Tag: modernization strategy

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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

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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

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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?

J

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

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.

Make Sense?

J

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

Read more about Building Smarter Businesses: Staying Relevant in a Cloud Accounting World

read more…

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Getting out of IT Jail

Getting out of IT Jail

I have a friend in the accounting/technology industry that spends way too much time on his business in-house IT.  He’s always futzing around with servers and workstations, fixing corrupted data files or PCs that won’t launch applications, and setting up remote access so he can work at home (which he never actually does because he’s at the office fixing IT issues).  More often than not, when I try to get time to chat with the guy, his response is “I’ll have to call you later; I’m in IT jail”.  As a side note, my friend is Doug Sleeter, a recognized leader in the world of small business accounting and among QuickBooks accountants, consultants and advisors.

My friend works a lot with different solutions and technologies designed to make it easier and more effective to get accounting and business information collected, processed, stored, and reported.  He reviews tons of different solutions each year, and looks for those he believes can truly make a positive impact in the life of a business owner.  My friend also, as he puts it, “eats his own dog food”, meaning that he actually puts into place many of the solutions which he finds to be beneficial so that he can experience their benefit in his own business.  His proven experiences then translate to support for the solution in the market.  People need to know that a solution will actually do what it is supposed to do, and many wait for someone else (someone they trust) to go first so they can use the customer feedback to help them make a decision.

My friend clearly recognized the growing value of cloud solutions and how implementing cloud-based services to solve specific business problems might be a more effective and affordable way to address growing business needs than with traditional ERP models or installed software approaches.  Using different tools that work together (his term for this is “chunkify” 🙂 ), even very small businesses could now affordably address the various operational and financial information management needs which exist at some level in all businesses.  Following along with his previous commitment to use and not just talk about these things, he began the process of selection and implementation of various cloud-based applications, tools and integrations for his desktop QuickBooks software.

No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.  thesis on Military Strategy, German Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke 

It was going great.  Application services subscribed to were working as expected, and all sorts of information was fairly seamlessly flowing to and from QuickBooks.  And then, it happened – his bookkeeper moved away and wasn’t able to work in the office where the accounting software and data were housed.  Take a deep breath. Okay, so back to the remote access thing, and more IT jail.

He worked diligently to create remote access for the now-remote bookkeeper, and remote desktop service worked OK, but it was “a pain to keep working, and it never could give the type of performance we were trying to give her”.  Go figure, the one piece of the puzzle left in the office was the one making everything else more difficult and costly.  He was in IT jail once again.

The final step was to get the QuickBooks software and company data out of the local network and in a safe and secure and fully-managed environment.  Particularly since QuickBooks is (in this case) the centerpiece of the business accounting system, it became essential to place it in an environment where it would be maintained, monitored, and protected by people who specialize in that sort of thing.  My friend, like most business owners, just didn’t have the time and resources to have the level of IT and management that an outsourced commercial service provider could offer.

See The Sleeter Group’s  QuickBooks and Beyond article Still Addicted to Desktop Software? Get it Hosted in the Cloud

Intuit even recognized that businesses needed a better way to run and manage their QuickBooks desktop software, so they created an accredited hosting program to allow service providers to offer application hosting and license management services to QuickBooks users.  My friend now uses one of these providers to host his QuickBooks and other desktop applications.  He still has all the integrations and features he had before, but isn’t required to spend time and productivity fixing hardware issues or software installation problems.  His software is installed, maintained, and actively supported by IT professionals who are focusing on nothing more than keeping his systems up and running.

In his own words, “the hosting move offloaded us from having to mess with providing access, and at the same time it improved performance and delegated the IT management”.

For a time my friend and his business went without a high level of IT management and support, but now he completely recognizes that he needs it and is finding it to be well worth the cost.   Now he’s got his own “get out of jail” card.

Make sense?

J

In case you didn’t know it, both Intuit and Sage have programs for service providers, providing authorization to host and deliver small business financial software products to direct customers.

Get information on Intuit’s Authorized Commercial Hosts for QuickBooks here, Get information on Sage hosting partners here.

If you need assistance deciding how to get your applications and business online, or selecting and implementing with a service provider, we can help.

Read more: Cloud Hold Out No More: QuickBooks Desktop Editions in the Cloud

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Turning to the IT Department When Times are Tough

When budgets get tight and the economic outlook is bleak, business owners and executives tend to turn to information technology departments and projects as a potential area for cost cutting. The reason for this is that many businesses view IT purely as a cost center, making it a prime target when driving to reduce operating costs. A survey by McKinsey & Company, however, reveals that the current trend is a bit different.  While the survey is a bit dated, the information it contains is as relevant today as it was then.

The research indicated that many non-IT executives “seemed to have a developed a healthier appreciation for their information technology functions” according to Joe McKendrick in an older ZD Net article on the subject. McKendrick mentions that business executives generally seem pleased with the way the information technology is helping organizations get through these difficult economic times, “navigating the rough seas” as he put it.

“The survey also suggests that organizations that took the most advantage of information technology going into the downturn may have come out the strongest” observes McKendrick.

The McKinsey & Co Study, authored by Roger Roberts and Johnson Sikes, reported that the economic downturn actually increased awareness of the role information technology can play in improving business processes and reducing costs. As for the quality of services delivered? The study revealed that non-IT executives largely believe their IT functions responded effectively to the economic crisis. A majority said current performance in providing basic IT services is very or extremely effective. In contrast, IT executives had a dimmer view of their performance, with only a minority being satisfied with service delivery levels.

There have always been questions about the alignment of information technology to the business need, and IT is often perceived as being out of touch with the business. In this research, McKinsey & Co indicate that IT executives are very aware of the issues of keeping up with the business and are finding innovative ways of addressing them.

Make sense?

J

If you need assistance deciding how to get your applications and business online, or selecting and implementing with a service provider, we can help.