lean business – Page 5 – Cooper Mann Consulting

September 30, 2015October 1, 2015

Why Offering Anytime, Anywhere Work Works

An Anytime, Anywhere Work Survey was completed by ConvergenceCoaching, LLC this spring, and they’ve published the results. In the survey, they asked firms to provide feedback on the results of flexible work programs, asking for both the good and the bad aspects of having an anytime/anywhere working model. It isn’t much of a surprise that the positive outweighed the negative, given the popularity of cloud computing and mobile working models.

The benefits of providing flexibility where and when people work is something that many businesses are just realizing. It took a while for the idea to catch on (and for the technology to catch up) but enterprise and small business alike are now taking advantage of flexible work programs to improve employee morale and the business bottom line. Keeping employees happy and engaged is critical to running and growing a successful business, and providing a level of flexibility in work programs can deliver a big boost to worker satisfaction.

Supporting a flexible work environment and mobile employees takes some additional attention to detail, especially when it comes to communication. If workers aren’t certain of their responsibilities and boundaries, then expectations may not be fully met. Training and communication become key elements in the business, making sure that employees understand what to do and how to get it done before they are allowed to operate remotely and with less on-site support.

There may also be some workers who feel that disconnecting is not an option when they are allowed some flexibility in hours and place of work. Often electing to error on the side of caution, these users may put in more hours than usual simply to make sure that their work and contribution is recognized. It is the “out of sight, out of mind” scenario they play over and over again, fearing that they will be forgotten or their usefulness minimized simply because they are not present in the office. On the other hand, many workers describe being more effective in their jobs because they’re able to focus better and find themselves to be more creative or efficient when working away from the office. The company must provide clear lines of communication and work validation which support offsite employees and allows workers to embrace the freedom an anytime/anywhere approach offers if they want positive and productive results.

The survey demonstrated that businesses offering flexibility in work programs saw improvement of employee work/life balance and better overall morale than those offering no such flexibility. Building and improving trust among teams was another cited benefit, as was the positive impact to the job of finding and retaining staff. I think the best attribute of the Anytime/Anywhere working model listed from the survey was “It is worth it!”. Maybe it’s just because I agree.

Make Sense?

Source: Why Offer Anytime, Anywhere Work? | ConvergenceCoaching, LLC

September 23, 2015

Analysis, forecasts and modeling: What’s the point?

finance In today’s business world, risk, uncertainty and volatility are just par for the course – everyday realities of simply being in business. Nothing is certain, they say, except death and taxes. Yet there is a fine art to driving profitable growth in a business, and adapting to existing and emerging risk takes a great deal of experience, information and agility. While planning and process development may occur at many levels within the organization, it is the FP&A (financial planning and analysis) capability which helps top performing businesses be top performers.

Financial planning and analysis are activities central to enterprise performance management (EPM) and must necessarily extend beyond finance. Integrating various functional domains in the business (financial, operational and strategic), FP&A should bring data together from the various facets of the business and use the information to help structure and guide the organization toward meeting short-term and long-term goals. Among the most critical of the duties of FP&A is calculating the financial impact, the monetary effects, of potential business decisions. Everything in business means money, so there is always an impact to a decision. With the right information supporting the decision, it is far more likely to have a positive impact and a level of sustainability.

While many CFOs may recognize the importance of performance measurement, planning and forecasting, a great many also believe the process isn’t very effective. The cause is frequently the divide between the various domains in the business and the information systems supporting them. Operational data are distilled into summary financial information and fed to finance systems, losing much of the underlying intelligence that might be gained from analysis of the details. Strategic development and planning may overlook certain volatile elements in the market, or may base successful outcomes on an expectation that conditions within the business will not change. Finding ways to integrate the data from the respective domains into a comprehensive model is essential to developing a better and more robust forecasting and scenario-playing capability. With the right information, analytics may be applied to all facets of management decision-making, anticipating and shaping business outcomes far more effectively than could be done without the insight.

Small business owners may believe that things like “predictive modeling” and “enterprise performance management” aren’t things they need to worry about, but the small business could use this information just as beneficially as a larger enterprise – perhaps even more as the insight could be the key to small business survival and growth.

Using analytics, the owner is able to adjust and re-align strategy in real-time to keep on the right path and goals clearly in sight. Analytics can also help a business better understand what really drives revenue, working capital and profits. Analytics can even help managers align compensation and strategy with business objectives, preventing compensation issues from outpacing business benefit.

There is a cost to growing a business, and some strategies might be more sustainable than others. Time will tell, but it is great if the business owner has some business intelligence that might indicate what’s going to happen before it actually does.

Make Sense?

August 12, 2015

Skinny Isn’t Just for Jeans: Lean Business and the Service Sector

Doing more with less is the mantra of today’s business. Hiring more people or throwing money at a problem is almost never the best way to solve it… even if there are people and dollars to throw. Businesses are feeling the crunch today more than ever, in some part due to advancements in technology and the emergence of retail and “self-service” service. Once upon a time it was OK to be a fat dumb and happy business, but those days are long gone. With competitive pressures increasing – and emerging from new sources – just about every business is feeling the need to trim some fat – cutting costs and streamlining processes even as customer demand increases.

Lean and efficient business isn’t of concern just to manufacturing sector, even though that is where you most frequently hear about initiatives relating to process improvements tied to quality management. Professional service firms should also seek to identify areas where cost or time efficiencies could be gained while at the same time preserving (or improving?) quality of service delivery. Price of service isn’t necessarily the largest factor in meeting the competition, but quality of service for the price and delivering on customer expectation are right up there as top priorities for buyers.

Quick: What do legal professionals and assembly-line workers have in common?

More than either one might think, apparently. After all, the “lean” approach to manufacturing—a concept which rolled off the Toyota Production System, only to be delivered to ailing U.S. auto giants in the late 1970’s—wouldn’t immediately seem applicable to workplaces where the heaviest lifting involves leather briefcases. As for paring resources, such as inventory, down to a minimum—it seems like overkill when applied to pens, yellow pads, laptops and file folders.

But the lean concept long ago roared out of manufacturing and parked its principles in service industries: lean accounting, lean healthcare, lean startups.

http://performance.cfo.com/2015/05/11/the-real-skinny-on-lean/

Professional service firms are being compelled to reduce costs just to compete, and are finding that cost-cutting isn’t all that is required. Rather than doing more with more people, firms have begun to recognize that getting more done with fewer human resources is the goal – a goal which must be achieved without sacrificing quality of service. In fact, most firms are now actively seeking ways to increase production and improve service levels, and to do it without increasing headcount and cost. Client needs are changing and demands for higher levels of service continue to increase as society more fully embraces social computing and DIY. Technology is impacting how businesses do business, and sometimes is the basis for establishing a new standard by which all competitors are then measured.

Technology advancements are among the primary drivers moving service firms to explore leaner and more efficient ways of working. As more sophisticated tech and the resultant capability it delivers is made available in the market, more businesses begin to recognize that the “traditional” providers of certain services may no longer be the most cost efficient suppliers. Competition often emerges from some of the most unlikely of sources, and this new reality is impressing itself upon even the sturdiest of professional service firms who find themselves facing new threats to the status quo.

Like all customers, legal clients seem to have grown fussier than ever. One study estimates that about 60% of large clients replaced one of their top two law firms last year—citing mediocre service. As is true across industries, the cost of acquiring new clients only heightens the appeal of retaining existing ones.

via The Real Skinny on Lean: It’s out of the Factory and into the Service Sector – Performance.

There is much talk among accounting and legal professionals as to what the “firm of the future” might look like. Are these firms highly efficient producers of service that rival the lean manufacturers, leveraging insight and innovation to deliver more value? Or are they adopting technology simply for the sake of change? There is a difference between change and improvement, and not all changes result in the desired improvements to operations, efficiency or quality of service. For the firms seeking to increase their competitiveness in a rapidly changing market, applying measurements to the various processes the business performs can reveal the secrets to improving not only process performance and product quality, but resultant profitability. https://coopermann.com/2013/03/18/philosophy-of-process-improvement-todays-cfo-focusing-on-operations/

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July 14, 2015

Formula for Success: The Cloud and a Pair of Bunny Slippers

drawn-bunny-slippers Information technology and the “cloud” is amazing. With the right IT resources and connectivity, individuals and small businesses are able to compete at global levels with much larger organizations, and are proving that placing focus and attention on the right aspects of the business helps the business perform better. The right IT approach is to use technology to make the business smarter so more gets done in less time and with fewer resources – this is wearing the bunny slippers. The goal is leveraging systems, software and connectivity to be more efficient and effective, creating the time to stop and think for a while, innovate, or simply relax.

Too often the business owners or managers are tending to computers and systems which simply support status quo and aren’t spending their quality time growing and managing the business – getting more clients, creating new products, rising above the competition. Cloud computing models play a big part in changing that standard, supporting new levels of business sustainability and supporting process improvements never before imagined.

Cloud computing is now integral to many business technology models because the potential benefits are great. Cloud computing solutions and outsourced information technology management allow businesses to focus on what they do best, and not on the IT supporting it. These solutions and services are in high demand because they allow businesses to scale easily and affordably, paying only for what is needed at the time. Improved collaboration and centralized access to applications and data make cloud computing models an important consideration for every business.

I’m not the only one who recognizes how beneficial the right IT approach and anytime/anywhere access can be. Others have recognized the freedom and flexibility these new technology models have enabled… and know the value of a pair of bunny slippers.

Joanie Mann Bunny Feet Make Sense?

Doing Business In Bunny Slippers Around The Globe.

Susan Solovic

When I first started my business, like many start-up operations, I decided to work from home.

I equipped an empty bedroom with a card table for a desk, cardboard boxes for filing cabinets and my dogs served as my office assistants. Voila! I was ready to roll, and it was great.

I could go to work in my fuzzy pink robe and bunny slippers. After all, no one other than the dogs would know.

Start-up business operations are always strapped for cash. It’s much less expensive to conduct business from your home than to rent commercial office space. And thanks to the Internet and technology home-based businesses can easily become international enterprises.

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/startups/doing-business-in-bunny-slippers-around-the-globe-01252506

June 30, 2015May 19, 2017

Two Ways to Get QuickBooks in the Cloud

Get QuickBooks in the Cloud: Hosted QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online

cloud-computing Running applications online, or “in the cloud” using today’s parlance, is top priority for a lot of businesses. It’s not that these organizations have a burning desire to post their financials to the web, which is what a lot of folks thought was going to happen when we first suggested they use their financial applications online. Rather, business owners and managers have begun to recognize and experience the benefits of connecting their various locations, remote and mobile workers with real time access to business applications and data. Further, centralization of IT coupled with outsourced IT management and subscription service pricing has introduced financial and operational benefits which make businesses more cost-efficient as well as more agile. From being the basis for foundational process and workflow improvements to allowing the repositioning of IT costs from capex to opex, online application services are proving their value in various ways every day.

The evident popularity of cloud solutions is clearly visible in one small corner of the global software marketplace: the small business accounting solution market. Intuit’s QuickBooks product, almost a default go-to with entrepreneurs and small business owners, is still the most prevalent accounting solution in use by US small businesses. While there may be growing usage of other applications on the web, such as Xero or FreshBooks (both are awesome SaaS apps that do what they do quite well), there is equally strong growth in Intuit’s own SaaS version of QuickBooks. The SaaS applications are easier to localize for different places in the world – different languages and currencies – so international use of these products is likely to continue to grow. Even more to the point, these solutions address functionality and pricing levels which are acceptable to entirely different classes of users that previously wouldn’t even consider buying accounting software to do the books (like freelancers and solo/soho operators), so the overall size of the market of “businesses who use accounting or bookkeeping software” is actually growing.

Intuit’s QuickBooks Online edition is a true SaaS solution that is quite different from the desktop-based QuickBooks. While QBO has gained tremendous popularity, it has yet to reach the user numbers the desktop products have. The desktop solutions boast not just a particular range of functionality, but integrated applications and add-ons, and – perhaps most importantly – being a foundation for a wide variety of financial and business record keeping, bookkeeping, accounting, operationally oriented and reporting processes. To sum it up: it’s embedded. People know the software, the data is in a known format, and the product is simply part of how the business operates.

Once a solution is as entrenched as QuickBooks is – kind of like the entrenchment Microsoft Word and Excel have in the productivity area – it doesn’t go away very quickly and only when the value proposition is much greater… and maybe not even then. Rather, folks find ways to make the solution they want work for them. This is where hosting comes in and meets with the market’s demand for running applications (yes! even desktop applications!) online, as managed subscription service.

Running your QuickBooks desktop online via a hosting provider is how businesses take advantage of the best benefits of SaaS without actually converting to a SaaS application. They retain investments in training, process and integration yet introduce mobility, remote access and office connectivity, centralized information and predictable costs. QuickBooks-using businesses need to know about hosting their QuickBooks and the providers who can offer anything from standardized to extremely customized service.

As technology continues to evolve at ever-increasing rates, businesses will continue to be faced with new paradigms for doing business. Some will adopt early and some will adopt later, and some simply won’t adopt. Certainly the market as a whole doesn’t adopt as quickly as software companies would like, but then that’s always the way it is. Customers will do what works for customers, and right now hosting is working for QuickBooks customers.

Joanie Mann Bunny Feet Make Sense

June 16, 2015

To the EU and Beyond! Avalara acquires VAT Applications

Avalara, perhaps the best known and respected purveyor of sales tax compliance solutions in the US, has made another acquisition to expand their service line. Just announced is Avalara’s acquisition of VAT Applications, provider of the iVAT suite of VAT compliance software and services. The iVAT solutions work for customers doing business in Europe and around the world, providing (among other things) cloud-based VAT compliance services for filing returns on all EU countries… in the required formats and languages. By incorporating the iVAT solutions into the Avalara product line, the company extends its reach and capability to serve the global market.

To Infinity and Beyond!

While Avalara solutions are quite popular with US-based small businesses, the solutions are geared to work for businesses of virtually any size. iVAT solutions now take Avalara into EU and beyond, where VAT compliance is a necessity for enterprise as well as small biz (just as sales and use tax compliance is in the US).

Avalara has successfully acquired and incorporated several companies and solutions into its fold over the years, including EZtax, HotSpotTax, SuitePlus and Zytax. This latest acquisition fills the cloud-based tax compliance solution line very well, and positions Avalara’s portfolio among the most comprehensive available anywhere.

Sales tax and VAT compliance is a big issue for business large or small. Finding a solution that can not only address the business need, but that can serve businesses across borders and boundaries is essential in serving today’s global economy. Even the smallest of businesses may find itself doing business internationally, selling to customers via the web often means crossing those lines and introducing new tax and compliance wrinkles and requirements. Avalara addresses those business needs, and delivers solutions for the market whether it is local or global. It’s light years ahead of the rest.

jmbunnyfeet Make Sense?

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