LIMA’s Paul Hinchliffe and Craig Pickford headed to Wyboston Lakes for this year’s Alternative Accountancy Tech Summit. Here’s a round-up of the key talking points from Alternative Accountancy 2026.
The Alternative Events summits are among our favourite in the tech calendar.
The format is part conference, part group therapy, part social occasion. The calibre of the people in the room is consistently high, the conversations are honest, and the energy is infectious. AccTech2026 was no different.
LIMA was there again, this time with a rather competitive game of whack-a-vulnerability, and a simple question on the banner: does your MSP empower you to innovate, grow and stay secure? Across two days of keynotes, roundtables and corridor conversations, that question felt more relevant than ever.
1. AI is raising the stakes for data quality
The keynote talks we watched set an ambitious vision: AI that can query entire audit datasets in natural language, surface insights that would previously have taken days, and democratise access to data right across the business. It’s a compelling picture. But it only works if your data is in good shape.
That’s a real challenge for lots of practices. Many are still managing fragmented data across 60 or 70 different applications – SaaS, legacy, on-premise – with all the duplication, inconsistency and governance headaches that come with it. AI doesn’t fix that problem, it makes it worse. Garbage in, garbage out has never been truer than when a confident AI is presenting your garbage as insight.
Getting your data environment sorted is essential to make everything else possible.
2. The firms pulling ahead have their foundations in order
The conversations we had on the stand, and the ones happening across the room, kept coming back to the same theme.
The accountancy practices that are growing, innovating, and adapting fastest aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets or the most advanced tools.
They’re the ones with the right foundations: a stable, secure platform; clean, well-managed data; and people who know how to use the technology in front of them.
That’s where a good MSP is worth its weight in gold. Not simply reacting to problems, but providing the proactive support that lets a practice focus on what it’s there to do.
3. Efficiency vs effectiveness
One of the sharpest points from the keynote was the distinction between efficiency and effectiveness. AI that helps you do the same things faster is useful. The real goal is AI that changes what’s possible, freeing your best people from routine work so they can focus on driving value for clients.
The firms that are furthest along on the journey are the ones stopping to ask: how do we want to deliver services in three years’ time? What does our workforce look like? What are we building towards?
That kind of strategic thinking requires a technology partner, not just a technology supplier. Someone who helps you plan, not just someone who keeps the lights on.
4. Cyber resilience needs to keep pace
Accountancy practices handle some of the most sensitive financial data in existence. That makes them a target. And as the attack surface expands; with more applications, more integrations and more users accessing systems remotely; the challenge of keeping that data secure gets harder.
Our whack-a-vulnerability game was a light-hearted way into a serious conversation. Every mole that pops up is a known vulnerability sitting unpatched in your environment, an open door that a malicious actor could walk through. LIMA’s Vulnerability Detection and Remediation service identifies and closes those doors continuously, so your team isn’t spending evenings and weekends managing patch cycles manually.
“LIMA’s managed vulnerability remediation service is a game changer.”
Ethan Cameron, IT Operations Manager at BKL, said it better than we could.
5. Leading change in accountancy IT
Another of the key talking points from Alternative Accountancy: the IT leaders making the biggest difference at their firms are helping their organisations navigate real transformation – making the case for investment, guiding AI adoption, managing risk, and building the kind of technology culture that attracts and retains good people.
That’s a big job. And it’s one that’s a lot harder if your managed service partner is firefighting, rather than genuinely supporting your roadmap.
The question on our banner wasn’t rhetorical: does your MSP empower you to innovate and evolve, accelerate growth, maximise productivity, and strengthen cyber resilience?
Want to continue the conversation?
If you were at AccTech2026 and want to pick up where we left off – or if you missed it and want to talk about what great managed IT services looks like for your practice – we’d love to hear from you.
Find out more about how LIMA helps accountancy practices.
Contact the team at 0345 345 1110 or enquiries@lima.co.uk
