Tag: small business trends

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How Accounting Professionals Can Improve the Profitability of Their Existing Business Using Cloud

Working Closer with Business Clients

Accounting professionals are increasingly asked to provide more meaning behind the numbers they report on. Small business owners care about the bank balance and their tax bill, but they care far more about how profitable and productive the business is operating. And small business owners care about how they can improve performance – earn more profits and keep more of it. Accounting professionals can help their small business clients do this more efficiently using cloud and hosting technologies.

Small businesses need their accounting professionals to take a more direct level of involvement in support of daily processes than larger companies do.

For small and mid-size businesses, the accounting office may be asked to handle bookkeeping, payroll processing, bank account reconciliations, paying bills and invoicing customers and more. In order to have close access to the information and applications supporting these processes, it becomes necessary for accounting pros to be able to connect remotely to client systems. This isn’t a new requirement, but the technology available today to make it work allows for closer and more immediate interaction between the client and the accounting professional.

When a small and growing business runs their applications on a cloud platform, the variety of users that need to work with the information are able to access it regardless of where they are located because the Internet becomes the network.  This model doesn’t in any way require that businesses adopt web-based applications instead of the desktop applications they have come to rely on.  Desktop applications like QuickBooks, Sage50, Microsoft Office and more can be hosted on cloud platforms, allowing business users to login and use the software they are familiar with and that supports their various processes.

With a cloud hosting model for running business applications and storing business data companies can take advantage of fully-managed deployments of their software and systems without having to employ the IT staff to implement and manage it all. This allows small businesses to have the advantage of high performance IT without the typically high-cost budgets required to support it. The other advantage is that the accounting professionals working with the business are able to access the systems in real time from their offices or other locations, enabling the close working relationship the business needs.

The key value proposition for the accounting professional is the improved profitability to be found in existing client engagements.

Whether it is through an increase in the number and type of services offered to the client or through an improved level of efficiency found with operating on the hosted system, professionals can increase revenues and reduce costs of supporting existing clients. That’s the secret to success in working with the small clients: earn enough working for them while at the same time keeping their costs down so they can grow into larger more profitable business clients.

Make Sense?

J

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Better QuickBooks Hosting: Noobeh Cloud Solutions on Azure Help Businesses Avoid Data Loss, Improve Application Performance and Implement QuickBooks Integrations

They said back in 1999 that the desktop was dead, but desktop software is far from gone. In fact, application hosting services for products like QuickBooks desktop editions just keeps growing in popularity because it delivers the access, mobility and managed services businesses need.

Service providers have been hosting QuickBooks for years, and I’ve been right there all the way, ever since the model was originally developed. In fact, the company I worked with is still selling that original service model today while many other providers have come along to follow it and take advantage of the opportunity.

Using the cloud to support accounting and other business processes makes a lot of sense, and the best part is that it doesn’t require businesses adopt the online versions of the software that just doesn’t work as well. I have a background in accounting so I understand the issues of working remotely with clients, when the business is done in one place but the accounting is done in another. And I love the technology and finding ways to make it easier and more efficient to get small business accounting done.

The benefits of using hosted QuickBooks services are many.

Anytime/anywhere access and fully-managed service are among the most obvious benefits for QuickBooks desktop users, but the advantages of centralized information and applications, secure support for mobile and remote workers, and real-time integrations and analytics capabilities can be transformational for the entire business.  Having the means to affordably extend applications to the entire workforce and keep everyone working with the same data in real time can become the foundation for improved processes, greater efficiency and better business performance.

Among the key benefits of the application hosting model is the fact that businesses are not forced to adopt software subscription services or invest their data in web applications that do not provide the functionality or features required. Even more, the business can elect to move their hosted system back to in-house computers, because the hosting is simply an alternative platform for running the software the business owns. You can take your ball and go home if you don’t want to stay.

With all the benefits of hosting QuickBooks, there are also risks involved, especially when working with shared hosting platforms.

Shared hosting platforms are architectures where the service provider spreads the cost of their infrastructure across many customers to help keep the costs down. Using conventional technologies to create divisions between customers on servers, networks and so on, services providers can deliver at a lower cost when they are able to generate revenue from lots of customers for the same pieces of equipment. As more customers are added, more servers are joined into the network. After a while, there are many servers handling the customer load.

Unfortunately, the greater the number of servers, the more complicated and costly it becomes to update the platform. This is among the reasons why many service providers have aged platforms, with server operating systems that are going out of support and offering only legacy desktop views. In addition to compatibility and modernization, a big problem with allowing the platform to age is that it becomes less secure and more difficult to keep protected.

Protecting against disaster is not the same as doing backups.

Many hosted QuickBooks customers have been faced with the ugly reality that their service provider backups are not enough to recover from disaster. This is largely the fault of the providers and is somewhat by design.  Businesses hosting their financial and other business applications and data want to know that their information is safe and secure. Performing data backups is part of the promise of protecting customer data, so most customers believe that their service provider is backing up in a way that ensures the data can be recovered.

What most hosting customers don’t understand is that the provider backups are there to help the provider recover from disaster and not necessarily to get the customer back where they were.

Hosting companies know that they need to do backups so they can support customers when files get deleted or become corrupted. Hosting companies typically do regular backups of customer data, but they do not necessarily retain individual backup data sets and they often backup all customer data together. This means that the backup data is constantly being updated, and that fully restoring the data of just one customer may be problematic. Service provider backups are there to support the continued operations of the service provider and may not provide the level of archive or retention needed by the customer. Just to make sure their data is safe and recoverable, I strongly recommend that clients keep any hosted data archived in at least one other location off the host’s platform.

In just the past year, outages caused by malware have been experienced by service providers Cetrom, Skyline, Cloud9 and Insynq, demonstrating just how devastating an outage can be when the service provider doesn’t have adequate protections in place.

In many cases customers lost data because the service provider wasn’t able to recover it from compromised or nonexistent backups. Suggesting that customers should have their data backed up locally is never part of the marketing or onboarding with the QuickBooks host, but it is often the fallback position in times of trouble.

Perhaps the most troubling aspects of these provider failures are that many of the problems stem from the shared nature of the platform.

When we first started building QuickBooks hosting services the hardware and software to make it work was terribly expensive. To approach some level of affordability, a shared platform approach was developed. This allowed the service to scale while offering a lower cost of service to customers. When the services were initially developed, there was concern about protecting from viruses and Trojans, but the nature of malware in the wild was not nearly as troublesome as it has become. Things were manageable.

But technology has evolved and so have the threats and bad actors.

The smarter bad guys should be forcing platform providers to reconsider their shared management and delivery models.

Affordable computing resources are available from platforms like Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS, offering small businesses the opportunity to have not only powerful and scalable platforms for their business IT, but also offering a means of operating privately. Not being forced to operate in the same network or on the same VMs as other companies means not having to worry about the behavior of other people or applications in your business network. It also means that the focus is on recovering your system if disaster strikes, not on recovering the systems of hundreds or thousands of other businesses at the same time.

Considering the move to a more private cloud hosting solution is an important way to reduce risk and improve IT performance for the business.

When they were in-house, the networks were private and no other businesses were sharing the servers. Moving to the cloud should not radically change that profile, and should offer customers the same privacy from outsiders and the same flexibility to implement whatever applications the business needs.

The Microsoft Azure platform provides this capability and businesses can benefit without compromising the budget. With private accounts on the Microsoft Azure platform, our customers are able to take advantage of the current and emerging technologies while safely and affordably supporting their business requirements, which is something the shared platforms fail to offer.

Make Sense?

J

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Next Generation Accountants and Businesses

Understanding the value and application of information technology is the cornerstone of building a successful “next generation” accounting or consulting practice. Professionals are finding that new opportunities to engage with new and existing clients comes from closer involvement with client financial and operational systems. Collecting and analyzing data, integrating applications and automating data exchanges, and leveraging cloud platforms and services is rapidly becoming the next level of “standardized” service offered by many professionals.

The pace of change is increasing, which makes it increasingly important for business owners to wisely select their technology partners and solutions. While many accounting professionals consider themselves to be the business owner’s trusted advisor, their clients often seek advice on increasing efficiency and reducing costs from software and IT consultants instead.

Yet conditions will change and could force the client business to make adjustments that impact the applications and services supporting the operation. Do the solutions in place have the agility necessary to meet changing business needs, being adaptable enough to meet new conditions or orientations? This is where accounting professionals can help their business clients make the right choices to address current and potential future needs.

Even as information management paradigms continue to shift, accounting professionals can help their business clients achieve better business performance and profitability through innovating workflows and increasing process efficiency. Whether or not the existing systems lend themselves to these efforts remains the question, and represents an area where the professional could provide great value.

Accounting professionals should look at services they can provide to clients that have direct and meaningful impact on operational efficiency and resultant profitability.  These areas represent not simply cost and efficiency improvements, but speak to quality of service and sustainability as well, creating better and repeatable outcomes that can support the operation even as operating conditions may change.

Improving data collection and analysis provides the foundation for understanding more about the operation, and delivers the insight required to identify areas where performance might be improved and then to prove the outcome.

Automating data exchanges and imports, eliminating redundant entry and the potential for manual errors, establishes structure in processes which can then be streamlined to deliver consistent and predictable results.

Utilizing cloud platforms and services allows the business to utilize the infrastructure required to support operations while providing a level of affordable scalability that doesn’t push the business beyond its reasonable boundaries.

What this discussion touches on is the subject of digital transformation and what that really means for small businesses and the accounting professionals who support them.

Rather than performing the accounting and financial work as after-the-fact participants, accounting professionals should help their business clients take a new view of processes and activities performed throughout the business, identifying areas where new approaches can be applied to increase efficiency as well as agility, developing a stronger foundation for growth and profitability. 

From the adoption of paperless and electronic workflows to merging social media with marketing and support activities, digital transformation represents an ongoing effort within a business to fundamentally shift from manual processes to electronic exchange, and expanding considerations beyond physical boundaries to include the virtual, as well.

All of this represents new opportunity and enhanced value for the accounting professionals ready to help their clients become “next generation” businesses.

Make Sense?

J

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Business Data Storage in the Cloud – Accountex Report

The term “cloud” has been applied to all sorts of online or Internet-based application models, and there are a great many approaches to developing cloud-based services and solutions. What this translates to is a volume of options and possibilities for information storage, management, and access in the cloud.Understanding where information is stored, how it may be accessed, and how it might be transmitted to others becomes essential knowledge that business owners should have when they engage with any information technology (IT) solution or service. Yet the plethora of “simple, affordable, and instantly gratifying” services currently available on the web all but ensure that businesses will engage with one or more solutions that provide them with little or no information (much less control) over the placement and management of their data.

Source: Business Data Storage in the Cloud – Accountex Report

Read more about Compliance in the Cloud, and making sure your data doesn’t get lost or compromised, even when you use a hosting company…

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MSP, IT, Telecom, Channel: Convergence and the Cloud

Small and growing businesses have always relied upon various service providers and vendors to deliver the solutions required which support the business operation. Often viewed as the critical infrastructure of the business, phone and computer systems are among the first acquisitions a new business makes.  Phones and voice service, wired and wireless networks and all forms of communications infrastructure are part of IT and represent a large portion of the business information systems.

Small businesses used to have a phone guy they could call for phone stuff. The phone guy was a person or company who got phone lines installed, ran cabling for phones, installed phone systems and set up voicemail. The phone guy could help get cheaper long distance calling rates and train users on how to use the paging system and transfer calls.  The phone guy interacted mostly with the office manager or receptionist – the person in the office most likely to be “in charge” of the phone system, influencing these purchasing decisions greatly.

The computer guy, on the other hand, made sure the workstations and server were working, defragged hard drives, installed software and set up printers. The computer guy was the person or company that sold and supported the IT in the business, and often consulted with the business owner or line manager when it came to addressing information system requirements.

Telephony and networking is now clearly in the realm of IT, which changes how services are selected and purchasing is influenced. Computing and communications infrastructure, networking and mobile is all part of business IT. The separation of services – voice versus data – is gone.  The phone vendors and the IT suppliers are now the same company, providing the critical infrastructure, the platforms and the application services that businesses are buying. These service providers understand that the foundations for delivering voice and data services are the same; the skills of their techs and the tools they use have converged to the point where there is little separation of duties.

Cloud services and outsourced solution providers offering hosted PBX and virtual applications infrastructure have revealed to business owners that there is often little difference in what the phone guy and the computer guy can provide. Business owners want converged solutions: voice and data when and where they need it to support business operations. Just a little research reveals that these anytime/anywhere models are widely available and that the cloud is the key.

IT services are critical to the business, but the server doesn’t have to be under the front desk or in a back closet in order to function.  There is simply too much evidence in the market for these business owners to ignore;  shooting the server is now a viable option.

Every day more business owners are being inspired to [shoot their servers] seek out the services that will allow them to continue to benefit from innovations in technology while relieving them of the direct responsibilities of equipment purchasing, implementation, administration and lifecycle management.

Cloud services deliver this capability, and channel partners and Value Added Resellers should recognize their opportunity to get inspired as well, and to start offering cloud-based and hosted services to their customers and capture the “buying decision” opportunity that has [been] created.

Ready. Aim. Fire.

Source: Go Ahead and Shoot the Server: End of Microsoft Small Business Server Inspires Cloud Adoption with Small Businesses « Cooper Mann Consulting

Recognition of the convergence of voice and data services and channels hasn’t really hit home for a lot of resellers and channel partners, and this has rightfully positioned providers on both sides of the equation as viewing the others as direct competitors.  The phone guy thinks he is his customer’s “trusted advisor”, and that the loyal customer will certainly come to him if there is ever a need.  As well does the computer guy believe that he is the trusted advisor, having the ear of the business owner and wielding enough influence to ensure a continued revenue-earning relationship.

In truth, both the phone guy and the computer guy probably have earned their business customer’s trust and were the go-to people when there was a new business need. The problem is that the customer may no longer call one or the other of their “go-to” guys because the forward-thinking guys are offering one-stop service that delivers everything the business needs.  The lines between phone and computer stuff are not so clearly drawn any longer; it is all cloud IT and full service providers are winning the customer business.

Channel resellers, agents and MSPs are all telling their SMB/SME customers the same things, and at a base level they’re selling the same things, too.  Everyone is talking about lower up front investments and improved business productivity… and what they’re all selling is cloud and virtual. “Businesses need cloud in order to compete; move CapX to OpX; mobile is the new office” and “remote workers and devices need a secure quality network”.

Whether it relates to telephone systems with voicemail, automated attendants and a little intelligent voice response thrown in, or if the deal is for servers and workstations, software and network cabling, it is all business information technology and the trusted advisor is the guy who can provide it all. Convergence has clearly arrived.

Make Sense?

J

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Focusing on Transformation

Focusing on Transformation

In January of 2007, Network World published an article stating that “user satisfaction with software as a service (SaaS) is starting to slip, but customer interest in this method of outsourcing IT functions is continuing to grow“, and says that recent survey results clearly demonstrate SaaS being “a dominant force going forward”.  That was 10 years ago, yet the same message is being played out today as managed services and hosting continues to grow in popularity. IT outsourcing makes sense for thousands of businesses, whether the software is part of the package or not. Today, outsourcing IT is almost an imperative if the business is to keep up a competitive pace.

Users need and demand mobility and will get their anytime/anywhere access to applications and data however they can get it. Businesses require agility in their technology, which is difficult when significant investments in hardware and infrastructure must be earned out prior to any new investment. Making systems accessible from outside the firewall, securing them in a reasonable manner and keeping them up and running all the time so users can access at any time is not a job for part-time IT.  Keeping the systems on and available at all hours requires full-time IT management, and this is in part what fuels the popularity of outsourcing it all.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) goes a long way toward helping businesses manage their IT costs in that the systems are part of the service.  The hardware running the application, the storage of the data and the support accompanying the solution are all part of the package.  Unfortunately, the SaaS solutions is not generally the only thing in use by the business, so continued reliance upon PCs, desktop software and locally stored data causes IT management costs to persist.  One size does not fit all, even with online application services.  Although customizations and add-ons can help a single app become a broader solution framework, there is usually something left behind that ends up anchoring a process or function to the desktop, device or local network, and requiring IT management and administration to go along with.

Application hosting services compete somewhat with SaaS in that the systems and management of them is included in the hosting service subscription fee.  While the business user retains licensing of applications and the flexibility of using the software already embedded in the operation, the organization is enabled to focus on operational improvements and not on the underlying systems supporting them.  By reducing or eliminating the requirement to directly manage and maintain servers, complex networks and user working environments, businesses are able to focus their in-house technical energies towards innovation and improvement. The centralized nature of the system facilitates new collaborative capabilities while allowing the business to build on the knowledge and base of information already invested software and processes.

Outsourcing IT service provisioning and management is just a baby step towards improving the business agility and positioning the organization for growth. Real digital business transformation begins with a change in the business mindset: not simply a focus on operational processes and improvements, a new strategy should evolve where the enterprise is situated to interact with its market seamlessly, at any time and all the time.  Businesses that wish to compete at this level must consider whether or not purchasing and maintaining their IT infrastructure is where they wish to focus their energies or if they’d rather invest their technical talent towards market building and transformational objectives.

Make Sense?

J