Isn’t your business worth at least 50 bucks per month?

or: Penny Smart, Pound Foolish

There is an age-old problem when it comes to small businesses and technology: small business owners have a hard time finding value in paying for IT services to support their businesses, and they spend a lot of money not addressing the issue.  For a wide variety of reasons, small business owners just seem to have a hard time justifying the costs of outsourced and/or managed IT services.  Strangely, many business owners end up spend more money and time trying NOT to outsource – they just won’t acknowledge this reality.

Let’s consider that a business has been operating for a few years, and maybe has revenues approaching $1M annually. A million dollars in annual revenues isn’t anything to sneeze at.  Now let’s also consider that this small business has a small computer network which supports their operations.  This network is likely made up of older machines, legacy desktop software, and a few random little applications or software constructions they’ve acquired over the years.  Is this business focused in properly securing the network with firewalls and security software, and is this portion of the network monitored regularly?  How about data management and backups?  Does the business frequently back up data offsite, and then test those backups to verify that the data can be properly restored?  Is the system protected from virus or intrusions?  Is it monitored?  Is it tested?  Is someone actually responsible for all of this stuff?  If this business is like most small businesses, the answer to most of these questions is “no” or “not really”.

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QuickBooks in the Cloud 101 – an entry-level introduction to working with QuickBooks clients and users

Cloud computing, online applications and Internet services are changing how we do business.  Interaction is real time, and the market demands that data be real time, too.  Accounting after-the-fact for business activities is helpful, but doesn’t provide the business owner with the information when and where it is most useful: here and now.

Learn about cloud computing approaches as they apply to working with QuickBooks software and clients using QuickBooks, and get the foundation you need to start using the right solutions to solve the variety of bookkeeping and workflow problems you and your clients face each and every day.

This free one-hour webinar is provided by The Sleeter Group, presented by Michelle Long, and features Joanie Mann of InsynQ CPAASP, a leader in the application services market and the first company authorized by Intuit as a commercial host for QuickBooks.

At the end of the webinar, we’ll also be making an exciting announcement which will bring new value and opportunity to QuickBooks consultants everywhere, so make sure to reserve your place today!

When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.  Let us help you understand your “cloud” options, and fill your toolkit so you have what you need to address the variety of issues each of your clients delivers to you.

QuickBooks in the Cloud 101 – an entry-level introduction to working with QuickBooks clients and users online.

October 27, 2011 at 11:00 Pacific/2:00 Eastern - register now to reserve your place.  https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/729816024

Placement is limited, and you don’t want to miss out.

Business Desktops in the Cloud: Benefit from managed service and online access for the applications you already use

The term “Cloud Computing” is most frequently used as another way to refer to outsourced information technology management – the servers, the applications, and the data are located and managed at a location other than your own  – usually by a commercial service provider.  SaaS, or Software as a Service, is another name used for this type of computing approach.  “Cloud” solutions, which can also include managed application service and SaaS, are accessed via the Internet, rather than being installed on your own computer.

Application hosting is essentially the same thing as Cloud Computing, where the servers/applications/data are provided and managed by a 3rd party (outsourcer).  Application hosting is different from Cloud computing or SaaS primarily in that you may purchase your software licensing rather than get it as part of the service.*  This also means that you could end your online hosting arrangement, and install the software on your own computers (“take your ball and go home“).  This capability does not exist with most pure “cloud” or “SaaS” solutions.  For example, you could not install Google email on your own servers and run it in your own network.  It only exists on Google’s servers.

The most evident benefit of “cloud” computing is anytime, anywhere access to applications and data and valuable business information.  These solutions allows users to access resources and be productive even when away from the office.  Cloud computing provides solution for mobile workers, or users in remote offices, too, and enables “home sourcing” (using at-home workers) or use of outsource companies or 3rd party contractors.  Cloud computing can also solves issues around having multiple business locations.

“Cloud” computing, SaaS, and application hosting can reduce or eliminate the complexity of information technology, and can reduce the cost of implementing and maintaining IT in a business.  Purchasing and installing servers and networks is no longer a requirement.  Maintaining, upgrading, and repairing all the hardware and systems is the job of the service provider.  Installing and updating application software is done by the service provider, and managing and protecting the data is part of the solution.

InsynQ‘s application hosting service is similar to cloud computing in that it offers many of the benefits of SaaS, but without the service or vendor lock-in. Our application hosting services allow the business to maintain the option to select additional (or alternative) applications or solutions for hosting, even extending or integrating hosted applications with other solutions that may be SaaS or cloud-based.  One of the biggest benefits of application hosting is that it allows a business to retain the option to return to localized technology – installing products on the local PC or network and ending the hosting service arrangement.  In short, application hosting services can help a business move to a cloud computing strategy without having to retrain users, convert data, or reduce future software and systems options.

Outsourced IT services and managed application hosting can reduce IT costs (or, at minimum, create predictability in IT costs) while at the same time delivering improvements in security, productivity and performance.  Application hosting services allow the business to implement new and complex solutions without the high upfront investment in hardware and networking infrastructure.  And most application hosting services include all system administration and management, so ongoing costs of managing and maintaining the systems is part of the monthly service fee.

• Break/fix is no longer a “surprise” IT cost, because the service provider takes care of that.
• Productivity losses are reduced due to high availability of systems and reduced down-time. Protection of data reduces potential for loss, avoiding the need to rekey or recreate.
• Services can be scaled to deliver as much or as little as the business requires.
  End-user technical support is typically included with the service for no additional cost.
• Moving to cloud computing via a hosting service allows you to improve your IT without retraining users or converting data because you can continue to use the software solutions you already use.
• Quality application hosting providers give you high levels of disaster recovery and can help with business continuity in the event of a disaster.

With InsynQ‘s hosted application services, the business is no longer dependent upon a single physical location because services can be accessed from almost anywhere.  Services are also no longer tied to a specific computer or device, and can be accessed from just about any Internet-connected computer.  InsynQ services are delivered with high levels of redundancy in the datacenter to help keep systems running, and tiered backups and strict data management helps protect against data loss.

How might your business benefit?

Looking for Application Hosting Solutions for business in Canada?

QuickBooks and Simply Accounting are available for delivery from Canadian-based data centers. Find out more

Home-sourcing, Crowd-sourcing, or just Partnering: Outsourcing Can Increase Efficiency and Improve Profitability

out·source (outsôrs, -srs) tr.v. out·sourced, out·sourc·ing, out·sourc·ers. To send out (work, for example) to an outside provider.

Outsourcing certain non-core business functions has become recognized as one approach to improving business process efficiency in terms of cost and personnel productivity. Through outsourcing non-core business processes, many organizations find that they are able to focus their energies, and their financial resources, on building the business rather than facilitating internal business processes. Perhaps outsourcing can provide a similar benefit to your practice – outsourcing IT operations and/or outsourcing mechanical bookkeeping and similar work.

Enabling technologies keep it all under control.

Enabling technologies and services, such as online application services and application hosting from InsynQ, help businesses work closer together in strictly controlled, secure environments. When your outsource partners and providers utilize the same platform that you do, it helps to ensure that client data is secure and well-managed, and keeps all applications and data available to the accountant and client business at all times.

Similar in nature to the information technology outsourcing model, the “e-Accounting” outsource model was created to deliver significant value to the professional accountant, or top-level provider. Understanding that the value of the business relationship is held by this trusted advisor, all supporting services must first deliver value to the accountant.

read the rest at Cloud Accounting 4 Canada

Extending access to QuickBooks data without using QuickBooks

How many times have you wondered about giving team members and other users in your business access to QuickBooks, so they can get customer contact information for sales or support purposes, or to handle various business functions which aren’t really accounting functions?  The problem with using your accounting software to handle business operations is that you may have a hard time limiting users only to the data they need to do their jobs.  Sales people don’t need to see the financial statements, they need access to customer and product information.  Support personnel shouldn’t have access to payroll, but they need to know who the customers are and what they have so support can be provided.

In so many cases, businesses find that they need specific functionality to support the business, and naturally tend to look first at the accounting system to see if the functionality is there.  However, providing  direct access to the financial systems isn’t generally the best approach to enabling the rest of the workforce.   Rather than looking at expanding the accounting solution to service business operations, perhaps an “extension” to the accounting solution is in order.  A great example of such an extension is Method Integration.

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Your Private Cloud: Avoid the Hype and Focus on Reality

Your Private Cloud

• All the apps you want so you can do everything from anywhere
• As much data as you can accumulate
• Perfection by subscription
• It never breaks and you can’t outgrow it
• Get it all for just $1

Yeah, right.

Hype?  You bet it can be.  According to Gartner research, private cloud computing has moved into the “Peak of Inflated Expectations”.  This comes from the Gartner 2011 Hype Cycle Special Report, which offers assessments of the “maturity, business benefit and future direction of over 1,900 technologies”.  The entries are grouped into 76 different “Hype Cycles”, revealing the similar patterns of “over-enthusiasm, disillusionment, and eventual realism” that comes with every new technology or innovation.

The purpose of the report is to provide guidance to business IT decision makers, providing information on when businesses should consider adoption of a technology or IT model in order to achieve the maximum potential value.

Part of the problem is the confusion in the market, where there are multitudes of definitions being offered for cloud computing models.  Different service providers offer their solutions with varying levels of service and capability, so there is really no way to compare one Private Cloud service to another.

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CFO versus CIO: IT Procurement in the Cloud

CFO versus CIO: IT Procurement in the CloudFor as long as there has been technology, there has been a struggle for power between the enterprise CFO and CIO.  The reasons aren’t at the level of rocket science… they’re actually pretty straightforward.  The CFO simply wants to know what the expected return on the investment will be.  The CIO knows there is not always a straight line to be drawn between an IT expenditure and a near-term positive business outcome.  Sometimes it takes a while to reap the benefits of an IT project… and sometimes it’s necessary to spend the money just to maintain status quo.

There is evidence, however, that things may be changing a bit – evidence that the CFO’s influence in the enterprise may be extending more into the areas where the CIO traditionally ruled, and it’s due – at least in part – to SaaS and the Cloud.

A survey performed by Gartner and Financial Executives International revealed a number of interesting results which indicate that the balance of IT procurement power may be shifting within the enterprise.  344 senior financial executives were surveyed, and they revealed that:

• in 45% of organizations, the CFO makes or leads IT investment strategy
• about 75% of surveyed CFOs said they have little confidence in their own IT departments

A CFO.com article on the subject also mentions a KPMG study from April, in which it was reported that “73% of CFOs identified IT as the greatest risk to finance meeting its objectives”.

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An Update for Your Software is Available: Do You Really Want It Yet?

Most businesses who rely on commercial software to manage their business information recognize that keeping their software up to date is generally a good thing.  Bug fixes and feature enhancements are often delivered to licensed users in the form of interim or point releases, allowing users to benefit from recent developments immediately rather than waiting for an entirely new version to be released.  More frequently, software developers are using the Internet to provide real-time notifications to customers that program updates are available, and many software products even encourage the user to download and install the updates as soon as they become available.

In previous years, when the Internet wasn’t quite so available and useful, software companies distributed their products on CDs and disks.  Technical people would usually manage the software installations, because the process wasn’t necessarily simple or straight forward, and end-users were not really involved.  This usually gave the business at least some foundation to recover from a bad software update – by performing the initial installation on test systems, creating system backups prior to update installation, and other methods.  Today, the end-user is often among the first to know about an available software update, and may even be the one who obtains and triggers the update installation (often without IT involvement).

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Challenges to the QuickBooks Accountant “self-hosting”model: There’s more to hosting than just having a server.

Sure, any good IT guy can build you a network.  And any quality IT services company can offer to manage your network and systems for you.  But, can just any IT company help make your business a QuickBooks hosting company for other businesses?  Maybe, maybe not.   I’ve always said that there is a fine art to delivering quality application services (especially involving QuickBooks) to a largely non-technical audience, and if the details aren’t covered up front, they will end up causing you a great deal of pain later.

Almost every IT consultant I’ve worked with believes that they have what it takes to help accountants create an in-house capability to host QuickBooks and provide remote access for client businesses.  While there is likely no argument that the consultant understands how to set up a network for a single organization, the rules change a bit when you begin talking about having many different businesses – most of them not related in any way – sharing systems, software, and data storage facilities.  This is often referred to as “multitenant” architecture, and QuickBooks, like many other desktop applications, was never designed for this type of implementation.  For these and other reasons, it takes quite a bit of technical understanding as well as recognition of the necessary controlling elements in the business model to create a hosted delivery that can actually work well, and deliver the security and confidentiality of data required and an online “experience” your clients will enjoy.

While many of the issues to be addressed are technical in nature, a lot of them also speak to the details of the business model and exactly what services are being offered.  Decisions must be made in terms of what applications to support, how users will access the applications, how users and data will be organized, and how the entire system will be supported, managed and maintained over time.  Experience has taught us that the business that expects their costs to be largely experienced with  initial equipment purchases and implementations will be unhappily surprised by the investments in time and materials required to create the client hosting environment, and then to support users and maintain systems post-launch.

The key is to not minimize the needs of the client, and to fully recognize and address the issues that the client will face when working from your environment.  Without the relevant experience to know what these challenges are and how to overcome them, the firm may find themselves at a significant operational disadvantage.  The result is that they are unable to fully meet the client demands, and could possibly lose the entire IT investment because of an inability to reasonably compete with commercial hosting offerings.

If your company is looking to offer QuickBooks hosting services to your clients, contact our consulting team today to get the information you need to make the best, most informed decisions possible.  After all, an unsatisfactory online experience could damage the trust and working relationship with the client, and that just isn’t worth the risk.

QBC

Why consider the cloud? follow the link to learn more

QuickBooks Hosting Program and Large Accounting Firms – is there a fit?

The Intuit QuickBooks Hosting program was designed to create a consistent operating and reporting framework for providers offering application hosting services for QuickBooks desktop applications.  This framework addresses a number of elements of the service model, including but not limited to essential security, system architecture, information privacy, and software licensing.  While the hosting program includes options for commercial providers and “self-hosts”, this article will focus on the market segment not effectively addressed by the program: large firms where several hundred client users may be involved.

According to the Intuit website, the Intuit self-hosting program is for businesses with an existing professional relationship with Intuit, either as a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor or as a Certified Intuit Solution Provider.  These providers may, under this program, be eligible to offer application hosting of QuickBooks software and associated data management services to customers to whom the professional is also providing bookkeeping or accounting services.

The key element in the QuickBooks self-hosting program, the element which makes the program not work for certain larger firms, is the limitation on the number of clients the provider is allowed to provide hosting services to.  The program cites the limit of two hundred (200) clients, or client businesses, with a limitation on the total number of client users at four hundred (400).  For most firms, this limitation is not a barrier to participation in the program, as they have fewer than two hundred businesses in their client base which would utilize hosted QuickBooks services.  For other firms, however, this limitation puts them at a disadvantage, forcing them to either accredit as a commercial host under the program (an expensive and time-consuming effort, and an effort not entirely appropriate for many accounting firms), or purchase services through an existing commercial host.

Partnering with and purchasing through a commercial host is probably the right answer, but at face value, the cost seems pretty high.  Once a firm racks up a bill of $10K per month to service 250 client businesses, it feels like a lot of money.  In the scheme of things, that per-client cost is likely negligible in terms of the efficiency savings and access to additional work, but the first glance is the one that sticks with people.

The unfortunate reality is that, with the limitations on the number of clients a firm can provide hosting for balanced against the costs of working with a commercial provider, many larger firms simply elect not to participate in any of the programs.  At the moment, there is not a visible enforcement effort on the part of Intuit to make any providers of QuickBooks hosting “come clean” and join the programs, so a number of firms are simply continuing to do what they’ve always done – which sometimes includes walking a fine line in terms of license compliance.  But I believe there is risk in that approach, and professional firms should investigate all of their options.  While visible enforcement may not be there today, those working in this service area know that a storm is brewing.  Particularly with Intuit now offering their label on hosted QuickBooks Enterprise (delivered by a 3rd party provider and offered as a direct competitor to the ISP channel and to the hosting programs, but that’s another story), we can all bet that enforcement will come eventually.  With no enforcement, Intuit reduces the value of their own offerings.  Rather, I see the eventual enforcement of the program participation and rules as being a key to Intuit’s success with the program long term.  And, there’s too much money at stake and far too many folks still – uh – leveraging licensing (leveraging is a much nicer way to say “stealing”, don’t you think?).

So, with the costs and complexities of the commercial program being a barrier to professional service firms (either with participating in the program, or purchasing through a program participant), and with the limitations on the self-host program not meeting the needs of the larger firms… how is the large firm going to address the needs of those QuickBooks-using clients?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the perfect answer here.  I wish I did, but I’m not making the rules, Intuit is.  I think it’s important to play by the rules, even if you have to find a way to make them work for your business.  Sometimes that’s where the real innovation comes in.

So – rather than trying to find a way to make the current business model fit into the box that Intuit has built, maybe it’s time to take a slightly different approach – one that’s out of the box.  After all, with the popularity of the cloud and all the good reasons why businesses should “focus on their core competencies and outsource those that are non-core”, it may be time to rethink your strategy when positioning those QuickBooks-using clients.  Maybe being the IT and accounting service provider is not the right answer.  Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to separate the two, and simply let the client make the choice.  Electing to not use the suggested platform of the firm could result in higher accounting fees or rates..why not?  You lose efficiency when you work with clients who demand offline, paper, manual interaction.  Maybe the fees should reflect that reality.  You’re giving the client the choice, right?  It seems that they will end up paying one way or the other… either paying for the hosting service which enables an efficient working relationship with the accountant, or paying higher fees because of the extra time and effort it takes to get, manage, and do the work.

Consider, for example, why the client uses your services.  Accounting is not their core competency, and it’s not what their business is about – but it’s necessary.  So, they outsource that part of their work to a professional.  This allows the business owner to focus on their business, and not on bookkeeping and/or accounting.  The same philosophy is true with respect to technology.  Most businesses aren’t in the IT business, so the consideration to outsource IT management and services isn’t really a stretch.  In fact, most businesses outsource their IT management now by using outside computer technicians.  It’s just that they only outsource the management, and not the entire IT problem (e.g., desktops, servers, etc.).

What does outsourced IT have to do with a large firm hosting QuickBooks?  Well, when it comes to figuring out how to approach the problem, we should consider all the parts and IT management is certainly a big part of what hosting offers to a business, and what the hosting solution would be providing to your clients.  In so many cases, I see the professional firm approach the hosting service only in terms of direct costs – cost to subscribe the user, cost of software, etc.  The firm is trying to justify in their own minds paying the cost of the hosting service so that the client will come on board… and then the firm would earn their profits by billing for the work.  The unfortunate result in this model is that the client doesn’t really see the direct cost of, or value of, the hosting solution, and views it as simply a means of working with the accounting professional and making his life easier.

The alternative approach, which is the approach that allows the accounting professional to keep an arms length relationship with the hosting service and, therefore, the cost of the service, is for the client to be the subscriber and pay their own bill for hosting.  When the client gets their service directly from the provider, then they may be better positioned to explore and benefit from the other services the provider can offer – including hosting for other critical business applications.  This is often where a QuickBooks-only or self-host service begins to fail the subscriber,  by not being able to support other applications or processes critical to the business.  And, if the service doesn’t work for the client business, they won’t use it.  If you try to make a client use a service that doesn’t work for them, then you’ll likely lose the client.

I believe it’s important for the client to know that the technology model supports doing business in a more efficient and effective manner, and that the technology and their accounting are not the same thing. The accounting firm does important work for the business, and the hosting solution helps them do it better.  Certainly, firms see a lot of improvements in their internal efficiency, as well as improvements in client service, when they apply the correct technology to solve certain business problems.  The client will see that, as well, if you let them.

QBC

Running QuickBooks in the Cloud: Get Information from those who know

Read the article “So You Think You Want to Host QuickBooks.  Really? Seriously?“  subtitle: Biting off more than you can chew

Read more about reselling accounting versus reselling technology, because we know you’re wondering about this stuff, too.