Category: small business

Posted on

Hosting All My Applications in the Cloud

Many business owners will recall when their first in-house computer networks were installed.  When the PCs were networked together in an office, it made file sharing and collaboration among team members easier and more efficient.  Installing additional applications on the PC was a relatively simple process, and when the new application came with the ability to integrate with another app already on the PC, it was often a fairly simple process to get the two “talking” together.  But installing and integrating applications on your personal computer is a bit different from getting multiple applications installed and integrated with a cloud hosting service provider.

In almost all cases, integrating multiple desktop software solutions requires installing those solutions on the same computer so that they can share certain program elements or, at least, share .ini or data files.  Application integration is important because it allows different software solutions to work together, communicating data from one application to the other so the information may be used in different ways or for different purposes.

An example of this might be a Microsoft Office integration with QuickBooks, which allows the user to perform a one-click export of QB financial data to an Excel spreadsheet.  Another example is the integration between QuickBooks and Fishbowl Inventory, which synchronizes information from the Fishbowl inventory system into the QuickBooks financial software.

In nearly every case where a software program has a software-based integration with another solution, the integration must be installed in the same system as the core solution.  In the QuickBooks world, this means that the programs which integrate with QuickBooks must be installed on the same computer as QuickBooks.

In a conventional PC network, the necessity of installing the various software solutions on the same machine is not a big problem as PC software and integrations have been implemented in this manner for years.  On the other hand, when the business is considering the option of moving desktop applications to the cloud, it is important to make sure the provider and service will allow all of your products to be hosted.  In most cases, this requirement highlights the main difference between a shared service versus a dedicated or server-based solution.

With shared services, the servers are generally configured to offer a strict and limited set of applications to be hosted.  The applications on the servers are used by subscribers of the service, and users are limited to accessing only those applications available in the environment.  The shared approach is popular with some application hosting providers as it creates an economy of scale which helps providers to earn more revenue on their infrastructure.    The trade-off is that a shared hosting solution only works well for businesses with a limited application requirement, and is generally fairly expensive when more users are added to the service.

The need for diversity in hosted application choices, coupled with the need for businesses to keep costs down even as the number of business users increases, are the primary drivers for adoption of dedicated and server-based cloud hosting solutions.  When the solution is managed as an entire environment rather than on an exclusively per-user basis, an economy of scale is developed within the organizational IT infrastructure.  As the business grows and adds more users and applications, the incremental costs to bring each user or application onto the platform is often far less than a user subscription in a shared solution.

For any business planning to migrate their server and systems to the cloud, the first step is to have a thorough understanding of the applications and integrations the business needs in the host environment, and then to find a hosting provider that can deliver the infrastructure and baseline system administration required.  It is unreasonable to expect a hosting provider to be an expert with every software product available, but skilled and experienced hosting providers understand how to generally install and implement most standard business applications and will rise to meet the customer demand.

While no business can guess what their future software needs may be, decisions can be reasonably made based on the solutions currently in use.  Finding a provider with a service to meet immediate needs is useful, but businesses change and therefore business requirements change, and it is good to know that the hosting infrastructure and IT services supporting the business can adjust to those changing needs.  After all, cloud hosting of applications and data just means the servers and infrastructure are with the service provider and not in the office, but it doesn’t mean businesses can’t have the feature-rich and functional applications their businesses have come to rely on.

Make sense?

J

Posted on

What’s Motivating Small Businesses to Move to the Cloud?

When information technology professionals tell their small business clients about cloud computing, it often sounds even more complicated, risky and expensive than in-house networks and business Internet access once did.  Business owners are faced with discussions about hosted or SaaS or hybrid and ask what will I do when the Internet goes out? and how secure is it? and will it work with my iPad?… and often get one of two responses from their local IT guy:

  1. The cloud is just a way for software companies to make more money.  I can keep your IT running better in your office and save you a lot.
  2. If you move to the cloud you have to do a lot to make sure it is secure, and you won’t be able to run all your applications (but we’ll back up your data to the cloud so it’s safe).

Now, you can’t really blame the local IT guy for being a little bit wary of some cloud solution offerings because these local IT guys really are (in many cases) trying to operate with the best interest of their client in mind.  It’s just unfortunate that sometimes a lack of information causes them to revert to their comfort zone, which is selling servers and performing on-site installation and break-fix work.   What information are these folks lacking?  An understanding of the various options and capabilities available with hosting services and cloud solutions, and how the IT provider can continue to be the advocate and IT manager for their clients even as those clients move their primary information technology to the cloud.

For many years business owners have relied upon their trusted local IT professional to help them find solutions to various business problems.  Answering questions and helping procure and implement computers and networked systems, software applications, backup solutions and more, the IT professional serving a small business customer base has necessarily become the one-stop-shop for everything related to computers.  Smaller IT service companies often rely upon regular sales of server equipment and network installations to pay their bills.  It’s no wonder that these companies have a hard time accepting hosted solution models, as they see their revenue potentials dwindling as fewer servers and networks are sold to small businesses.

The interesting trend being viewed these days is that more business owners are looking beyond their IT professional to find solutions to the problems they deem as high priority for business technology: mobility and remote access.  It is not necessarily that the self-service technology model makes more sense for small businesses (businesses can still benefit tremendously by getting training and implementation support from their local IT guy), but simple and affordable cloud solutions have addressed many of the small business IT challenges that were previously big revenue streams for local IT service providers.  Savvy business owners will find solutions that work for them, and will look beyond their immediate advisors if those advisors aren’t providing the right answers.

When a small business owner talks about mobility and is looking for answers to the remote access question, they are not thinking about GoToMyPC or other remote control technologies and simply connecting to an office PC.  Small business owners today are talking about central access to information at any time from any place and with whatever computing device they happen to have available at the time.  For a small business owner, the benefit of the cloud is a largely emotional benefit – being able to stay in touch with the business at all times.  The real benefits may be improved security, simplified management of information resources and pay-as-you-go pricing for business applications, but these are often value statements which fall on deaf ears just as the cost/benefits of upgrading the server every 2 years did.

It is tempting to focus on logic and reason, discussing the tangible benefits of any business information technology model or approach rather than how it makes us “feel”.  Productivity metrics, best practices in security, total cost of ownership… these are all the right areas to pay attention to when selecting any technology solution for a business.  But really, when it comes to selecting technology for small businesses, the business owner is in the driver’s seat, and that owner wants one thing: to see what’s going on all the time.

Make Sense?

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetJ

read more about The Psychology of Small Business IT Adoption

Posted on

What Small Businesses Need To Know about QuickBooks and the Cloud

With all the talk of cloud computing and having remote access to business applications and data, many small business owners are finding themselves searching for the answer to cloud-ifying their tried-and-true QuickBooks desktop software.  At first view, most business owners get the impression that their only viable choices are to either move up or down the product line – downgrading to QuickBooks Online Edition, which lacks the features and functionality they’ve come to expect from QuickBooks, or upgrading to QuickBooks Enterprise Edition, the only version Intuit visibly supports on terminal servers and which is far more expensive than the Pro or Premier editions.

It is surprising how many accounting or even IT  professionals don’t understand the real options available to their small business customers wanting to move entirely to a cloud-based IT strategy, particularly when it comes to QuickBooks.  This is no fault of the IT guy or accountant – unless they’re specializing with QuickBooks, there are some options they are simply not being made aware of because it isn’t where Intuit is focusing its marketing efforts.  Intuit wants businesses to buy QuickBooks Online.  The market, on the other hand, likes the QuickBooks desktop products and wants them in the cloud.  The well-kept secret is that businesses can have their QuickBooks desktop editions in the cloud and it works the same way as it does on the desktop.

Hosted QuickBooks isn’t rocket science; it’s simply a method of installing QuickBooks desktop software on servers and making the solution available to users via the Internet.  Many business offices are already doing this type of thing without really recognizing it – accessing the office PC via a Remote Desktop connection so they can work on their QuickBooks or other applications from home.

A QuickBooks hosting solution is essentially the same thing: QuickBooks software and the company data exist on a computer in a data center, and the user connects to that computing environment, application and data via a remote connection.  Most providers use the same underlying technology (Remote Desktop) to deliver their hosting services that users deploy in their own offices – they just use “bigger” versions of it and sometimes a little extra technology with it to help out.  The point is that Remote Desktops and hosted applications are not new or bleeding edge technologies; they are a proven means to effectively and efficiently deliver seamless remote access to computing resources (environment, apps, data, etc.).

Perhaps the weirdness surrounding the QuickBooks licensing is part of the problem; I’ve seen this confusion prevent businesses from running their QuickBooks on remote systems simply because they could not figure out the right way to do it and still conform to licensing rules.  Consider that QuickBooks is essentially a single-user application, and it’s the database manager that really allows concurrent multi-user access to a data file.  The program was not designed to have multiple users of the PROGRAM all running from one computer concurrently (which wasn’t a problem when only one person at a time used a computer).

But these days, with terminal servers and remote desktop capabilities, a single computer is essentially turned into a box containing a bunch of user environments (call them desktops, sessions… whatever).  Each of these user environments (desktops/sessions) are running at the same time and on the same computer.  So, when a user goes to launch QuickBooks and then open a QuickBooks company file, the database manager looks at the computer running the QuickBooks license and says “ok, you have a license to allow QB to access a data file with one user”.  When the next user launches QuickBooks from that machine it will allow them to open the program, but if they try to connect to the same data file as the first user, guess what?  QuickBooks database manager looks at the computer and license and sees the same single-user license number coming from the same computer.

A single-user license means only 1 user can access the company file concurrently (at the same time).  So, if two or more people are on the same terminal server (remote desktop server), and are trying to access the same company data file concurrently, the QuickBooks license on their terminal server must be at a level that allows all of them to access the company file at the same time, e.g., a 2- or 3-user license.  This is not intuitive.

Another issue relating to QuickBooks licensing on a terminal server or remote desktop setup is the fact that it’s a really awesome method of giving more users access to QuickBooks than you legally should.  This is an unfortunate technical reality of the product, and is possibly an issue which influences Intuit’s lack of support of the product in this type of environment.  While the licensing language and the operation of the database manager indicate that each user running QuickBooks should have a license, the technical reality is a bit different.

The technical reality is that a single QuickBooks license installed on a terminal server could possibly be actively used by any number of people on that server – all at the same time – as long as those users don’t try to open the same company file at the same time.  Of course, this is in direct violation of the license agreement and is essentially a situation where a single QuickBooks license is being unlawfully accessed by more users than it is licensed for.  Intuit does not approve of this model as it falls into the category of software piracy, but I sure see a lot of accounting firms applying it for client QuickBooks access. (It’s often a statement about how, as a ProAdvisor, the accountant gets their license each year, installs it on the terminal server, and magically all clients now have access to the new edition!).  **Note to self: if your service provider or accountant gives you “free and automatic” upgrades to QuickBooks each year, you may want to look a bit further into whether or not the licensing is actually legitimate; the risk to your business books isn’t worth avoiding a $249 investment**

Another thing that often prevents businesses and their IT people from moving QuickBooks to a hosted solution is the lack of available support.  While Intuit says that they support QuickBooks Enterprise in a terminal server environment, there is no such offering for the Pro and Premier editions.  In reality, this doesn’t mean that the solutions won’t work, because they will.  It simply means that Intuit won’t support the installation directly.  Perhaps this is the best and most evident reason to work with an authorized QuickBooks hosting provider.  Particularly when it comes to your business accounting and financial data, it makes sense to make sure it is running in a supported environment.  There are few things as frustrating and potentially damaging to business than losing customer, vendor and accounting information.  Let us still be realistic about this, though.  QuickBooks was not designed to run on a terminal server, and its behavior and performance may not be flawless.  In most cases, however, any tradeoffs are easily weighted towards the benefits of mobility, security and IT management.  You get glitches with QuickBooks even on a local PC, so occasionally experiencing them with QuickBooks in the cloud should be expected.

Small businesses need help with their information technology, particularly as even simple to use solutions like QuickBooks continue to get more technically complex (simple to use often means there’s a lot going on behind the scenes).  And small businesses want worry-free IT, so they can focus on running the business and not on running computers.  For these reasons and more, the small business owner and the IT person serving small business should take a close look at hosting their QuickBooks desktop software – along with their other business applications – with a trusted cloud hosting provider.  Yes, you can have your QuickBooks in the cloud.  Today.

Make sense?

J

Posted on

The Collaborative Online Model for Small Business Accounting Professionals

Accountants and bookkeepers serving small business clients are facing a growing problem – how to provide services that are valuable to the client in a way that makes it profitable for the provider.  Part of the problem is that small business, while they need quality accounting and bookkeeping services, have a hard time paying for it unless the person doing the work is sitting in the office producing tangible reports and paperwork all day long (and maybe answering the phone while they’re at it).  Accountants and bookkeepers working with a variety of small business clients can’t be profitable when they have to travel to client offices to do the work or pick up and deliver files and paperwork, and they certainly aren’t expecting to be the office receptionist while they’re there.

The solution for both is an online working model, where the outsourced professional and their client can both login together.  Each accesses the applications and data to get their work done, and is able to access when and where they need to.  Online accounting approaches help service providers increase their profitability at the same time they increase their level or range of service provided to clients.  With a collaborative online accounting model, professionals and their clients can work from anywhere at any time, giving both the freedom to focus on what needs to get done.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that the bookkeeping or accounting solution has to be an “online” service, per se.  Looking at the accounting product alone isn’t often the best way to solve the mobility and managed service problem for the client, which is really what “online” for the client is about.  The fact that their service providers (accountants, bookkeepers, etc.) can also work in the system is of secondary benefit to the client.  The worst thing an accounting pro can do is tell their client they have to switch accounting solutions just to make it easier for the accountant or bookkeeper.  It makes sense to improve that situation, but accounting/bookkeeping isn’t generally the entire IT requirement for the business client.

An online working model enables collaboration with team members and providers alike.  Reducing or eliminating the requirement for sophisticated technology solutions is the key element, providing everyone the ease-of-use and security of server-based computing.   The real benefits include centralization of business application management, protection data resources, and the ability to more fully streamline business processes.   For many businesses, the earned benefit is increasing the capacity to do business profitably simply by making the current working model much more efficient and effective.   The benefits are there for both the client is collaborators to experience, and this is where the focus should be – on the benefit to the small business.

Accounting professionals can also seamlessly increase their own opportunity and value by embracing a collaborative online working model.  Through the use of outsourced bookkeeping, payroll services and other providers, accountants can increase or expand the services they offer to clients by seamlessly incorporating them into the overall offering.  An online approach makes this possible, and can position these valuable services as the key to client business success. Working online together, professional service forms and their contractors or outsourcers can work closer than ever before, and the accounting professional is positioned to deliver far more value to the business client.

An online working model improves the profitability of the professional practice, too. The movement of information from one place to another, the restructuring of information from one form to another… these are processes that represent the cost and inefficiency in the professional accounting office.  By working online in client accounting solutions along with the client, firms can reduce or eliminate redundant and time-consuming work that is the bane of the practice. Bookkeeping, property tax compliance work, payroll, HR and benefits administration – these are areas where outsourcing may make the most sense for the practice while enabling accountants to increase the overall value of service provided.

Does your professional practice offer valuable business services like these for your clients? Profitably?

A collaborative online working model can enable your firm to deliver the range of services business clients need most while improving the bottom line for both.

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetMake Sense?

J

Posted on

Moving to the Cloud While Retaining Your Investment in People, Process and Business Knowledge

Moving to the Cloud While Retaining Your Investment in People, Process and Business Knowledge

cloud-businessWhen businesses consider moving their information technology to the “cloud”, the problem is often approached with a thought that things will have to change dramatically in order to achieve a fully online working model.  In many cases, business owners are left believing that any business use of cloud technologies is the equivalent of changing software and systems over to SaaS solutions, enabling the much-desired anytime/anywhere working model.  What too many businesses aren’t being told is that there are a variety of ways to move to the cloud, and changing software and systems isn’t necessarily a prerequisite.

The benefits of a cloud computing model are many, with mobility and managed service being the most obvious.  Less evident are the potential cost savings, because the subscription approach to paying for IT services may, on the surface, look like an equivalent or even higher cost over time.  What isn’t being factored in to the cost (savings?) is the potential to improve processes and increase productivity.  These benefits are often achieved simply due to a centralized management and access approach, and are not necessarily attributable to the adoption of new software tools.

For many businesses, the cloud is the right answer for deploying and managing IT and should be considered first, before changing out the software and tools in use throughout the organization.   This approach has been widely adopted by businesses using Microsoft Exchange messaging solutions, where in-house Exchange servers are being replaced by outsourced Exchange providers and users experience the same functionality but with far better uptime and protection.  The same approach is working for businesses electing to move their in-house business software and systems to the cloud, engaging with application hosting providers to install and manage existing desktop and network applications and to secure business data on the host.  Users are able to access their native desktop applications via the cloud, allowing businesses to retain their investments in people, processes, and business knowledge.

Purists may contend that hosting of desktop applications is not truly “cloud”, but the terminology is far less important than the benefits businesses can achieve with a hosted application approach. For most folks, the “cloud” refers to Internet-based solutions and software delivered as a subscription service.   When desktop applications are deployed on remote servers and the environment is managed and protected by the service provider, it is pretty much a cloud solution.

Particularly as Microsoft and others continue to move away from packaged all-inclusive solutions for local installation, small businesses are finding that the cloud, hosted applications and remote access provide the answers to a variety of business IT problems.  Even more, those answers are being provided affordably, with a simplicity of setup not previously available, and with higher levels of service than was reasonably available with localized IT.

Information technology professionals at all levels are now recognizing that their small business and enterprise clients can experience many benefits with a cloud hosted and managed IT approach.  It doesn’t take a comprehensive application or process overhaul to begin improving internal IT operations for the business.  It makes no sense for a business to give up investments in training, process development, and people knowledge in exchange for a centrally managed and remotely accessible system.  Rather, the smart business takes the steps to solve the real issues of IT management and mobility while allowing users to continue performing their tasks and doing business as usual – only better  because the IT is now working for them.

Make sense?

J

Posted on

Workflow is Essential in Document Driven Business

The popularity and proliferation of online applications and cloud computing solutions for business has transformed how organizations manage activities, people and resources.  The Internet-connected marketplace has introduced both opportunity and challenge for businesses of all sizes, and much of this focus has been placed on the management and control of digital documents and data.

Electronic document management has been commonly used in professional services business for many years, yet has not always been viewed as an essential technology to apply in the context of organizing and structuring the processing of the document.  As clients of these professional firms continue to generate and utilize a great deal of paper documentation and written information, firms continue their reliance upon paper files, shared drives, and other more traditional methods of organizing the work, and storing or controlling access to documents.  However, key trends in the industry are causing these approaches to be increasingly burdensome for professional service firms, including:

  • Need to support multiple offices, geographically disbursed team members, and mobile workers and devices
  • Increasing use of email as a primary tool for collaboration
  • Introduction of new risk elements accompanying new technologies
  • Increasing numbers of forms and document types coming from clients
  • Rising expectations of clients and increased market competition
  • Growing need for businesses to increase earnings and profitability with fewer resources
  • Increasing requirement for knowledge management supporting sustainability, creating the ability to retain and reuse best practices and work produced

Advances in the design and underlying technology supporting many document management solutions today have delivered great capability to firms adopting electronic document management approaches.

Benefits of implementation include the ability to create a centralized, searchable documents base which includes all client-related content, including email communications as well as documents and data files. Easy search, access, collaboration, and re-use of information are enabled, and complete audit trails may be retained. Electronic document solutions also reduce physical document storage needs, reducing costs associated with managing and storing paper files, and can better serve business disaster recovery and continuity initiatives.

While today’s electronic document management solutions may address many of the challenges involved in working with large volumes and varieties of documents and data, there are few solutions on the market which address fundamental issues relating to document processing workflows and how they are impacted by various business or data-driven events, or by the availability of people or resources to facilitate the process.

The growing problem facing businesses today is the volume and variety of information which must be organized, processed and archived. The market is sold on the idea that electronic communications and record keeping will simplify things, but the reality is proving otherwise. Businesses are hoarding information at unprecedented rates and with the ability to collect and generate increasing volumes of digital data, businesses have not simplified their information processing, they have only created a greater need.

Generating and collecting data is not the issue created, nor is ultimately the archival and storage of the information. Rather, the problem created is in organizing the work related to processing this ever-increasing volume of documents and data.

Businesses dealing with documents and transaction-based activities should not only attempt to structure workflows necessary to support the various processes, but must also seek to normalize as much as possible, developing a consistent and methodical approach to the work which results in predictable and consistently high quality service delivery.

The efficiency gained through this structuring and standardization of the work allows the professional services firm to achieve a greater level of profitability for outsourced processing engagements, which are often viewed as low-margin and low-profit activities.

Make Sense?

J

Read about Using Structured Workflow to Manage Offline Clients | Intuit Accountants News Central