Monday, October 19, 2009

Accounting professionals as tech advisers

I've seen a couple good articles recently on the role of accounting professionals as technology advisers. I thought they made some very good points and wanted to highlight some things here. First off, it's very true that small businesses look to their bookkeeper or CPA for help with technology issues. If you're a certified Quickbooks Advisor you should be able to fix everything else right? By being able to fix those other issues you establish "stickiness" with your client. Your value as a trusted advisor simply goes up. So what do you need to be aware of to help provide the best technological advice to your client? I'm going to highlight a few big trends right now so that you can be an expert for your client.

1. Cloud Computing - Everyone's talking about moving to the Cloud even the Federal Government. Your Mom and Pop business however will have no idea what the Cloud is. So how do you explain it? In one sentence, your information lives on these servers over there and you can access them from everywhere. Simply put, it's not scary and it saves you money.
2. Security - This one goes hand in hand with Cloud Computing. The classic question, how do I know my e-mail, files, information et cetera is safe? You're going to confuse them when you say it's in a SAS 70 Type ii certified server. What's more dangerous to them are the links they click from phishing e-mails. Their data is safe on a SAS 70 particularly because it's not being moved from place to place on a CD or thumb drive. Make sure you warn them of the danger of phishing scams that come in the form of e-mails, text messages et cetera. If there's a link that you don't trust, don't click it.
3. Social Media - Get 'em signed up and get their brand out there. The least that it does it make you think of your business in a new dimension. The worst, you find it boring and don't want to do it anymore. Trying out Social Media won't hurt anyone.
4. Saas, PaaS and are two big acronyms floating around right now. What do they mean? SaaS - Software As A Service. It means software available for use online, that's it. It's used by the end user to access their software/data. PaaS - Platform As A Service - bundle up a bunch of SaaS apps on a platform and you've got you're PaaS. Expect some SaaS questions not so many PaaS questions.
5. Google - Know thy google information. Suggest it as a search engine. Seriously, some people still use what I'll call "unsophisticated" search engines. What's in a search engine? The algorithm.

I do realize that these are the very bare bone basics of what you need to know. Please feel free to comment below and help fill this post in a little more. I'm curious what clients are asking for of accounting professionals.

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