Tag: business information technology

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Stay, Upgrade, or Move On? Choosing Your Next Business System

If you’re a business owner using QuickBooks accounting software and thinking it is time for a change, you aren’t alone. While QuickBooks Enterprise works really well and has for a long time, there always comes a point where a growing business simply needs more. Change for the sake of change makes no sense, but if the systems or software are holding the business back, change becomes a business imperative.

Choosing the next business accounting system can feel a little like standing at a fork in the road with three signs: keep QuickBooks and try to improve reporting, upgrade to something like Intuit Enterprise Suite, or close your eyes and jump into a full ERP with both feet. The wrong choice can create years of frustration; the right one can give the business room to grow without adding unnecessary complexity.

Surprise! There is no universal answer for the “right” accounting system.

The right choice depends on what is actually causing the pain: reporting gaps, finance process issues, or deeper operational complexity.

Option 1: Stay on QuickBooks and add Fabric

This is usually the best path when accounting is still working, but the company needs much better reporting. Maybe the business has ServiceTitan, Jobber, Cin7, HubSpot, spreadsheets, and QuickBooks all telling part of the story. Noobeh team helps businesses use Microsoft Azure and Fabric to pull that data together so Power BI can show the bigger picture.

Possible Option 2: Move to Intuit Enterprise Suite

This may make sense when the finance function itself is starting to feel stretched. The company may need multi-entity financials, stronger approvals, better controls, consolidated reporting, more AP/AR automation, or budgeting and forecasting that go beyond the basics. The team at Mendelson Consulting are among the few who can really help make this evaluation with you (years of financial system and QuickBooks experience and backed by actual CPAs).

Option 3: Move to a full ERP

A full ERP starts to make sense when the business has outgrown simple accounting-centric tools entirely. That usually happens when global entities, multi-currency, multi-entity consolidation, inventory, manufacturing, supply chain, or operational workflows become too complex to manage around the edges.

That is when a system like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central enters the conversation. Where Intuit Enterprise Suite may provide a “next step” for finance teams, Business Central could likely be the superior (read = longer-term) solution due in part to the tight integration with applications and services the business likely already uses.

A simple decision framework

FactorQuickBooks + FabricIntuit Enterprise SuiteERP
RoleAccounting + analyticsLight operational finance platformComplete Finance and Operational Platform (Full business system)
CostLow to moderateModerateModerate to high
ImplementationFairly FastMediumMedium to long
FlexibilityVery highModerateHigh
Operational depthLimitedModerateVery deep
Reporting powerVery high (Fabric)Moderate, but higher if Fabric is addedHigh

The question to ask first

Do we mainly need better insight, better finance scale, or a new and modernized business system?

  • If the problem is visibility → Fabric
  • If the problem is finance scale → Enterprise Suite
  • If the problem is finance and/or operational complexity → ERP

The bottom line

The modern SMB stack is not always about picking one perfect system. More often, it is about building the right combination of operational tools, accounting or ERP software, a data platform like Microsoft Fabric, and dashboards in Power BI. Start with the business problem first, then choose the system path that solves it with the least unnecessary complexity. What’s truly important is to look ahead a little bit and consider what the next likely issue will be, and to address is now rather than facing another purchasing decision later.

The best choice is usually the one that solves today’s bottleneck without creating tomorrow’s burden. That may mean improving reporting, scaling finance, or moving to an ERP, but the decision should start with the business problem and not the software label.

Not sure which path makes sense?

Connect with our team at Noobeh and lets discuss your top-of-mind challenges. It may not require a formal assessment to get the improvements started. If things sound a little more complicated, the next step would be a short systems assessment by Mendelson Consulting specialists.

List the tools you use today, the reports leadership actually needs, the manual work your team repeats every month, and the workflows that are starting to break. Once we help reveal those gaps, the decision becomes less about software buzzwords and more about choosing the platform that solves the real problem.

bunny feetMake sense?

J

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AI FOMO and Your Business

“AI FOMO” (Fear of Missing Out) has become a major force behind business adoption of artificial intelligence.

Rather than pursuing AI with a clear strategy, too many organizations are investing because of competitive pressure, media buzz, and fear of falling behind. This reactive approach often leads to rushed, expensive, and poorly executed initiatives that fail to create real value—and can even spark internal friction.

Surveys show that a large share of IT leaders and executives—sometimes more than 60%—acknowledge that FOMO significantly influences their AI adoption decisions. This fear is fueled by rapid technological change, assumptions that competitors are gaining an advantage, and limited understanding of what AI can and cannot actually do.

Implementing AI without thoughtful planning or alignment to business needs often results in wasted investments in tools that don’t address real problems. Projects may stall in the early stages or fail to produce any measurable benefit or return on the investment.

Among the biggest challenges with AI centers on data and trust.

When a business puts speed of development above quality and security, it can lead to data errors, AI “hallucinations” and just plain wrong answers that diminish trust in AI systems. Workers may already feel threatened or undervalued, which creates anxiety and slows tech adoption, so care must be taken to not prematurely introduce AI that may further erode trust in the technology.

I’ve always understood that technology isn’t just a tool, it can be a strategic advantage helping businesses gain in ways not previously available. The key is to move away from fear-based adoption and toward a deliberate, value-driven approach.

Start with identifying the real business problem. With AI, figure out what problems you need the technology to solve for you rather than asking what AI can do. Just because AI can do something doesn’t mean you want it to do it for you, or that it will deliver any real value to your process or operation.

Change for the sake of change makes no sense, so it is essential to understand if there is actually a problem that AI may be able to solve and that the benefits of the solution outweigh the cost to develop and the risk potentially introduced. Start small and have pilot projects in low-risk but high-impact areas of the business where the organization can learn and refine before scaling.

Among the most important aspects of AI in business is the data the AI works with. This is where many businesses fail in their initial attempts with AI development, due largely to the fact that data is siloed or segregated and completely unclassified or categorized.

For AI development to deliver effective business benefit, high-quality, organized data and solid data infrastructure are essential.

AI systems learn directly from the data they are given. If the data is incomplete, inaccurate, inconsistent, or poorly managed, the AI’s performance will reflect those flaws. AI models are only as good as their data because AI systems—especially machine learning and generative AI—identify patterns and make predictions based on training data.

Poor-quality data results in biased, unreliable, or incorrect outputs. High-quality data supports accurate, trustworthy, and consistent results. If an AI is trained on inaccurate or inconsistent information, it will learn (and repeat) those errors.

Shift from a fear of missing out to a fear of missing the advantages of AI.

The focus should be on maximizing AI’s potential to create a competitive advantage, taking strategic risks that are aligned with the business goals. Replace fear-driven decision-making with thoughtful, goal-oriented planning and turn AI into a meaningful source of long-term value and differentiation rather than an anxiety-inducing trend to chase.

Noobeh cloud services works on the Microsoft Azure platform, creating data platforms and delivering services that fuel and support AI development. Let us create the dynamic data infrastructure your business needs to develop the intelligence to propel you forward.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J

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Maximize QuickBooks Performance with Proper Data Maintenance

Millions of businesses around the globe use QuickBooks software for their accounting. With an estimated 84% of the small business accounting market making the buying decision to go with it, QuickBooks has enough product momentum and functionality to support small businesses through midmarket customers.

This is a broad base of customers for any accounting product, and the continued popularity of QuickBooks Enterprise is a testament not just to the application’s usefulness, but to the large gap that exists in the space where QuickBooks Enterprise desktop leaves off and the well-known enterprise ERP systems start. 

Initially, a business will implement their accounting system to keep track of customers, vendors, items, and cash. More detailed processes are then introduced as the business requirements grow, such as tracking more specific information on the costs of certain products, or drilling into customer purchases or item sales activity to see more details. This additional data provides a much more informed basis for business decision-making but also has impacts on systems and software as the volume of data to be managed grows.

Data growth can happen in many ways. Growth can occur in the number of products or services offered, growth in the number of transactions processed regularly, growth in the dollar value of transactions, or growth in the number of employees who need access to the system. Each impacts the ability of the system to continue to support the business requirements, but not necessarily in a way that isn’t manageable.

Given enough time, a certain “density of data” will eventually be reached, causing the system to lose efficiency in manipulating the file. The business process requirements may not have changed, just the size or condition of the file and data. The file opens slower, operations slow down and processes take longer, the system crashes frequently or has errors, and the usefulness of the product is severely diminished.

Keeping the QuickBooks data maintained and in good condition will improve performance and increase longevity of the application.

Too often, businesses assume they have outgrown their QuickBooks software because it is slower or has problems when they begin using additional features. Frustration sometimes even turns to looking at changing the accounting software entirely. Yet experience has shown that many of these situations are solved with some data file maintenance and repair, and sometimes a little re-training or setup work.

Regular file maintenance and a little housekeeping can keep a QuickBooks file in good working condition for a long time.  Regular backups with a complete verification and other routines will clean up the file and help the software manage the file more efficiently. But there are limits to how much data a single QB company file can hold, so it is wise to consider starting a new file every few years, just to keep the file manageable. This in no way means abandoning any data, as previous files can be retained and available to open and view at any time. How many years of data you can store in a QB Enterprise company file depends on a number of variables, and can range from a few to many.

While QuickBooks is very easy to use compared to most accounting products that service this small/medium enterprise market, this is both a benefit and a bit of a problem. Many users aren’t really trained in accounting, they are trained in how to operate QuickBooks. Moreover, the knowledge of how to make something work in QuickBooks doesn’t always translate to either proper use or to proper accounting. Even if it is simple to accomplish something in QuickBooks, it is always wise to get a little confirmation of the setup and training on proper use.

For a QuickBooks Enterprise desktop customer, the next step up in software is a big one no matter what, and it would come with drastic change, require data conversion (or abandonment), and incur high costs in licensing, implementation and training services. If there is a good business purpose to make such a change, then it makes sense. But bearing the significant costs of change may not make sense if the problems are centered on poor housekeeping or improper usage.

Mendelson Consulting’s team of QuickBooks Enterprise experts and ERP consultants can help your company get your data file and QuickBooks operations in the condition they need to be. With data file analysis tools and numerous methods for dealing with QuickBooks data and operations issues, Mendelson provides the services businesses need to continue success with QuickBooks. And, if we find that you have outgrown what a QuickBooks-based solution can do for your business, we’ll have that conversation, too.

jm bunny feetMake sense?

J

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Why Small Businesses Need Proactive Accounting

It has been demonstrated time and again that businesses working with experienced accounting professionals can benefit from the strategic financial guidance and compliance support they may provide. Yet these factors alone are often not enough to make the business owner happy. For most small business owners and growing enterprise stakeholders, the lack of proactive advice compounded by slow responses to business requests are the primary reasons for leaving their CPA.

Even if they don’t know how to ask for it, small businesses want proactive attention from their accounting professionals. Small businesses want and need to get information when it matters, and they need help deciphering what the information really means.

It is common for professional accounting firms to simply wait for their clients to provide after-the-fact information from which reports are prepared and delivered long after their relevance has passed. These firms often see no sense of urgency in helping clients address the business issues facing them in real-time.

Business owners attempting to grow a small enterprise from their budding small business especially need the benefit of experienced insight into operational metrics, cash flows and overall business performance. Without this meaningful data and advice delivered in real-time, stakeholders don’t really know what is going on or if they’re on the right path.

Advice on business planning and financial strategies should come to business owners from their accounting professionals, but it often does not. It is interesting that so many firms list business planning and strategy among the services promoted on their websites, yet they just sit back and wait for clients to ask for help.

Regulatory and reporting requirements for businesses are ever-increasing, so it makes some sense that many professional practices continue to focus on taxes and compliance work. Firms may find it challenging enough to keep up with changes to these core services provided. Yet this is why practitioners should take notice and accept that their ability to meet changing market and customer demands is wrapped in their ability to leverage technology to do what people and process can’t do alone.

Information technology is needed to speed up the bookkeeping, accounting and reporting processes, and it takes even more technology to help turn data into relevant and useful information. This is where Mendelson Consulting and Noobeh cloud services can help.
Working with businesses of all sizes and encouraging participation by the accounting professional, Mendelson and Noobeh help businesses implement the technology that facilitates faster collection of information throughout the business and then applying solutions that reflect those numbers in ways that helps users visualize the meaning of the data.

Mendelson and Noobeh help CPAs and accounting professionals remove threats of competition and irrelevance by helping them work closer with and deliver greater value to their small business clients. Applying proven, innovative technologies with improved processing methods and controls leads to better information provided in a timelier manner, which returns to the client as a better result offering greater insight. This is what small businesses want from their CPA, and Mendelson Consulting and Noobeh Cloud Services helps professionals deliver it.

jm bunny feetMake sense?

J

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Enhancing Business Insight: Noobeh Cloud Services and Azure-Based Solutions

Technology is evolving and so are our ways of using it. While the rules of accounting haven’t changed for years, the solutions we use to do the work have changed a lot. Yet there remain many businesses that haven’t yet embraced the idea of fully digital workflows, integrating and automating how data moves through the “system” to provide a comprehensive view of the business and how it is performing.

This is where accountants and bookkeepers can best serve their clients, by helping them implement the platforms and solutions which transform operations and provide greater insight into these areas.

Over 20 years ago, a technology model was developed which allowed businesses and the accounting professionals who serve them to work directly and collaboratively in the clients’ accounting system. By hosting QuickBooks and Sage desktop products on host servers, small business users and their accountants could both access the software and the data in real time.

This new approach was a boon for accountants, bookkeepers and others working with small business clients as it not only enabled closer work, but also provided those advisors an opportunity to do more – and more complex – work with the client. Yet many platforms and working models created barriers to broadening the scope of service or access to client systems, limiting to just basic accounting products like QuickBooks, and not effectively addressing the rest of the business need.

As technology has evolved, so have these transformations.

More accounting professionals understand the benefits as well as the necessity of moving from analog to digital workflows, removing manual entry and improving efficiency and accuracy of data. Yet this improvement doesn’t require changing accounting software and undoing years of learning and business knowledge. Rather, the platforms and connections must be the primary focus, replacing the manual with automation and smoothing out the bumps where data isn’t flowing at all. If the system isn’t in place to handle the complete flow of the data, there is a break. Like a pipe leaking water, this break results in data loss – which is also loss of business intelligence.

A key to all of this is the consideration of where the data ultimately resides. When business data exists in closed silos – whether web-based software or closed hosting platform – it takes a comprehensive approach to collection, storage and analysis. This is among the benefits to be derived from the modern cloud and Noobeh’s Azure-based hosting approach.

Noobeh’s hosting is not just about the desktop or the applications.

The cloud platform, and Azure in particular, also provides resources for data analysis and business intelligence, workflow and data flow automations, improved security and identity management, IoT and computing on the network edge.

For professionals looking to evolve their practices by helping clients go beyond basic recordkeeping and reporting, it’s time to delve into the operational details, data flows and development of real business intelligence and insight. Noobeh Cloud Services and Mendelson Consulting have the platforms and the supporting services to help bring it all together, improving profitability and performance of their clients through the intelligent application of technology.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J

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Preparing Your Business for Exploding Growth

Preparing for exploding growth in a business requires careful planning and strategic decision-making. To develop the information necessary to support these activities, businesses must implement their processes and systems to properly collect the data required. Unfortunately, many organizations fail to develop the systems which will support increased activity and business growth, only recognizing after the fact that the process support and the data they need isn’t there. To prevent being caught off guard with more business demand and not enough organization to support it, follow these recommendations to set the business up for success over the long run.

Set clear goals and adjust as required. You need to know what the business purpose is… the objective you hope to achieve with all this activity. Establish SMART goals – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. With a set of smart goals and a well-defined objective, the business has a clear direction and a guide to assist in decision-making.

Build infrastructure that is scalable. If the business infrastructure can’t handle increased demand, the business can’t grow effectively. Scalable information technology and software systems, robust production capabilities with adequate human resource availability, and increased efficiency in supply chains will help the business meet increasing demand, while improved reporting and business intelligence helps to anticipate potential bottlenecks, allowing for plans to be developed to address them.

Make sure finance and accounting are set for growth. Strengthen overall financial management and review your financial processes to ensure they can accommodate growth. Implementing the right systems and software is necessary to not just optimize production and operations, but to provide a foundation for establishing sound accounting and financial practices which will help the business secure funding and manage cash flow effectively. A good way to evaluate your preparedness for growth is to prepare financial forecasts and stress tests to gauge your business’s financial resilience under various growth scenarios.

Streamline operations and automate where it makes sense. Evaluation of businesses processes is an ongoing task if your business is to continuously work to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Where opportunities for optimization and improvement exist, consider using automation and technology solutions to help streamline operations and reduce manual effort while remaining focused on enhancing customer experience and satisfaction through streamlined processes and improved service delivery.

Plan for Risk and Contingencies. You should try to identify potential risks and challenges associated with rapid growth, such as increased competition, supply chain disruptions, or changes in customer preferences. Develop contingency plans to mitigate these risks and ensure continuity of the business and operation. It may even make sense to consider diversifying your revenue streams to reduce dependency on a single market or product.

Monitor, adjust and adapt as needed. Key performance indicators (KPIs) should be regularly monitored, as should market trends, to stay informed about your business’s progress and to stay on top of industry developments. Use data analytics and reporting tools to gain insights and make data-driven decisions instead of operating on emotion. The business that plans for growth must remain agile and adaptable, adjusting strategies and operations as needed to accommodate changes in demand as they occur.

Preparation for rapid growth requires a proactive approach and continuous evaluation of your business’s readiness. Regularly reassess your strategies, make necessary adjustments, and stay focused on delivering value to customers as you scale.

Mendelson Consulting and the Noobeh cloud services teams are advisors and consultants with expertise in scaling businesses, and can provide valuable insights, guidance, and support throughout the growth process and beyond.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J