Cloud Computing – Page 32 – Cooper Mann Consulting

March 12, 2013

Online Document Storage = Smarter Business Continuity

It is never safe to take business-supporting services for granted, yet many business owners today do just that. Reliance upon Internet connectivity, the dial-tone of the 21^st century, has created the potential for a negative cascading effect on infrastructure and the delivery of business services, even in the case of a minor disruption somewhere along the line. Natural disasters and other occurrences can have a devastating impact on business and personal lives, and it has been proven that organizations with solid plans for reacting to emergency situations have a far greater chance to recover than those without.

Business continuity management describes the recovery of the business or service from outage or disruption, and a solid business continuity plan includes considerations for people as well as systems, because it takes a combination of both and knowing what do to in the event of an emergency. Businesses with disaster plans will always do better than those without, and training employees how to react swiftly when necessary by bringing backup systems online or relocating to offsite work areas is essential to minimizing downtime and reducing the impact of the outage. This is where SmartVault’s online document storage and the cloud can make a big difference between success and failure of a business continuity and recovery effort.

One of the first steps in developing a business continuity plan is creating a means to protect business information. Digital documents and files that reside on local PCs and networks should be protected and archived in a secure central document storage system, allowing for storage and retrieval of documents as well as facilitating collaboration and sharing of information throughout the organization. Using SmartVault for online document storage gives you a secure online vault for maintaining essential business information. When a business adopts the SmartVault solution and elects to store business documents and files in the secure SmartVault system, they have implemented a critical first step towards establishing business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities. Preserving business documents and files in the cloud-based SmartVault solution allows the business to retain access to critical information even in the event of a natural disaster, fire or theft. Documents are stored safely in the SmartVault system, accessible via any Internet-accessible location, so relocated workers can access what they need when they need it.

SmartVault is an easy-to-use online document storage solution that seamlessly integrates with popular business applications, like Microsoft Outlook and Intuit QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online. Working with SmartVault is simple and intuitive, so it is easy to apply the solution to handling most business documents and digital information. When online document storage is fully-integrated into the workflow of the business, it helps ensure that data is consistently captured and stored, reducing the potential for lost documents and increasing the overall capability of the business to continue operations.

Disaster planning means thinking ahead to what could happen, and then taking steps to protect the business in case it does. SmartVault is one of the applications in the business toolkit that addresses the daily needs of business document and information storage and management. When disaster strikes (and it will) SmartVault is there and working, helping businesses continue to store, access and share the information they need to keep the business in business. For more on SmartVault’s secure online document storage solution, visit http://www.smartvault.com/features/online-document-storage/

jmbunnyfeet

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March 7, 2013

Global CFOs returning to fundamentals

Accounting professionals in the United States have recognized for some time the value of offering what many refer to as “high level” services to their clients. For the accounting professional and the client business, consulting regarding strategy and growth represented value for both parties – guidance for the business client and profitable service for the accountant. However, as the economy began to decline and businesses tightened their belts, accounting professionals around the world recognized the opportunity and the need to return to focusing more on client operations and not simply on strategy and growth.

A recent article on CFO.com discusses the results of a survey performed by the ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants), discussing how accounting professionals around the world are adjusting their approaches to accounting – adjustments at least partially fueled by global economic difficulties.

“There has been a little bit of a shift following the economic crisis. Pre-crisis there was a lot more focus around growth,” says Lyon. As the recession hit, Lyon says, global CFOs began to immediately question “What’s my cash position from day to day? What’s happening to my costs? What’s happening with my controls?”

Such anxieties may have triggered a shift back to the basics. “The CFO is a key adviser to the strategic (decision makers); that’s not in question. But there is a balance to be had in these times. That balance is around cost management and certainly managing risks,” says Lyon. “Finance as a function has been slightly brought back into focus.”

I would suggest that shifts in the approaches by accounting professionals are (at least in part) due to the various impacts of economy, technology, and globalization. There have always been different types of accounting professionals, with some focusing on management issues and others on strategy. Today’s accounting professionals must find a way to find a balance while addressing holistically the needs of the business client. This belief is also in line with the findings of the survey:

The complete finance professional 2013 summarises our thinking on why businesses need finance skills and capabilities across the entire finance value chain. We also recognise that this new environment requires finance professionals to bring a much broader range of finance skills to the table. The challenges faced by finance functions in supporting businesses are not constrained to a particular accounting or finance discipline. To strive to become world class, finance functions must excel in a broad range of capabilities, from supporting businesses to manage risk, developing effective strategies for growth, driving financial insight, continuing to maintain appropriate levels of control across the organisation as well as ensuring its statutory and regulatory responsibilities are met.

There are a lot of US accounting professionals out there who once approached their clients with a “holistic” service offering, focusing both ON and IN the business. Today, competitive pressures are driving professionals to re-engage with their clients in deeper operational roles, combining cost and cash management with guidance on growth and sustainability. It’s kind of like going back to the good old days of the full-service accounting office, and that’s a good thing for businesses.

Make Sense?

Joanie Mann Bunny Feet J

February 27, 2013December 7, 2017

Accounting Professionals, You’re right – your clients don’t care about the numbers.

Accounting pros, what your clients care about is how they’re doing and if they’re on the right path. Are you helping them understand that, or are you just the guy who works with the numbers to make sure they’re accurate?

Accounting professionals are having a hard time of it right now, with clients demanding more insight and assistance in helping to build value and profitability in their businesses, yet accounting professionals continue to be mired in the details of the numbers. It’s like the old saying about not being able to see the forest for the trees. You spend time in the trees, counting trees and making sure the trees are properly categorized, but are you seeing how this group of trees performs compared to others in the forest? The analogy isn’t that far off. You see, if there are other trees in the way, or if it doesn’t rain enough, the tree won’t grow and thrive.

This is what it’s like out in the world, where your business is just one of many. It’s not like you can grow and thrive no matter what others are doing. If they’re bigger than you and take all the light, then you can’t grow. If they take all the nutrients and resources, you can’t grow. If it doesn’t rain, you can’t grow. Somehow, some way, you have to find a way to stand above the others, get the light and the resources and the rain. Someone in the business should be paying attention to this bigger picture, and it is often the business owner. Their accounting professionals, on the other hand, tend to remain in the dark, below the sun, counting numbers because the owner isn’t interested in counting. The owner is interested in growing.

Accounting is about numbers, but growing a successful business is about numbers and strategy. Historically, the numbers tell you how the business has performed up to this point. Adding in the elements which speak to strategy, you can then look at what your potential performance will be in the future, and then make the necessary adjustments to make sure that the potential is realized. The accounting professional acting as a small business CFO must be prepared to help business clients look beyond the numbers to their meaning and what they say about the business today, factoring in elements relating to business strategy and market forces to reveal what they indicate about the future.

Accountants, it’s time to recognize that you are the only ones really worried about the numbers. Business owners just want to understand what the numbers mean and what they can do about them.

Reducing costs and managing expenses and cashflow is critical, yes, but how many business owners actually know what they’ll be up against when looking for financing, or a buyer? Or do they even realize that they’re not on the path they wanted… building something valuable they can leave to the kids? Sure, the cashflow may be there, and they’re taking a healthy monthly salary… but does that really tell the entire picture or show them where they’re likely to end up? No, it doesn’t, and every accounting professional knows that truth.

While it’s true that bad accounting data turns into bad decisions really fast, it’s also true that too many accounting professionals THINK their client’s don’t care about what the numbers SAY just because they don’t care about the numbers. I would suggest that maybe small business owners care far more than their accounting professionals recognize… and they care about building value and not just accurate digits. This is one of the reasons why KPI dashboards, dynamic reporting tools, and business valuation solutions are so popular among small business owners – they are able to have a conversation with their business data that their accountant isn’t having.

Can self-help reporting and valuation tools be useful to business owners? Well, that’s sort of like asking if trying to figure out what you’re worth (or not, as the case may be) will hurt your business. Information is power, and every business owner wants to believe they have the power to succeed in their own hands. Just because they’re not having this conversation with their accounting professional doesn’t mean they’re not thinking about it. Maybe they’re just not asking and the accountant isn’t offering.

Accounting professionals, go ahead and continue to monitor KPIs and crunch the numbers and show cash flow (real cash flow, not just today’s bank balance). But if your client had 1 hour per month to actually spend working ON the business (on the forest), trying to make sure their business is heading where they originally planned to go with it, wouldn’t it be a good idea to show them where to spend that time? Yes, it would, and adopting the use of realtime reporting and analysis tools for business clients can help do that.

Data dashboards and decision-support solutions are important tools which help business owners understand their businesses better. Rather than viewing these tools as dangerous or competitive, accounting professionals should view financial analysis, business valuation and KPI reporting tools as something they can use to help build value in the information they develop, rather than trying to convince clients that the value IS the information and not the guidance it suggests. The data won’t make the tree grow, it’s the guidance that feeds it.

Make Sense?

Read more about Bookkeeping and Benchmarks – Getting the Numbers Right
Read more about Data Dashboards and Financial Analysis: Comparing Apples to Aardvarks
Read more about how accountants need business intelligence, too
Read more about how there’s no fear and loathing in accounting
Read more about the pressure on accountants to deliver more value and intelligence to their clients
Read more about Data Warriors: accounting in the cloud

February 21, 2013March 31, 2017

The Psychology of Small Business IT Adoption

Convincing small business owners to adopt and apply technology in their businesses is often a difficult thing to do. While most business owners readily accept the need to have computer software to help them produce information and an email account to communicate with others, even such fundamental business solutions as a business website or computerized accounting system can be a hard sale.

Solution providers in every category are looking for ways to communicate the value of their products and services to businesses, and many do not consider that communicating value to a small business owner is not the same as communicating value to a larger and more established enterprise. There is research available which discusses why small businesses adopt IT, and how the importance (weight) of various factors change as the business grows. With small businesses fueling the economy and numbering far larger than their enterprise counterparts, it makes sense to understand just why small businesses buy. It’s also interesting to note that this research revealed that the different characteristics of firms and individual executives “did not have a unique effect on adoption decisions”. If the decision wasn’t impacted by characteristics of either the firm or individual executives, what does impact the decision?

An academic study by Icek Ajzen (Organizational behavior and human decision processes… University of Massachusetts at Amherst) discusses a theory called the Theory of Planned Behavior, and this theory was posed as a basis for predicting who would pursue a particular course of action or activity. The idea is that “intentions to perform behaviours of different kinds can be predicted with high accuracy”, and that the prediction is based on attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived control. Okay, but what does that really mean?

Intentions represent the strength of a person’s conscious plan to do something. So, when someone intends to do something, like adopt an IT product or service, it means that there is a strong positive plan in that person’s mind to accomplish the activity. However, having a plan in mind – no matter how strong or positive – is impacted by several elements: attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived control.

Attitude represents the belief that the activity will lead to a consequence that means something. If you have a plan to adopt an IT solution, but then develop a negative attitude towards the likely outcome (consequence) of using the solution, adoption isn’t likely to occur. On the other hand, if the belief is that the results or consequences of adopting and applying the solution will be useful, and deliver benefits in the areas intended, then the chances of deciding to make the purchase increase dramatically.

Another factor which weighs on the intent to do something is the pressure related to “subjective norms”, or what might be considered to be social factors. These factors exist in the firm, in the customer base, with partners, and within the market. As an example, it is an expectation that a business will have email addresses, computers, and other technology to support the business. This is simply a normal expectation of businesses today. It is also a requirement that businesses protect customer information, a requirement and normal practice from both a privacy and regulatory perspective. It is this expectation and the pressure to be “normal” (a motivation to comply) that also weighs on the decision to act and adopt.

The final factor is perceived control, which comes down to the person’s perception of how easy or difficult it will be to do what they’ve got in mind. Looking at various potential obstacles, and judging whether or not the business has the resources and capability to overcome them effectively, results in either a positive or negative impact on the intent.

All of these things are placed in linear order, and a straight line can easily be drawn as you move through the process. It’s all about:

Intent,
- the attitude towards adoption,
  - belief of expected outcomes and their value,
    - expectations and the motivation to comply with them, and
      - evaluating barriers and the adequacy of resources to overcome them.

Boiling it all down to a fairly simple explanation, businesses adopt IT because there is a conscious plan to do so, and that plan is supported by a belief that the solution will do good things for the business, the solution is a recognized (if not expected) approach, and the business believes it has adequate resources and capability to effectively handle it.

Make sense?

February 19, 2013August 9, 2019

Bookkeeping and Benchmarks – Getting the Numbers Right

I am a big fan of business analytical and reporting tools. I very much believe in using industry benchmarks as a means to understand various aspects of business performance as it is compared to others. I feel strongly that this type of information is essential at all stages of the business, and is useful for planning and forecasting as well as in daily business management. There are a lot of tools available now which provide KPI (key performance indicator) reporting, dashboards, and industry comparisons. The thing that none of these tools provides is an assurance that the underlying data is any good.

For data-driven reporting and analytical tools, the reliance upon customer- reported and accumulated benchmark data is both the benefit and the problem. Drawing upon actual customer financial data is what makes the reporting solution useful – reflecting the realities of the business as they are revealed in the accounting data. The problem is that the data will often be flawed in some manner due to the lack of accounting knowledge of the user. Particularly when small business owners take it upon themselves to perform their own bookkeeping work, there is a large potential for the information to be incomplete or erroneous, or at least not truly reflective of the business finances.

It is essential that accounting professionals be involved in the accounting process to ensure the accuracy of the information presented to any analytical and reporting solution, thus improving the quality and value of the information. Further, I would suggest that accounting and business professionals would look to these types of tools to assist in the identification of issues or conditions which exist in the business requiring attention. Business owners would get far greater value from the services of their accounting professionals, and accountants would deliver a much higher level of tangible value to their clients.

If the accounting professional is not regularly discussing business issues and conditions with the small business client, the client can use their own tools to attempt to gain the insight. HOWEVER (note the big letters), any small business owner who tries to do their own books and use their own decision-support tools is likely to run into problems. While it is true that some accounting professionals are not offering the level of guidance and insight (“value intelligence”) that some analytical and reporting solutions might try to offer a small business user, suggesting that the DIY reporting tool is useful when coupled with DIY accounting is questionable at best. Why? Because most small business owners and untrained bookkeepers do not know how to perform proper accounting. And bad accounting data turns into bad business decisions really fast, even with the coolest-looking reporting tool.

badaccounting

What’s the bottom line? The participation of a qualified accounting professional is necessary to make sure business bookkeeping information is properly accounted for, even and especially when great tools and solutions designed to help small businesses get their work done are being used. The accounting professional is necessary to make sure information is classified correctly, connected and associated with the proper supporting information, and that the data is complete. This is a lot of work if done on a regular basis (which it should be) yet many accounting firms don’t even offer the service, or offer it affordably.

Accounting professionals working with small businesses, look at it this way: it makes more sense for you to engage a contract bookkeeper and make a bit of money on the work they do to serve the client than it does for you to

a) lose the client to an accountant offering bookkeeping services, or
b) charge the client to re-write up the information, which isn’t really profitable for you and isn’t as valuable to the client

Serving larger businesses may provide firms with an ability to be more selective of the services they offer, but small business accountants need to take an entirely different approach. Small business accounting professionals need to be full-service providers and help clients get the complete range of services they need, including daily bookkeeping.

Accounting professionals helping their small business clients get complete service – from basic bookkeeping to insightful planning and advice – that’s the benchmark for high value accounting in the world of small business. It’s the only way to make sure the numbers are right, and that the business owner is looking at the right numbers.

jmbunnyfeet Make Sense?

Read more about Data Dashboards and Financial Analysis: Comparing Apples to Aardvarks
Read more about how accountants need business intelligence, too
Read more about how there’s no fear and loathing in accounting
Read more about the pressure on accountants to deliver more value and intelligence to their clients
Read more about Data Warriors: accounting in the cloud

February 15, 2013

Accounting Professionals Should Do This: Be Proactive and Regularly Communicate with Clients

I’m not sure where I heard it, I think it was a sky diver on TV, who said about the sport “you’re dead until you do something about it”. At the same time that I realized that I never wanted to sky dive, I also realized that this fairly desperate philosophy at some level applied to a lot of business situations. Weirdly enough, one of them was how this relates to public accountants and bookkeepers working with small business clients.

One of the things I’ve heard a lot throughout the years is that bookkeeping and doing other work for small business clients is tough, because they never bring you the information you need when you need it. With a philosophy of “help me help you”, accounting professionals are trying to find ways to make it easier for the client to deliver the work to them. The missing element, however, is a closer working relationship with the client, coupled with PROACTIVE and REGULAR (please note the big letters) reminders that getting the work to the professional is the only way to get it processed in time .

How many firms really communicate with clients only during tax season? Is the client organizer your main method of reminding them that you’ve got a relationship? It’s not even funny how many business owners couldn’t name the accountant who did their tax return last year, and who don’t seem to care to know. This is definitely not the way to build and retain client relationships, yet it is the approach many professionals take. And then they wonder why the client base isn’t growing, and why they are having a hard time “communicating their value” and they want to know how to get more of that profitable “higher level” work.

You’re dead until you do something about it.

Put into the context of the reactive accountant, it starts to make sense. Accounting professionals must be proactive – be doing something to build customer loyalty and retention, be actively and regularly communicating with clients so it’s not a mad rush during tax season, and be implementing tools and solutions to help them offer more meaningful services to their clients. This is how to make the firm grow and thrive. So, go do something about it.

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Being Proactive, Not Reactive – Accountants Need to Increase the Speed of Service Delivery from Intuit Accountants News Central

Online Document Storage = Smarter Business Continuity

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Global CFOs returning to fundamentals

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Accounting Professionals Should Do This: Be Proactive and Regularly Communicate with Clients

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