Category: risk management

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Road Trip! Guidance You Can Count On

Road Trip!

Guidance You Can Count On

Keeping up on where you’re going is vital to any business, small or large. Watching trends, tracking expenses and monitoring cash flow are all basics of good business. You wouldn’t keep driving straight if the road veers to the left, would you? You might, if you don’t notice the curve. That’s the type of problem any business can run into, if you just don’t watch where you’re going.

Metrics are the lifeblood of any industry; from Information technology to accounting, manufacturing, and retail. Acting like a guidance system, or GPS, your company’s metrics will tell you where and when you need to make a change to keep up with your industry and the needs of your clients. Look at your business the way you look at a road trip across the country. Would you leave home without a map or directions to your destination? Probably not. You could, but getting where you want to be would become an almost insurmountable task. Without directions you end up taking wrong turns, getting lost, and just have a difficult time making forward progress.

The possibility of breaking down in the middle of nowhere grows as well. Like on a road trip, it’s probable that anything that goes wrong will do so at the worst time imaginable. Unlike your car, however, your business doesn’t have AAA. No one to call to bring you gas or give you a tow, so knowing you have what you need to get where you’re going is the best bet. The only way to do that is with metrics; gathered, compiled, and triple checked. Your business needs maintenance just like your car does. Oil changes, alignments, tune-ups, new tires when the weather changes or the old ones have worn out. It’s all part of being prepared; which is a good thing to be, in business or on a road trip.

Watching how your business is performing in the market should be a simple thing, but it’s not. Not usually anyway. It requires poring over spreadsheets, running the numbers a dozen times, and re-evaluating the information you gather again and again. It takes hours of your time. It takes hours of your clients’ time. Just pulling up all of the information you need is time-consuming, and often daunting, but compiling it into a usable form is a hefty task in and of itself.

In any business, using your time efficiently is a priority and usually easier said than done. More often than not the process of seeing where you’re heading takes hours. Literally, hours. Of course your financial software has reports and statistical data monitors built into it, but the information is usually presented in a way that is less than helpful when it comes to seeing trends or where you’re heading in any given aspect. One would think that in today’s society, where easier is always better, someone somewhere would come up with a solution to this problem.

Well, someone did. The Corelytics Financial Dashboard, from Corelytics.com, integrates directly with your accounting software of choice and pulls all of the data you need into one place. What used to take hours only takes minutes. The dashboard even gives you the ability to compare your business with industry standards and set customizable goals.  You’ve got the green light, so check your dashboard, get direction, and get your business moving forward.

Make Sense?

See the dynamics of your business come alive through the award-winning Corelytics dashboard at Cloud Summit 2012.

Get Cloud Summit information here.

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Mobility and the Cloud – Managing “Bring Your Own Device” and Securing Company Resources

There are lots of reasons why businesses are adopting cloud and Internet technologies in great number, and supporting mobile workers is one of the big ones.  In order for traveling sales people or workers in remote offices to have access to business applications and data, many organizations are turning to hosted and cloud solutions to centralize systems and make enterprise-wide access easier to deliver and manage.

What many businesses are just now realizing, however, is that allowing individuals to use their own mobile devices to access corporate data is exposing the enterprise to new (and often unknown) risk with each and every device and app that gets used.

Most businesses recognize the need to secure corporate systems while allowing users to remotely access resources from home or mobile computers.

Many CIOs and IT managers are failing to address the vulnerabilities introduced through the proliferation of tablets and smartphones in the business. Some enterprises initially embraced the concept of “bring your own device” [BYOD], as it tended to encourage users to work from home or while on the road, increasing employee productivity and keeping workers more “attached” to their jobs – all without the business having to pay for the device.

With growing numbers of reported “rogue apps” and apps that secretly collect and pass data, the potential benefits of allowing workers to use their own devices is rapidly being overshadowed by the risks involved.

Earlier this year, Apple, Facebook, Yelp and several other firms were sued for privacy-infringing apps that, among other things, pillaged users’ address books. …but what if the app uploads a sales representatives’ contact list and the developer then sells it to a competitor? That’s a new type of data leakage that most organizations aren’t ready for.

http://www.cio.com/article/716368/Free_Mobile_Apps_Put_Your_BYOD_Strategies_at_Risk  

Phones, in particular, have not traditionally been viewed by most business owners as a primary platform for information theft or damage – other than when an employee uses one to tell someone something they shouldn’t.  But in terms of intrusion, data theft, application hacking and things like that… not so much.

But that was before phones got really smart.

Phones that most folks carry around now are actually computers with a great deal of processing and storage capacity, and as such are just as capable of running bad programs and being vulnerable to attack as their more obvious portable computer counterparts.  Perhaps they are even more vulnerable because of the “connected” nature of the device, because by its very nature it is geared towards communication of information, not just processing it.

It’s not that hackers and developers of exploits (or just bad code) are necessarily focusing on stealing your business data (well, OK, a lot of them are).  Maybe someone just got lucky one day, when they first realized that the employee phone was the “camel’s nose under the tent” which would get them inside, far enough to deliver access to confidential corporate information and data someone would pay for.  People tend to be the weakest element in the security chain, and exploiting vulnerabilities under the guise of “making things easier” for the user has been a highly successful approach (would you like to sign in with your Facebook account?).

..because attacks that target employees may well end up targeting the employer as well, even if the employer wasn’t the original target.

Whether it is intentional or not, the risk is very present, and every business and enterprise has a responsibility to recognize the vulnerabilities introduced with mobile device use and to do what it can to mitigate that risk.  It is also important to recognize that the risk is not a purely personal one, either.

Since the information held by most businesses also includes the information of others – customers, vendors, partners, etc. – it is essential that the business not expose itself to unnecessary problems (litigation, fines or penalties, or simply lost opportunity) caused by accidental leakage of confidential information belonging to 3rd parties.

For some businesses, the best answer may be to only allow use of devices the business provides, along with clearly written use policies and guidelines.  This approach allows the organization to determine which applications may be installed and to dictate how the device is to be used for business needs.

There are even solutions available which can assist businesses in managing the expenses related to mobile devices in the enterprise, addressing not only security and privacy concerns but also helping to optimize expenditures on mobile devices by monitoring contracts and usage, identifying underused agreements or overage charges, or even identifying contracts still in force which should have been cancelled.

For many businesses, however, allowing users to continue accessing business resources with their personal devices may be desirable for a variety of reasons, cost being only one of them.  If this is the case (as it is most often in small and growing businesses), it is important to make certain that users understand what is and is not appropriate device use, and to inform users on the policies relating to apps which may or may not be allowed and why.

Make sense?

J

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Turn Risk into Opportunity: Focusing on Value and Supporting Profitability

Turn Risk into Opportunity:

Focusing on Value and Supporting Profitability

Most businesses accept that they have “customers”, people who pay for the products and/or services that the business provides.  However, the customer many businesses fail to recognize is the “internal” customer – the consumer of services delivered internally to the organization.  These customers, most frequently recognized as co-workers and team members, depend upon the services delivered to them in order to do their jobs for the company.  This dependency represents the value of the service, and every organization has a need to get as much value as possible for the cost they expend for these services.  When the business approaches these internally delivered services as profit centers rather than pure cost centers, the impact to the business could highly beneficial as the application of resources gets focused on building strategic benefit for the company and not simply on supporting status quo.

Calling a part of the business a profit center doesn’t mean it’s going to sell services externally for money.  Rather, it means that the activities of the department can have a direct and meaningful impact to business profitability, and are participants in the development and facilitation of business strategy.  Profit centers can come in many flavors in a business, and may be identified as managers and owners reflect on areas of the business where changing conditions may introduce business risk.  Risk often translates to opportunity at some level.

A fairly obvious example of this is in the placement of IT departments and services within an organization.  If information technology is viewed purely as a cost-center and a “necessary evil” of doing business, it is more likely that IT services will have a perceived higher cost and lower level of value, as the technology is not considered a player in business strategy.  When technology is leveraged more directly to realize the strategic vision of the business, and is applied in ways which assist in delivering higher levels of service at a reduced cost while providing a means for market differentiation, the positive impacts in efficiency and profitability can be great.

A not-so-obvious example of a cost center which could be re-oriented towards increasing strategic positioning while making a positive improvement in internal service delivery (resulting in increases in performance and profitability) is the area of sales tax compliance.  Particularly with the emerging complexities introduced with cloud and Internet services, and with the lack of standards being the only consistency across the country, sales tax compliance is becoming a significant consideration and risk factor for businesses seeking to adopt cloud services and SaaS application solutions.

“Don’t just think of the tax department as a compliance shop,” says Waterfield. “It should also be considered a profit center. If given the proper resources, and access to information, it can provide the company the ability to become competitive in the marketplace either from assistance in calculating the proper price point or reducing overall tax expense on purchases.”
CFO.com (http://s.tt/1n56t)

Unless the tax compliance department is a direct participant in the consideration and adoption of cloud IT and other services, the business could end up with a significant liability and risk exposure that was not expected or allowed for.  Rather than finding this out after the fact, reviewing these types of potential impacts should be part of that same process which considered the adoption of the solution in the first place.

Accounting and tax professionals can find additional value to deliver to their existing and prospective clients by placing focus on these very important aspects of operating and managing a business.  As technology and globalization introduce more, and more complicated, issues relating to sales taxes and reporting compliance (which even the smallest of businesses must address) accounting and tax professionals should help their clients meet these changing requirements by offering proactive consultative guidance and support.

Make sense?

J

Read more about Should you be paying sales tax on your cloud solution?

Read more about Cloud FAQs for CFOs: CFO.com

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Be the McDonald’s of Professional Service

Be the McDonald’s of Professional Service

The Progressive Accountant

You run a professional services firm, perhaps an accounting firm. You have a wide variety of clients with a wide variety of needs, but the services you offer are relatively standardized. You provide tax return preparation, bookkeeping and financial statements.

What’s not standardized is how you approach each client need, and how you work with each client. You treat each engagement as a one-off, dealing with the client (and the client information) in a manner that suits the client at that time. While this sounds like a great approach, lending itself to a high level of personalization, the underlying result is inefficiency, lack of standards, and a very limited ability to improve your internal profitability.

What you need is a machine – to be the McDonald’s of professional services – delivering consistent and predictable service to your client community. Your service quality doesn’t have to be in the realm of “fast food”, but the point is that you should be using a standards-based approach and applying the same tools and methods to each engagement in a consistent and repeatable manner. You’ll rapidly find that a great many of your clients will eagerly adapt, and begin to embrace and take advantage of the tools you provide to them. For your firm, the result is more predictable performance and increased profitability.

As an example, let’s say that your firm is “tooled up” to provide services using Internet or cloud services.  You have a client portal where you can store and share files with clients, and you have mechanisms for securely emailing files and documents to clients as well.  Your goal is to get your clients to use the online portal to exchange information with your firm, enabling somewhat of a “self service” model.  But many of your clients won’t log in to the portal, and require you to use email to send/receive files and information.

The right approach here is to use the portal no matter what.  This is a key element to the success of your overall approach –the strength of your standardized processes.  And it’s important to remember that it isn’t a process if you don’t do it the same way every time.  Even if your clients don’t use the portal for data exchange, you should still encourage it and put the documents there.  Now, you’ll still likely do the email thing – it’s always a good idea to have at least two paths of communication.  But if you consistently use the portal as a standard method of making data available for your clients, many of those non-portal users may become users simply because they find that the convenience of any time/anywhere access really works for them.  Sometimes it takes letting folks get used to things, but once they do, it becomes second nature and almost an expectation.   Once these clients have adopted your standard portal approach, what else can you introduce to them to improve efficiency and effectiveness of the engagement?

You need to help make your firm as efficient and profitable as possible, and to have a quality product (or service) produced every time.  Henry Ford’s assembly line is where you start.  Create the machine that is the operational level of your business, and establish the tools and standards that will allow for sustainable growth and success.

Make Sense?

J

Read more about Data Warriors: Accountants in the Cloud

Read more about using the cloud to extend “connectedness” beyond traditional boundaries

Article originally published via The Progressive Accountant

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Big Data and Big Decisions

Structure a process to develop the questions and measure outcomes, and then go get the answers

It seems that everyone these days (including me) is standing on the soapbox of “big data”, and the need to go beyond simple dashboards to help executives and owners make the daily decisions which may ultimately result in great business success or total organizational failure.  What many of us fail to discuss is how to manage the process of getting and using data, and why it is important to know what decisions the business should focus on making before the data is collected and analysis performed.

The whole point of “big data” is to assist in the development of more informed processes and people, which are elemental to supporting successful operations.  Data becomes useful information which helps to bring understanding and insight, and which results with action (information = power).  While this type of analysis was once oriented almost exclusively towards financial risk and fraud identification or detection, it is now being turned to the front lines where it is more focused on customers and supply chains, and where decisions made may be more visible (and volatile).

Decisions, questions posed in the business which are answered with action, are best made when based on complete and accurate information.   To accomplish this, data must be collected from all available aspects of the business, including trapping detailed operational data not often collected for summary financial reporting.   With this level of data, and with a structured and purposeful approach to management of the decision-making process, the business gains agility by being analytical and informed, and is better able to sustain performance by adapting to changing conditions.

The success of any decision-making effort is enabled by management practices which recognize the need to apply structure and standards, and know the value of actionable data over instinct. The application of performance monitoring and similar tools is also essential to measure the effectiveness of not just the decision, but also the processes which supported making it.  Like asking a student to produce their work, this approach helps to identify potential flaws in the decision-making process, even as apparently successful conclusions may be reached.

Today’s big data push is fueled by cloud solutions and interconnected systems delivering more, and more detailed, data than ever before.  Further, analysis tools have evolved beyond summary reports in graphs and charts and now offer advanced data mining and visualization, and introducing a predictive capability based on trends and condition sets.  While the availability and access to business data increases, so does the responsibility of the organization to understand WHAT decisions it is looking to make improvements in, and to create a process to monitor the effectiveness of those decisions made and acted upon.

Make Sense?

J

  • Read more about using the cloud to extend “connectedness” beyond traditional boundaries
  • 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
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Disruptive Trends = Emerging Opportunity: Adapting to a changing technology and business environment

Every new day brings some new advancement in business technology, and much of this advancement relates to cloud computing, mobility, and new social computing models.  Information technology and solutions applied to business use have rapidly evolved away from paper-based or fixed-location tools, and are now oriented towards enabling mobility and anytime, anywhere access to business applications and digital data.

Trends driving change in business technology today may be reflected in two main areas: enabling solutions which are revealing benefit not previously recognized, and disruptive approaches which represent trans-formative changes to how businesses operate.   Disruption and transformation often generate new business opportunity, yet many professionals in accounting/finance and information technology fail to see the new potential available and resist anything which represents significant change.  These professionals equate change with risk, and are reluctant to entertain either.

An example of a class of solutions which enable the organization to “know more”, providing decision support through deep analysis and reporting of key business data, is the new generation of data visualization tools now available in forms and formats easily accessible by any business professional.  Previously, business owners had to rely on system analysts and accounting professionals to compile and report on various aspects of business activity.  Using spreadsheets and database driven chart-building systems, manipulation of large volumes of data was unwieldy and limited by available computer resources.  Moving beyond previously recognized boundaries in data collection and aggregation, tools now available assist users in combining data from disparate sources, and offer a rich suite of analytics coupled with the simplicity of drag-and-drop selection and exploration.

The opportunity introduced with this new capability does not rest solely in the analysis of the data.  Rather, it is in the control and the structure which must be developed to ensure that all relevant data being collected, and in the structure and control placed on those data collection and integration processes which will ensure that the information is properly associated or correlated, and accurately integrated into the model.   Completeness and accuracy of data is of critical importance, as is an in-depth understanding of the nuances of structured and unstructured data relationships.

In addition to the enabling solutions emerging on the market which are driving deep changes in how businesses see themselves are the advancements in technology which cause fundamental shifts in how business use technology to support operations.  The most evident advancement, often viewed as an approach which is disruptive to more traditional models, is the emergence of “cloud” computing models.  Cloud computing, connected services, and fully-managed outsourced IT solutions address a number of issues which have burdened enterprise IT deployments since IT departments were invented.

The difficulty for IT managers is that they are often overworked and underfunded, as information technology is not often viewed as a strategic differentiator but merely as a necessary cost of supporting operations.  Users view IT as being unresponsive and ineffective, and have little understanding of the balancing act required to meet user demands and at the same time deliver standardized enterprise computing services in a secure manner.

Mobility and the cloud has changed the landscape of business IT, and the concept of “there’s an app for that” is now fully ingrained in the user mentality.  Cloud solutions, sometimes introduced to the business by non-IT personnel and often viewed as “rogue IT” projects, have won adoption by business users due in large part to the simplicity of implementation, and often because they can deploy the solution quickly, outside of the boundaries established by internal IT management.  Information management within the organization must necessarily extend now to mobile computing devices, where an entirely new set of issues is revealed in terms of personal device management and distribution of corporate data and intelligence.  Professionals assisting the business with information management, access, collection and integration processes must now give greater consideration to incorporation of mobile device and application management, as well as the risks introduced with the broad use of personal computing devices within the organization.

The cloud represents a convergence of social and mobile computing, and introduces an entirely new class of business metrics to measure due to the significant increase in available data captured at various levels and through various types of virtual interactions.  With users being able to engage wherever and whenever they choose (“there’s an app for that”, again), businesses must shift IT focus to strategic enablement, creating standards for outsourced deployments, and infusing each effort with the security and control required, which is a mainstay of IT operations.

Big data, visualization and analysis, and mobile and social computing are changing how we do business.  As the trusted advisor to the business, the accounting professional should embrace these changes and the opportunities they present to deliver more value and service in each client engagement.  Accountants can help their clients understand how to do more with less – leveraging technology to improve operational efficiencies, and to structure, capture, integrate and analyze the relevant data which will reveal the risks and potentials of the operation under a variety of circumstances.

Disruption creates your opportunity to bring order to the chaos, helping clients compete and flourish in a difficult economy, and providing the proactive guidance and analytical support necessary to build and sustain profitability.

Make Sense?

J

  • 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