Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/49996
SUCCESSFUL SMALL BUSINESS CONSULTING W Doug Sleeter Mr. Sleeter is the founder of The Sleeter Group, a national group of accounting software consultants who serve small and medium-sized businesses. He is the host of the Accounting Solutions Conference and the author of several books including the QuickBooks Consultant's Reference Guide, and the leading market college textbooks "QuickBooks Fundamentals and QuickBooks Complete." For more information , call 888-484-5484 or visit www.sleeter.com. Doug can also be reached at Doug.Sleeter@CPAPracticeAdvisor.com. 12 12 Chunkifi cation, Zero Entry & Lego Mastery While we all cherish the most trusted advisor status that accountants have earned, this status must be continually re-earned with clients. Ask yourself whether your clients want you to serve them or lead them to bet er success. I believe your clients desper- ately want you to lead them — and if you don't, they may turn to someone else who will. Of course, to eff ectively lead your clients, you must constantly retool your knowledge and processes or risk becoming irrelevant and out of touch. At the recent Sleeter Group Accounting Solutions conference, Himanshu Palsule, Executive VP of Sage, said it perfectly: "If you don't like change, you'll surely hate irrelevance." If you've been following the buzz in the accounting technology world lately, you have no doubt been fl ooded with new terms, new predictions and new opportunities to lead your clients into the future. Here is a quick review of some of the key trends in accounting soſt ware that are particularly relevant today: Chunkifi cation In the past 30 years or so, the accounting soſt ware market has been dominated by large, all-in-one accounting products such as QuickBooks, Sage Peachtree, Microsoſt Dynamics, Sage ERP Accpac, etc. All of these products include General Ledger, AR, AP, Payroll, Inven- tory and most of the functions needed by small and medium sized businesses. While these prod- ucts were built to solve the horizontal needs of clients by providing basic features common to all businesses, most do not provide the vertical, industry- specifi c customiza- tions needed by nearly every client. T e new crop of products and tech- nologies, nearly all of which are cloud- based applications, are "chunkifying" those large systems into specifi c business processes to provide January 2012 • www.CP.C APracticeAdvisor.com more specifi c functionality and verticalization. T is is a double-edged sword. It's great because we can now fi nd the best match for each business process for each client. On the other hand, we now have to worry more about how each of the chunks will fi t together into a unifi ed accounting system. Even with these new challenges, chunkifi cation is compelling for accountants, clients and especially for soſt ware developers. With such broad adoption of the cloud and mobile devices, developers can now focus on deep functionality and integration that customers demand. And by focusing on smaller chunks, they can develop more profi table business models that allow them to continually improve, update and customize their solutions to meet the evolving demands of the market. Clients gain incredible benefi ts from this chunkifi cation because they can pick the best match for individual parts of their accounting system. Zero Entry For several years now, we've been using systems whereby customers and vendors can enter accounting data for us when they place orders on our web stores, or when they send us electronic invoices. Compared with our old world of faxes and paper documents (both sales orders and vendor invoices), in which data is manually entered by the bookkeeper, this is a signifi cant leap ahead for effi ciency, accuracy and reduction in the cost of bookkeeping. T is is the trend that is at the core of what I mean by "zero entry." T e key to zero entry is that it moves us away from data entry and towards connecting business processes with the accounting system via soſt ware connections and data fl ows. We realize the goal of zero data entry by connecting customer-entered data, vendor-entered data, employee-entered data and automated recurring entries that free the "bookkeeper" from entering data. Although we'll never actually reach zero entry, the dramatic reduction of data entry from this trend is compelling and revolutionary. Lego Mastery By combining the concepts of chunkifi cation and zero entry, we will see a dramatic change for the role of the bookkeeper. Although the bookkeeper role won't completely disappear, the role will change from being the expert on how to enter transactions effi ciently to how to manage transactions and other "data fl ows" f om several cloud-based "chunks" of the system. T ink about what it takes to become a "Lego Master." You know, those artists that excel at building the most ornate and complex Lego masterpieces. T ey can quickly identify the right Lego pieces from thousands of shapes, sizes, colors and textures, and assemble them using the right connections in order to create the most complex and interesting structures. T ese skills are a perfect analogy for what we must develop to succeed with clients in the new world of cloud-based, chunkifi ed accounting soſt ware. We will still use all the knowledge and experience we acquired as accountants and bookkeepers, but now ALTHOUGH THE PROCESS OF GETTING FROM TODAY'S WORLD TO THIS NEW, CLOUD-BASED, COLLABORATIVE WORLD MAY BE DISRUPTIVE, THE PAYOFFS WILL BE HUGE. we'll apply that knowledge, combined with expertise in various soſt ware chunks, to connect and integrate data for each client to create a customized, effi cient accounting system — very much like fi t ing together diff erent Lego parts into a complete Lego masterpiece. Collaborative Accounting Services We also must focus on how to collaborate with and serve clients in ways that were simply impossible just a few years ago. In this new world, cloud computing provides the perfect platform for both accountants and clients to work collaboratively on the same data at the same time from anywhere in the world. By centralizing the client's data in the cloud, surrounded by robust security measures (both physical and network security), we can provide clients with the same features and capabilities they used to get from their premise-based systems, but we can also work collaboratively with clients and manage their business information. The Payoff for You & Your Clients Although the process of get ing from today's world to this new, cloud-based, collaborative world may be disruptive to your practice and to your existing clients, in the end the payoff s will be huge. T e key payoff is that by focusing less on teaching clients to enter data, and more on helping them implement zero data-entry systems, everyone becomes more effi cient. Your clients can focus more on growing and managing their businesses, and you can move up the value chain and provide high-value business consulting services like business analytics, real-time dashboards and management consulting. If you're like me, you can't wait for this new world to become our real world. It's coming, and we'll all get there sooner or later. But remember, the early bird gets the worm.