Tag: software

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e-Discovery in the Cloud: Benefits versus Risks

e-Discovery in the Cloud: Benefits versus Risks

After many years of working with business professionals in “enabling” their organizations to make better use of technology, I must say that it is a bit frustrating trying to get folks to understand that this new and wonderful cloud computing model (or Internet-based computing, SaaS, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it computing) is still just technology.  It uses computers and disk drives, it runs software, it takes electricity, and it was developed by human beings.  It can break.   It’s not magical and perfect and you can’t get the good stuff for free.  Swim at your own risk.  So, assess the risks, and measure the benefits against the risks and costs.  For many, the benefits outweigh the risks, as cloud computing approaches can deliver advanced capabilities at cost levels not previously available to most businesses.

No industry is immune to the security and access considerations surrounding a cloud computing model.  Particular those lawyers involved in e-discovery (all of them) have recognizing the potential benefits – and tradeoffs – of the model.  This reality was clearly revealed at the ILTA (International Legal Technology Association) 2010 event in Las Vegas.  While the discussions at the conference were oriented specifically towards the legal profession, the IT-related discussions are totally relevant to every business.  Accounting and finance professionals should pay close attention to this type of conversation, as it relates very directly to accounting’s approach to information technology and the application of IT in the business or professional practice.

In a recap of the event entitled ILTA 2010 in Las Vegas: Strategic Unity, Defensibility, and the Cloud, author Chris Dale discussed that professionals in both public and corporate service must work with the IT departments towards a common goal.  “IT is no longer just a service department providing an infrastructure, applications, training, and troubleshooting.”  While these elements still remain as critical aspects of IT, the role has grown to also incorporate considerations for collaboration (collaborative information management), mobility, and social media.

Recounting one session attended, called Defensible Ediscovery Processes, the author related the variety of definitions provided to the general term” defensible”, which were pretty amusing.  These definitions ranged from “protected against attack“, to “less lousy practices“ or “practices which suck the least” (my personal favorite), and finally, “what you can get away with without being found guilty of spoliation“.  From these definitions then came qualifiers, such as “reasonableness” and “faith”.

Why would defensible processes be important, and how does this relate to IT or cloud computing?  An example of the element of “faith” came up in this context: ” how can [lawyers] have faith that the technology is delivering the right answers?”  A panelist gave the sample of “an email retrieved from (or possibly not retrieved from [love those lawyers]) a system, with 26.5 pages missing.  How can you be sure that the systems which you are using will not do that to you?”  These are valid questions in any IT environment, and are no less important when considering a cloud-based technology model.   The trade-offs are related to perfection in functionality and performance of the solution versus cost, and should be measured in proportion to one another.

The tradeoffs may come in a variety of areas, with collaboration and connectivity being the primary drivers (collaboration) and barriers (connectivity) to the model.  Businesses are more than ready to adopt cloud computing strategies based on the belief in improved collaboration, access to information, and improved IT management,  but tend to overlook the offsets in the areas of bandwidth availability (and consistency), application functionality (or lack thereof), and level of support available from the provider.  In support of this argument,  Jerry Justice (IT Director for SS&G – Certified Public Accountants and Advisers) posted in a LinkedIn discussion on the topic that “by design the Internet is ‘reasonably’ connected, but not the same as a well-connected [local] network.  the upside is it gives you the ability to connect from great distances, the tradeoff is that you experience variable connectivity.”

“The underlying issues are that there is a paradigm shift to working on the Internet (from working in the office) and then another shift when you add in cloud-based environments (versus local apps).  It is possible to be very productive, but .. you have to adapt your approaches“.

The idea “that perfect must be qualified by cost and proportionality” was also discussed in an ILTA session on cloud computing which included panelists from Autonomy iManage, Mayer Brown, and Ernst & Young.  “Cloud computing remains a contentious area, with no obvious agreement even as to what the term means, let alone as to its implications” wrote Mr Dale in his recap of the event.  While the panelists held differing views, the representative from Mayer Brown held a position similar to Mr Dale, in that it is important to “dissect the objections one at a time, accepting that there is room for more than one view, and testing arguments against the alternatives.  Arguments based on pure cost are pretty compelling, and if one method of achieving an objective is very much cheaper than the others, then the burden shifts to those who argue for the more expensive route.”

Discussions went on to describe differences between public cloud providers and others, who segregate customer data in “private and identifiable silos”.  “The key word here is identifiable“, writes the author, “which connotes a geographical certainty as well as anything else.  I sometimes wonder if the imagery associated with cloud computing (invariably a jagged line disappearing into some cumulus) does not leave some people with the idea that their precious data is indeed floating in some inchoate container up in the air.”

“If you neglect to provide in your contract that your data remains in a specified jurisdiction, and if you fail to conduct proper due diligence checks on the provider, then you deserve all you get.  Like any risk assessment, it involves weighing cost against other factors; most of these other factors are definable and quantifiable“.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetJ

original post March 24, 2011
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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

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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

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Small Businesses and Performance Data – Analytics are more important than ever

Creating and keeping a competitive edge is critical to building a successful business.  Developing a plan, monitoring the plan to make sure the business remains on target, and setting goals for growth and profitability are foundations of business success.  But great strategy and detailed planning cannot ensure success because the economy and business environments are unpredictable; no amount of planning is a guarantee that bad things won’t happen and the business won’t experience challenges.  On the other hand, regularly monitoring small business performance data can reveal trends and indications that things are not going as expected, and provide a basis for making the decisions necessary to get the business back on track and regain the competitive edge.

Business owners must be prepared to make adjustments as conditions change, acting on decisions made based on business performance data.  While business analytics are more important than ever, with businesses facing volatility in financial markets and increasingly globalized competition, finding a way to approach the matter is often the biggest barrier.  The growing difficulty – the increasingly expanding problem facing business owners and their advisors – can be distilled down to three particularly noticeable trends.

An Aberdeen Group report from Nov 2011 titled “The Analytical SMB” identifies these trends as More Data, More Users and Less Time.

More Data

  1. The volume of data flowing into organizations is already high and is increasing.
    1. The data is complex
    2. The data lacks similarity (data is disparate)

The volume of information flowing in to businesses is already high, and is increasing steadily.  With all the data collection applications and tools available, and as the business seeks to gain more information and intelligence from more sources, the volume of information gathered by businesses has increased at astounding rates.  Technology has adapted to this need, allowing businesses to gather than store vast amounts of data.  To be of value, however, the data must be analyzed to find the answers to questions posed.  What technology is only now beginning to address is the complex and disparate nature of the collected data.  Coming from varying sources and in equally varying formats, data must be “normalized” and related for it to make much sense.

More Users

  1. More business decision makers in more job roles and functions are getting involved
    1. More people approaching the problem with their own “brand” of analysis

In a very small business, decisions are generally made by the owner.  This is most often due to the fact that the owner is the person who not only knows what’s going on in the business, but is generally the one doing a lot of the work.  As businesses grow and bring in personnel to manage various functions, these managers become decision-makers.  Decisions are made in businesses at all levels, and as management layers are compressed, those “closer to the action” are being handed more responsibility for the decisions impacting their areas.   Without a comprehensive and company-wide framework for data analysis and reporting, these individuals and workgroups find ways to capture and analyze the data they feel is pertinent to their requirement and within their own realm.

Less Time

  1. Timeframe for making decisions is shrinking, and is shrinking at an “alarming” rate
    1. The “velocity” (rapidity of motion) of business is increasing

It may be that, in some businesses and markets, certain decisions don’t have to be made with any great speed.  Businesses or markets of this type are tough to find these days because the Internet, information technology and connected systems have all but eliminated the effects of time and distance. Just about everything in business today moves at a rapid pace, and that means that business decisions are often demanded on-the-spot, providing little time for detailed consideration and working through the problem.   Without the tools and data providing meaningful real-time visibility into business performance, decision-makers may be able to act fast but not wisely, and are most frequently guided by their “gut feel” as to what the right move is.

Driving Small Business Analytics

Business decision makers are now recognizing the need to know more about the business and how it is operating and competing in order to effectively address the choices and decisions faced each day.   The cause for this recognition may be due to variable elements, but the conclusion reached was the same: good business decisions require business analytics to support them.

Not surprising was the report finding – that the majority of small business owners felt pressured to adopt a business analytics solution primarily due to the fact that “critical business decisions rely too much on “gut feel”.  Surprise! Other drivers listed were lack of visibility into operational metrics, the growing number of people in the business who want analytical capability, the business’s inability to identify and act upon business opportunities, and having less time to make decisions.

Steps to Get There

As with any business project, there are “degrees of success”, and the ultimate success of a business initiative requires that all parties be on board with it.  Businesses who recognize a need to improve their analytical capability, but who do not then empower their systems, processes and people, will not achieve the same result as those who do.

Focusing on the business data, it is important to address both the volume and disparity by creating formal data management practices and policies, and implementing systems and processes which assist with the intelligent capture and storage of business information.  Simply retaining the data is not useful; it must be presented and applied in a meaningful manner for it to become useful as decision-supporting information.  The value of the information increases dramatically when it becomes truly useful to the business.  Additionally, by empowering a broader framework for data collection and analysis, businesses extend the “intelligence” to others in the organization, supporting individual and workgroup efforts to make better decisions for their respective areas of responsibility.  Of course, if the information is not provided in a timely manner, its value is reduced if not eliminated (hindsight may be 20/20, but that doesn’t help you see where you going to step next).  Any approach to building business intelligence should leverage connectivity and integration to provide a timely delivery of complete information how and when it is needed.

What’s the Proven Benefit?

source: article
source: article

The obvious benefit of business analysis is that business owners are provided with data to help them understand more about the business operational and financial performance.  The real and proven benefit is that the information provides a basis for gaining insight into trends and conditions which impact performance, and which support making the necessary decisions which facilitate improvement in various business areas.

The highest level of proven benefit, according to the Aberdeen Group report, was achieved by those businesses who embraced the requirement to know more about the organization and operation, and who implemented a focused effort at building business intelligence.

Fast Facts: Best-in-Class SMBs Achieved 24% year over year increase in new customer accounts sold compared to 12% for the industry average, and 11% for the laggards.

These organizations which achieved the greatest improvement operated from real data rather than being guided by gut and emotion, enabled the entire organization to participate in the development of organizational and business intelligence, positioned themselves to identify and act on new business and market opportunities, and ensured that those who must make decisions have the information and insightful data to support making the right ones.

Make Sense?

J

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Knowing Enough to Run a Successful Business

Knowing Enough to Run a Successful Business

If you own and operate a business, you probably want to make it successful.  Granted, success comes in many flavors, and there are also “degrees” of success, where maybe you do okay but not as well as you’d like (or not as well as your local competitor).  Running a successful business, and crafting a business with sustainability and long-term value, takes information as well as know-how.   Remember that information = power and you want to be as powerful as possible when it comes to running your business.

While today’s information technologies, mobile devices, and “everything as a service” have the capability to deliver way too much information for the average business owner to make sense of, there are a few areas of the business where investing in a little insight and reporting can make a big difference in the level of understanding you have about the business.

Rather than making decisions based on guesses or gut, business owners should use actual historic data relating to these are key areas (and key performance indicators) to help predict sales and order volumes, estimate cash flows, and forecast profitability.

Getting Customers

The “customer lifecycle” does not start when someone buys from you, it starts when they become a potential customer (often referred to as a target).  Even before someone buys, your business may expend resources to expose your brand or product to them on websites, in advertisements, and through other marketing channels.  These marketing efforts will (hopefully) result in the generation of qualified leads for the business to sell to.  Unless the business understands the costs involved and the efficiency of the marketing and lead generation efforts, it cannot understand the actual cost of getting a new customer.

The next step in getting customers is turning a qualified lead into an actual paying customer.  The business will want to keep track of conversion of leads into customers, along with sales data including total sales, number of items sold, and how items were priced.  Powered by sales performance data, business owners can learn whether or not their lead qualification efforts are working, if their products are competitive, and if the pricing is in alignment with the industry.

Producing Work

When businesses operate, they essentially produce whatever work product their business model is designed to produce – whether it is a professional service, product, logistical support or whatever.  Every business produces some type of work product.  This is the operational aspect of the business, and business owners should want to know as much as possible about how well operations are running and how effective the operation is.   This isn’t just the cost of production, (the yield expected for a given investment in materials or equipment), it is also about the quality of the product (customer satisfaction) and the quality and value of the service behind it (customer retention).

Keeping Money

Money (more specifically, cash and the availability of it) is the metric that most small business owners tend to focus on.  It makes sense, too, given that most small businesses survive based on what they have in their bank accounts.   Then again, looking at the accounts receivable and payable won’t tell the entire story, either.  Business owners need to know how quickly their customers generally pay, and they need to know how much capacity or inventory they have before needing to buy or develop more.

The message underlying this entire discussion is that fact that you can’t analyze what you can’t quantify (no information = no power), so it is essential that systems be in place to capture information from the business and its activities.   Further, recognize that it takes some skill and experience – perhaps from your trusted accounting professional – to put the information together so that it makes sense and is useful.

Make Sense?

J
Measure, Manage and Succeed.  It’s all about knowing how to speak the language of finance

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Lean and Mean – Improving Sales and Distribution Performance

Lean and Mean – Improving Sales and Distribution Performance

It is surprising that, even in this world of Internet marketing and online commerce, many businesses are operating at levels far below their potential.  Reliant upon people rather than information and process, these businesses are weighted down by their legacy approach to getting things done.  They throw money and personnel at the problem, adding more “fat” to the business and making sustainability just that much harder to achieve.  The right approach, and the mantra of all manufacturers and distributors, should be to work “lean and mean”, applying technology and business principles which support agility and improved process efficiency.

The center of lean business is in operations, and includes all aspects of the “order” processing and support systems.  From the point where an order is sought, to the point of order entry, and through to delivery and service – all aspects of the operation must be addressed for the business to achieve maximum success.  Innovating in operational areas, such as in order management and distribution, can help the business rise above others in the market and create a significant competitive advantage.

What becomes challenging for many businesses is the fact that years of working in established “silos” often makes it difficult to introduce the cross-functionality necessary to support lean operations.  It is not sufficient to simply suggest that the organization work collaboratively to streamline processes from order through to service and support.  Work groups and team members must work together and adapt to delivering process improvements, following through with the actions necessary to turn the philosophy into bottom line results.  Good support is required to keep customers, and a good product is necessary to support increased sales.  No aspect of the operation stands alone, so each is necessary to participate in making end-to-end improvement.  Additionally, back-office processes must be aligned to work collaboratively where required, supporting efficient operations rather than creating unnecessary bottlenecks or delays.

The key to developing a lean and mean, high performance operation is applying the technology and principles which translate into improved profitability and customer retention.  In many cases, the same solutions which create customer “self-help” capabilities are also solutions which can address similar needs for internal business users. Ultimately, the goals are elimination of redundant or error-prone processes, establishing the sharing and secure collaboration of information throughout the organization, implementing integrated systems which allow users to efficiently perform their particular tasks, and working cooperatively with others in the supply chain to maximize the real-time capability and efficiency.

Rather than continuing to utilize basic record keeping solutions, or accounting products which aren’t prepared to address the specific operational aspects of the business, owners and managers should be looking to the tools and solutions which will help them develop the framework to support improving operational performance, turning people knowledge into sustainable business profitability.

Make Sense?

J

Accountants and Small Manufacturers: Getting in Front of the Ball

There’s a lot more to accountability in a manufacturing or inventory-based business than simply keeping track of money in and money out.  Particularly in an economy when nobody can afford to build or stock products too far ahead of demand, it is essential that these businesses have a means to not only track and manage purchasing, manufacturing, distribution and stocking activities, but to understand conditions or trends which impact the flow of materials and cash through the business.  Read more…