Dwight Wainman: The Financial Wizard

Source: Exec Digital USA

Date :8/7/2008 4:05:04 AM

Dwight Wainman, founder and CEO of CaseWare International, realized early on that technology could free accountancy from the tyranny of number-crunching.

Written by John O'Hanlon

In the second largest country in the world 90 percent of its population lives within 100 miles of the United States border, which means that upcountry Canada has the lowest population density in the world. Dwight Wainman grew up in rural Ontario, and while it wasn’t exactly a Jack London experience, it sounds a world away from present day Toronto when he describes it. “In Gowganda in the 1950s our entertainment was limited to books and an AM radio.” Those were the days.

This kind of upbringing may sound idyllic, but understandably it grew in the young Dwight Wainman a powerful desire to see more of the world. The whole of the world in fact, though that had to come a step at a time – the first step was to the University of Toronto a mere 350 miles away, where he studied electrical engineering and accountancy.

After qualifying as a chartered accountant, Wainman took articles with PWC: “At that point I wanted to grow my experience and have a good look at the world of business and Price Waterhouse was a great place to do that.” Still in his early 20s, Wainman moved on to work at Budget Rent a Car: this experience was an important stage in his career, says Wainman, in which he learned a great deal from an inspirational mentor, became familiar with the partnership-style franchised business model to which the global expansion of CaseWare owes much, and gained the confidence to set up his own accounting practice.

Paper out

These day it is hard to remember how business was conducted before the PC was invented. “I knew about tax and had some experience of international taxation and auditing but I was always interested in the question of IT and what could be done to automate the numbers. When the first IBM computer came along they told us that it would change the world; it would computerize all this paper-based tax stuff in three months, but it took us seven years to digitize 95 percent of the compliance and corporate tax market.”

Of course the accountancy profession is presumably the oldest in the world – even the traditional holders of that accolade presumably had to work out what they were getting out of the deal - so it is no surprise that it’s slow to accept change. Wainman was always excited by the opportunities offered by IT and was an early adopter, so by 1988 when he span it out from his accounting practice and embarked on what he calls his ‘third career’ as a software developer, CaseWare had developed a highly effective box of tools for accountants and auditors. “We wanted to create a software product that would not simply be an aid to managing taxation matters but for auditing and financial reporting too. I wanted to meet the challenge of developing a global solution…

Click here to read the full interview with Dwight Wainman