by name signs it off.
About this announcement
Written by Thomas Paule. Published . Part of Visory’s company announcements: launches, recognition and milestones, each with the date it happened.