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Industry Insights – A Conversation with Daniel Hood

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:45:00 +0000

Daniel Hood

This week’s Industry Insight’s conversation is with Daniel Hood from Accounting Today. Daniel is the current editor-in-chief and also worked as managing editor of Accounting Today for 15 years. A graduate of Georgetown University, he has also served as a business editor for the New York Daily News, and as a production editor for The Wall Street Journal Europe. He is the author of five novels and a guidebook to New York City.

We sat down with Daniel to discuss the intersection of cloud computing and the accounting industry.

INTACCT: What are the main issues that accountants have today with IT?

HOOD: I’d say it's keeping up with the pace of change. Around 20% of accounting firms are all over new technology, but a big swath has a wait and see attitude. As partners age, they get into leadership roles and tend to be cautious on spending. They also may not want to learn a new technology if they are going to retire in five years. A lot of these systems are a serious investment. It requires months of training and a lot of effort to put in a new system for time and billing, tax preparation or practice management.

INTACCT: Is the cloud changing the pace of adoption of new technology?

HOOD: The cloud in all of its different forms has been around for about 10 years, but it has taken a very long time for accounting firms to adopt it. They've had concerns around the security of client data, and today they're worried about complying with new legislation and the heightened awareness around fraud and identity theft. Yet most often, the data will be ten times safer with the cloud vendor than internally. A lot of this is misplaced concern. Accountants are starting to get beyond the resistance because they’re seeing all the benefits. The software is easy-to-use, update and install, and they don't need on-staff IT people to run it. They can also serve their clients better because cloud computing is enabling them to discover and offer new services.

INTACCT: So running their systems in the cloud is also generating new revenue streams?

HOOD: If all of your clients’ data is in a portable format—that is protected, of course – and can be manipulated with business intelligance tools, your firm can analyze that data and uncover information to help clients. For instance, you can come back and say ‘Hey we found these six ways that you can save money or improve your processes.’ The firm can go beyond basic accounting to offering more strategic services to help clients make money or save money. The cloud is leveling the playing field for smaller accounting firms.

INTACCT: Are accounting firms encouraging their clients to move to the cloud?

HOOD: This is starting to happen, yes. The benefits to clients are similar but it's also good for the accountants, because it enables better workflow and data sharing. If client data is in the cloud, it’s real-time and you don’t have to worry about reconciliation and accuracy. So everyone’s working on the same set of data which ultimately can save the client some money by cutting down on hourly charges. Then, the accountant has more time to think about the client’s business instead of focusing on the grunt work of closing the books and basic compliance services.

INTACCT: Are an increasing number of CPA firms reselling cloud financials too?

HOOD: Yes, and midsize firms in particular are offering these services because it's easier for them to set up a new line of business compared with a smaller firm. In some cases, the firm doesn't even have to sell it – but may just give clients information about what's out there. If a company trusts its accounting firm and likes them, they are receiving an independent opinion and higher level of credibility in that software recommendation. Practically speaking, if an accounting firm recommends the software, they usually know how to work with it and can offer an extra set of help to the client, if needed.

INTACCT: What are a few considerations you would look at when selecting cloud-based financials?

HOOD: There's always the basic due diligence around the level of security the vendor has, what kind of service level agreements they offer, and reliability. You also want to make sure you have control of the data, so if your company ends up leaving the vendor or the vendor is acquired, your data is portable during any kind of transition.

INTACCT: Now for a couple fun questions…

If you could have dinner with any celebrity (business, sports, politics or
entertainment) who would it be?
HOOD: Trey Parker and Matt Stone of “South Park.”

What is the last movie/production you saw?
HOOD: Does the local production of High School Musical with my 10-year-old
niece in it count? Because it was pretty good.

What is your favorite restaurant, anywhere?
HOOD: Fraunces Tavern, downtown Manhattan, for a plate of oysters and a
pint of Porterhouse Red.

Do you have interesting industry insights you’d like to share? Do you know someone that we should interview? Send your suggestions for consideration.

Previous Industry Insights Conversations:
May 9 – Jeff Kaplan
May 2 – Mike Vizard

Channel Momentum… Accelerating the Cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Taylor Macdonald) — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:59:00 +0000

Intacct continues to grow at a rapid pace – we grew new business last quarter by nearly 70% over the same period a year ago. Our growth rate is consistently faster than our competition because we continue to hit on all cylinders – from our direct sales efforts, to our business process outsourcing efforts with CPA’s and the AICPA endorsement, and our rapidly expanding business partner channel.

Over the last two years Intacct has made a considerable investment in our channel partners and the overall Intacct channel program. In 2011, we saw a six-fold increase in new business from channel partners over the same period in 2010 – and that growth continues this year. What is the secret behind the success of the Intacct channel partners? It starts with the partners themselves.

Based on years of experience, we’ve created a set of criteria that help us determine which partners will be successful. We only recruit those firms that meet our criteria, ensuring they are the right size, conduct business in an ethical manner, have the proper industry experience, and can offer the necessary commitment to Intacct and our high levels of customer satisfaction. Unlike other vendors who sign up anyone who can fog a mirror and pay the partner fee, Intacct turns down five partners for every one we sign up – including many top firms who simply don’t meet our standards.

In Bob Scott’s recently released 2012 Top 100 VARs, Intacct had 19 partners on the list. This was by far the most of any cloud computing vendor – equaling the total of the next three cloud vendors (NetSuite, SAP, and Acumatica) combined! This reflects our focus on signing up fewer and stronger partners, rather than just signing up any partner. We expect that we will have over 25 firms from this list as Intacct partners within the next 90 days, as the best partners continue to flock to Intacct.

Why are Top Partners Signing Up with Intacct?
Simple – industry leading products, our channel 3.0 philosophy, and our unwavering commitment to our partner’s success. It is also word of mouth within the partner community. Our current partners are seeing a lot of success and they are back to growing their business, as opposed to just supporting existing clients on old, on-premises systems.

But it’s not just the amount of success our partners are having, it is also the speed with which they can achieve that success. Our new partners are hitting the ground running – with many partners closing their first sale in 60 days from completing our product training. We have also seen the overall time to first and second sale continue to decline as our partner ramp quickly with the program.

In my next blog post I will explain a little more about our Channel 3.0 philosophy and why it drives the best partners to Intacct and delivers added benefits to our joint clients. I’m also working on a post that will highlight some of the successes the customers of our partners are achieving with Intacct. be sure to subscribe to the blog to follow along.

Want to discuss this topic? Connect with me on Twitter (@taylormacd). You can also follow Intacct on various social media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Image: 123RF Stock Photos

Industry Insights – A Conversation with Jeff Kaplan

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:10:00 +0000

Jeff Kaplan

Welcome to the second installment of our Industry Insights blog series. We’re inviting some of the top minds from across the cloud computing, financial applications, and SMB markets to sit down with Intacct and share some of their insights on a variety of topics.

This week our conversation is with Jeff Kaplan, the managing director of THINKstrategies, a strategic consulting firm focused on helping clients capitalize on the migration of the technology industry from a product-centric to a services-driven business model. Jeff is also the founder of the Cloud Computing Showplace, the largest online directory of Cloud-based solutions. As a former industry analyst at IDC, Dataquest, and META Group, Jeff is widely considered a top thought leader in strategies for SaaS, Cloud and Managed Services.

INTACCT: What are the greatest challenges for companies and IT departments when transitioning to using cloud-based systems?

KAPLAN: It starts with fear. Whenever an organization is considering a third-party service, especially a Web service, there are concerns about reliability, security, and privacy and how well they can manage the service to meet their needs and requirements. What we're seeing now is a greater receptiveness among corporate users who have been exposed to the ease of use with consumer applications. They're looking for the same level of accessibility in business apps. IT has a responsibility to work with their corporate end-users and executives to safeguard their systems, software, and data.

INTACCT: How have companies dealt with accessibility issues around cloud solutions?

KAPLAN: Despite the fact that Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce have experienced some service disruptions, I haven't seen any reports of significant legal actions against those providers. This may be related to how the contracts are written, but it's also because the cloud providers have been able to outperform many, if not most, internal IT organizations. While no one likes to have their service disrupted and they don't want to have it happen regularly, if the vendor is keeping them notified of the status of the problem and when it will be fixed, customers can tolerate occasional disruptions. Fortunately, outages haven’t proven to be a pattern that has created a negative impression of the cloud. [See details on Intacct’s security, performance, and availability.]

INTACCT: Cloud-based systems have delivered a lot of benefits to companies of many sizes and industries. How would you rate the top three?

KAPLAN: The top benefits are first of all, greater reliability, functionality, and value. Secondly, these systems are able to deliver value more quickly and economically while mitigating the risk of adopting business apps. Third, SaaS applications are becoming increasingly configurable in a way that can meet the needs of specific users and give companies a competitive advantage. There has been a myth that SaaS is one size fits all, but users can now configure many of these apps to support their complex requirements.

INTACCT: How is cloud computing changing the concept of technological innovation inside companies?
KAPLAN: Innovation now is less about the technology itself and more about the functionality being delivered. The greatest innovation in cloud-based applications is making them more social and mobile with greater analytics capabilities. IT can add value in educating users about the potential of the cloud, how it can both support the needs of the business and how it can change operations to be more efficient and collaborative.

INTACCT: Do you have any thoughts on the evolution of the cloud market?

KAPLAN: Aside from the inevitable consolidation that is already happening, I'm also seeing the redefinition of the channel. The cloud is not going to kill the channel as some have feared, but will change the competitive landscape. The traditional resellers and integrators will need to become more business oriented and more agile. It used to be that these firms could generate 5 to 10 times the cost of the original software license in services fees. But customers aren’t going to accept that now. They want and need faster and cheaper deployments. These changing dynamics mean that whole new channels are emerging. Accounting firms and insurance companies, for instance, are beginning to sell SaaS applications to their clients.

If you want to connect with Jeff Kaplan, you can find him on Twitter and follow his THINKstrategies blog.

Do you have interesting industry insights you’d like to share? Do you know someone that we should interview? Send your suggestions for consideration.

Previous Industry Insights Conversations:
May 2 – Mike Vizard

Industry Insights – A Conversation with Mike Vizard

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Wed, 02 May 2012 17:33:00 +0000

Mike Vizard

Today we are kicking off a new series on the Intacct blog called Industry Insights. We’re inviting some of the top minds from across the cloud computing, financial applications, and SMB markets to sit down with Intacct and share some of their insights on a variety of topics. On a weekly basis (or thereabouts) we’ll be talking with top analysts, bloggers, industry practitioners, and other influencers to discuss the trends they are seeing in the industry.

Our conversation this week is with Mike Vizard, a blogger for IT Business Edge. Mike has been covering enterprise IT issues for 25 years as an editor and columnist for publications such as InfoWorld, eWeek, Baseline, CRN, Computerworld and Digital Review. We spoke with Mike to get his take on the progression of companies moving toward cloud-based financials.

INTACCT: Do you think it matters that vendors are using the terms “Cloud” and “SaaS” interchangeably?

VIZARD: Technically, cloud computing refers to a style of computing that’s about self-service and elasticity, while SaaS is really the application layer—a subset of the cloud. All business people really care about is that cloud implies external. The IT people care about the architectures and all of the variations and they can try and explain that it’s a single tenant or a multi-tenant decision. The businessperson will just look at them and say: “That’s nice.”

INTACCT: What should a company consider when evaluating a cloud-based financial system?

VIZARD: The thing I’d worry about is what if the organization already has ERP or other legacy financial systems in place. For larger enterprises, they might be thinking about putting some of their financial apps in the cloud because they're easier to use, but ultimately they're going to create duplicate data sets that then have to be rationalized. But if you are a small or midsize business, and just scaling up on IT, the decision criteria are much different. Then it’s about which systems are most accessible and usable and which have the best analytic capabilities. Any system can collect data, but the ability to visualize the data with insights is really valuable.

INTACCT: How hard is it to move your legacy data to the cloud?

VIZARD: People will tell you they have automated tools to do that but the tools vary a lot in quality. The process is not fun and frankly it adds overhead. You need to counter that with a boatload of application value. Many legacy, on-premises applications are a chore to use. If the cloud software supports mobility and is more agile and more usable across the board, then the data transfer headaches are pretty small in comparison.

INTACCT: Saving money has been a big motivator for companies going to the cloud over the past few years. Are other benefits rising to the top today?

VIZARD: I never really bought into the cost savings because it all depends on the number of users. If you are a large company with tons of users, running the software internally is possibly going to be cheaper. But the whole point of the Cloud is doing things faster and being able to move on a dime, instead of waiting for IT to catch up on their projects. No IT department is ever big enough these days, so giving people the ability to easily access the data that they need, when and how they want it, is what's most valuable.

INTACCT: How much are companies worried these days about enterprise risk and security when it comes to the cloud?

VIZARD: There is still concern, yet it can be a red herring that the IT person throws out because they don't want to lose control of the application. I think the risks are more perception than reality. IT people have been trained to fight for ownership of applications, so if their workload goes to SaaS, it's cutting into the psychological heart of IT. The role of IT is changing to be more about brokering services, and enlightened IT thinks about the delivery of services instead of the management of platforms. On the business side, there are finance guys who believe that owning the application is critical to compliance. But you've got to look at a particular application and determine if there is any real difference in what you would do managing it internally versus what the vendor would do? If not, then there's really no point to keeping it inside.

INTACCT: Applications such as CRM and HR have moved pretty quickly to the cloud. Can we expect the same rapid growth curve for financials over time?

VIZARD: It has taken longer to put finances in the cloud because of the sensitivity around the data. Companies are often worried about secrets or doing anything that could impact stock value. Usually, the finance department has more of a bias toward owning the application but the benefit of going to the cloud is that there are no longer so many arguments about which financial numbers are correct. The data is right there on the Web, for those who have rights to access it. I would advise that a CFO take the financial applications and integrate them together with systems like CRM and supply-chain, because it's going to give them real visibility across the business. There are political reasons why this isn't happening and technically it's not always easy, but that end to end integration helps companies see the truth. They can know for sure whether they have enough inventory right now to fill that big order or conversely, that there is enough demand for what they have in the pipeline.

INTACCT: We’d like to end this with a little glimpse into you on a more personal level. Here are three fun questions…

  What is the last book you read?
  VIZARD: Hearts Touched by Fire: Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War

  What has been your favorite vacation destination?
  VIZARD: Ireland

  If you could start over, what would you do for a living?
  VIZARD: I would do the same thing – no regrets.

If you would like to connect with Mike Vizard, you can follow him on Twitter and read his IT Unmasked blog at IT Business Edge.

Do you have interesting industry insights you’d like to share? Do you know someone that we should interview? Send your suggestions for consideration.

The Best Cloud Accounting Software for Small Business

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Tue, 01 May 2012 17:38:00 +0000

For many small businesses, QuickBooks, Peachtree, and other entry-level financial applications offer an easy and affordable first step in managing their business. However, as these companies begin to grow – reaching 20 to 100 employees – spreadsheets and entry-level accounting programs are no longer acceptable. These growing small businesses need a true corporate-caliber financial management and accounting system that centralizes data, automates financial processes, eliminates dependence on spreadsheets, promotes team collaboration, and streamlines consolidations and closing the books.

The May 2012 issue of CPA Practice Advisor features a nice review of the top cloud accounting software for small businesses. The article notes that this is a rapidly growing segment of the business management tools market and that real-time collaboration between client and accountant, as well as better importing tools, have made these solutions a compelling alternative to traditional, locally-installed applications.

The CPA Practice Advisor article also includes a review of Intacct, where we received the top score of 5-Stars! This was the fourth straight year that Intacct was the top rated system in the CPA Practice Advisor review and something we are very proud of. There is a lot of work that goes into making a system that is approachable for small businesses and still offers the deep functionality these businesses require as they grow to having several hundred or even thousands of employees.

In the product review, CPA Practice Advisor notes:

“Intacct is a full-featured business management solution for small and mid-sized businesses, and is clearly the most capable product included in this review. The company’s successful, exclusive relationship with the AICPA and CPA2Biz has resulted in enhancements which are focused on key pain points for accounting professionals, as well as a number of relationships with large accounting firms.”

CPA Practice Advisor also highlighted several key strengths of Intacct in its review:

Has a strong ecosystem of third party solutions to meet most industry requirements
Customizable dashboards are very impressive, and provide an alternative to standard reports
Full integration between customer relationship management and payroll
Supports any number of users, with strong user access control tools
Relationship with AICPA/CPA2Biz has yielded integrations with other solutions

[You can read the full review of Intacct from the May issue of CPA Practice Advisor at http://bit.ly/Jimljm.]

When Is It Time to Move to a New Financial System?
Are you starting to outgrow an entry-level accounting system and trying to determine if now is the time to make the switch from to a more robust cloud-based financial system? The video below offers several Intacct customers and partners discussing when it's time for a new financial management system...

Can't view the video? Watch it on YouTube at http://youtu.be/8rsto0DRDS8.

Intacct can help you gain real-time financial and operational visibility throughout your business. If you want to see Intacct in action, watch a self-guided tour or register for one of our upcoming live web Product Tours here: http://bit.ly/Iv9EEs.

Have you connected with Intacct on our Social Media channels? Be sure to visit us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Here's to All the (Jelly) Bean Counters

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 18:35:00 +0000

In addition to being Earth Day, today is also National Jelly Bean Day. Nothing like combining two things I love... Earth and jelly beans! This got me to thinking about the term "bean counters" which is often used as a slang, and sometime derogatory, term for accounting and finance professionals. At Intacct, we often talk about using cloud financial applications to help finance teams move from being transaction oriented (some could say... bean counters) to more of a strategic advisor.

But where did the term "bean counter" come from? Well, after an exhaustive -- OK, very quick -- search on Google, I came across a couple sites that attempted to answer that question.

The first item I came across was a CFO Magazine article from 2007 that tracked the origin through history. Their conclusion: it relates back to Greek politics and how beans were used in selecting the Athenian Assembly. You can read the full article here: http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/10007782.

Then there is the Phrase Finder site. They track several iterations of the term "bean counter" and struggle to get an clear answers. Read their take here: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/bean-counter.html. Brainz states the origin only goes back to the 1970's - http://brainz.org/what-bean-counter/.

Oh well... I guess we may never know the true origin of the term.

If you want to take the first step toward moving from being just a "bean counter" to becoming a strategic advisor, take a closer look at Intacct. We can help you build a world-class finance organization. Want to learn more... register for one of our informational webinars or Intacct Product Tours scheduled for this coming week:

Upcoming Informational Webinars:

Golden Nuggets of Revenue Management

Wednesday, April 25, 2012 10:00AM PDT

Nonprofit Compliance: Winning Strategies for a Successful Audit

Wednesday, April 25, 2012 11:00AM PDT

Improving the Financial Success of Your Project-based Business

Thursday, April 26, 2012 11:00AM PDT

The Future is All Cloud for World-Class Finance Organizations

Thursday, April 26, 2012 1:00PM PDT

Upcoming Product Tours:

Intacct Product Tour for Organizations Growing Beyond QuickBooks

Tuesday, April 24, 2012 10:00AM PDT

Intacct Product Tour

Wednesday, April 25, 2012 1:00PM PDT

Intacct Product Tour for Nonprofits

Thursday, April 26, 2012 10:00AM PDT

Intacct Product Tour

Friday, April 27, 2012 10:00AM PDT

Intacct Product Tour for Software Companies

Friday, April 27, 2012 11:00AM PDT

To stay up to date with Intacct, be sure to connect with us on our Social Media channels: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Helping Nonprofits Reduce Costs and Improve Financial Visibility

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 23:12:00 +0000

Click to Enlarge

Cloud financial applications have become increasingly popular with nonprofit organizations. From charities, trade/membership associations, and cultural institutions to charter schools and faith-based organizations, nonprofits are moving their financial applications to the cloud to gain better control over their finances, improve operations, increase transparency and minimize costs.

Cloud computing-based financial applications have two central benefits that are particularly attractive to nonprofits. First, the entire organization can access the financial system from anywhere, at any time of day or night. Second, cloud-based applications are vastly more cost effective than trying to operate and manage their own financial management and fund accounting software.
With cloud financial applications, these organizations do not incur a large upfront cash or CAPEX charges since they don’t need to buy software, hardware, or other infrastructure to deploy the system. Plus, there is no ongoing maintenance of the software for an IT team, allowing the organization to focus their financial and human resources on something more strategic to their mission than managing financial software.

Intacct works with all types of nonprofit organizations to help them achieve the outstanding benefits available with cloud financials. Take for example, SEMI, the global industry association serving the nano- and micro-electronic manufacturing supply chains. SEMI (www.semi.org) switched from Lawson, an on-premises financial solution, to Intacct as a way to slash the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their financial applications.

Jim Jackman, corporate controller at SEMI, noted: “Intacct offered the best mix of functionality and quickly eliminated the need for us to manage and maintain any hardware or software going forward. Intacct helps reduce the TCO of our financial system by at least 50 percent on an annual basis.” Could your organization benefit from that type of savings?

Of course, costs savings are just the tip of the iceberg. Cloud financial systems like Intacct also offer nonprofits many other key benefits around improving financial operations. For example, Intacct helps nonprofits to gain real-time operational and financial visibility, deliver robust financial and regulatory reporting, achieve world-class stewardship of funds, accelerate billing and collections, and automate revenue management.

Just look at Canyon Ridge Christian Church (www.canyonridge.org), a mega-church that switched from QuickBooks to Intacct in 2011. We spoke with Gay Lynn Martin, the finance director for Canyon Ridge, at our recent customer conference. You can watch a short video on our YouTube Channel with Gay Lynn discussing the move to Intacct and the benefits they've seen.

Then there are the comments of James Linday, the CFO of the Great Books Foundation: "Intacct helps us save both time and money through automated and streamlined processes; and we can now devote those resources to expanding the reach and success of the Great Books Foundation." Download the full Great Books Foundation case study here.

It is testimonials and cloud computing success stories like those that are encouraging an increasing number of nonprofit organizations select Intacct for cloud financial management. Some of the organizations that have recently selected or gone live on Intacct, include: Bridges Community Church (www.bridgescc.org), California Southern Baptist Convention (www.csbc.com), Conrad N. Hilton Foundation (www.hiltonfoundation.org), Fellowship Bible Church (www.fellowshipnashville.org), Fellowship Church (www.fellowshipchurch.com), Fisher House Foundation (www.fisherhouse.org), IslandWood (www.islandwood.org), Lake Monticello Owners’ Association (www.lmoa.org), National Council on Crime & Delinquency (www.nccd-crc.org), NECCO (www.necco.org), Organ Donation & Transplantation Alliance (www.organdonationalliance.org), UAB Educational Foundation(www.uab.edu/uabef), White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood (www.whiteribbonalliance.org), Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (www.wedc.org), and Women’s World Banking (www.swwb.org).

LEARN MORE...

If you are a nonprofit and want to get a closer look at Intacct, be sure to check out our upcoming 45-minute product tour for nonprofits on April 10. Intacct and the NonProfitTimes are also putting on a webinar April 19, at 11am PT, focused on how to improve financial reporting in the cloud. You can register for that free event here. Finally, there are also two great archived webinars for nonprofit organizations I would recommend:

Association Best Practices in 2012: Cloud Computing - learn more about the value of Intacct and Avectra
Cloud Financials Come of Age for Nonprofits - featuring the CFO of TechAmerica

Be sure to follow Intacct on our social media channels: Facebook and Twitter. You can also follow me on Twitter: @Intacct_Peter.

Pricing Cloud Accounting Services

noreply@blogger.com (Amy Vetter) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 22:30:00 +0000

So, the evolution has arrived, and more and more accountants are moving to the cloud. It is the topic of discussion at conferences, blogs, periodicals and amongst your peers. But, how would you price a cloud engagement with your client accounting services clients? This among other IT Issues is a puzzle to many accounting firm owners to figure out. So, in this article, I am going to attempt to give you some insight to help you with applying this to your own firm and provide a better understanding of the pricing model to employ in this new frontier of cloud accounting.

The AICPA just issued their 2012 Top Technology Initiatives survey (http://www.aicpa.org/INTERESTAREAS/INFORMATIONTECHNOLOGY/RESOURCES/TOPTECHNOLOGYINITIATIVES/Pages/2012TTI.aspx). The survey found that the top technology priorities for firms are: securing the IT environment, managing & retaining data, managing risk & compliance, ensuring privacy and leveraging emerging technologies. It also found that the technology initiatives considered having the most impact are information security, remote access, control & use of mobile devices, business process improvement with technology & data retention policies & structure.

The cost of monitoring all of the regulation, security within your firm, privacy issues and what is accessible on a mobile device, just to name a few, is a large overhead cost that firms are having to bare. Most likely paying outside experts to help them make sure they are in compliance due to the large amount of regulation in this area. It is much to complex to figure out on your own unless you already have an IT background and stay up to date on the ever-changing and increasing regulation and opportunities to be compromised. The efficiency of being in the cloud helps to spread a small portion of the costs you would incur if you did it yourself to manageable costs over all of your client engagements. You pay for what you use instead of having the upfront overhead cost that needs to be covered by your engagements before you even start becoming profitable. Your cloud providers incur the cost of maintaining all the security and privacy regulations and auditing the system. So when pricing your services in a cloud environment, you have a real opportunity to incorporate your cloud costs into a value-billing system with your clients to gain profitability as you become more efficient with each engagement.

Value billing or fixed fee billing was something I used to stay away from before the cloud. Reason being, in an on premise environment where I did not control the accounting or the software selection of the client, I couldn’t be sure of the work I was going to be doing each month. The client led the engagement instead of me being able to control the quality of the accounting system and the deliverables it could create. Additionally, the collaboration issue was an expense I couldn’t predict either. Each client had their own setup – different remote access solutions & back up procedures that made it hard to predict how much non-billable time I was going to incur just to be able to do the work or return it to the client. All of these non-value tasks add up and create those hidden costs that draw down profitability.
In a cloud environment, the costs are face value. The software and hardware expenses, IT security and privacy audits, real-time client collaboration, financial & operational reporting, customer support and all other accountant program benefits is all inclusive in the price you pay. Therefore value billing is possible and not a science anymore. So for example, if you have 20 clients you bill monthly accounting services, and the invoice is always variable each month with hourly rates offering little opportunity to be come more profitable as you become more efficient, this cloud environment will allow you to value bill. When moving to this model you can take advantage of the efficiencies you create to drive your realization higher and make the bill more predictable for your client, which makes it a win-win for both parties!

Going back to this example, you may have the following scenario with 20 clients on your chosen cloud platforms

Cost Structure:

Let’s estimate the annual program fees for your Firm from all of your cloud vendors is $2,500. The Overhead cost per month for these program fees would be approx. $208/month spread across your 20 outsourced accounting clients.
The monthly per client fee to utilize the system including all of your cloud vendors may be approx. $100/month/client.
If you have 20 clients on the cloud platforms of your choice, the monthly cost for you to pass through to your client would be (20 * $100/mo) $2,000 + the monthly total of the program fees of ($2,500/12) $208 = $2,208.

Profit Opportunity:

In this example, the client services you provide for your 20 clients are Bookkeeping (i.e. entering & paying bills, creating customer invoices, bank reconciliations, etc) and/or Controllership (i.e. monthly financial statement preparation & analysis, cash flow forecasting, business planning & budgeting, etc) for an average of $1,500/mo/client. The total revenue for the accounting services you would bring in each month would be approximately $30,000.
Assuming that you spend approximately $60,000/yr on staff to perform the work for these 20 clients, the monthly labor cost would be $2,500.
Your profit before any other firm overhead costs for 20 clients on a cloud platform would be:

Client Revenue @20 clients/month (avg $1,500/client): $30,000
Cloud Platform all inclusive costs/month ($2,208 + $2,500): $ 4,708
Monthly Profit Margin on 20 clients/month: $23,292
Profit Margin Percentage: 84%

Taking this same example and spreading it over your real client base, you can see the opportunity to change the way you work with your clients and become more profitable at the same time. It is also a large request that I am sure you hear from your clients that they appreciate more predictable billing. Additionally, when moving your practice to the cloud, you can have peace of mind that your cloud vendors are doing the necessary IT security processes and procedures that you would not be able to keep up with on your own. Get involved in the discussion on the social media sites and take the time to learn more this upcoming conference season to assess whether you can incorporate some of these changes into your practice this coming year!

Gain the Power to See Your Business in New Ways

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:08:00 +0000

When you talk to Intacct customers as much as I do, you start to pick up on several recurring themes. One of things I hear all the time from our customers is how Intacct’s reporting and dashboard capabilities truly help them see their business in ways that weren’t possible with their previous financial system. They consider this new found financial and business visibility as a key to transforming their finance organization from simply logging the numbers to becoming a strategic business resource.

With Intacct these companies can unlock the power of their business data to gain faster time to insight and improve performance across all of their business units. For small and medium sized businesses, having this level of business intelligence used to be out of reach, requiring an expensive stand-alone tool or complicated and unwieldy Excel spreadsheets that didn’t tie back into the financial system.

If you are struggling with manually intensive and reactive tactics and want to move to rich planning scenarios, real-time reporting, and detailed analyses – from a “single source of truth” that all stakeholders can access simultaneously – maybe it is time you took a closer look at Intacct.

Here is what some Intacct customers and partners had to say about Intacct’s ability to provide them with extreme financial visibility…

Can’t view the video? Click here to watch it on YouTube: http://youtu.be/9rot5h2Slmg

Now is the time to leverage Intacct’s powerful financial reporting and analysis capabilities to help build, plan, define, and measure your business metrics and performance. Provide your employees and executives with the business insights and visibility they need to make better decisions and drive performance. See your business in new ways!

You can learn more about Intacct’s reporting, dashboard, and analytics capabilities at http://us.intacct.com/our-products/reporting-and-dashboards. Also, be sure to check out our upcoming informational webinars and product tours.

Have you connected to Intacct on Facebook and Twitter?

The Need for Flexible Financial Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:24:00 +0000

Not all companies are created the same. Your business is unique. Shouldn’t your financial applications be flexible enough to adapt to your unique business needs? You shouldn't have to bend over backwards to adjust to your financial system.

As I noted in my post last week on the three Intacct customers that recently completed IPOs, having a flexible financial system is critical to success. When you’re making the change to a new accounting and financial management system, the last thing you want to do is box yourself in with rigid functions and inflexible processes that might require another system switch as your business changes down the road.

This is an area Intacct takes very seriously. We’ve designed our applications to provide exceptional flexibility and easily adapt to your business needs as you grow and evolve. For example:

Flexible workflows and business processes… A large portion of our new customers when switching to Intacct either don’t have many formalized processes in place, or those processes aren’t exactly based on industry best practices. When moving to Intacct, these companies typically see immediate process improvements with our pre-packaged templates, best-practice charts of accounts, dashboards, and a library of more than 150 pre-built financial reports. However, even more importantly, they can easily tailor, extend, and integrate Intacct to match their precise needs and processes. It is that combination of a prescriptive approach coupled with adaptability that makes Intacct so powerful.

Highly customizable system… Intacct puts you in complete control – enabling you to tailor workflows, data fields, transaction definitions, invoices, report formats, and much more to precisely match your business. You can control how the system handles specific accounting treatments. You can tailor reports and role-based dashboards to meet the needs of each user. If someone tries to tell you cloud-based systems can’t be customized, clearly they have never seen Intacct.

Extensive integration… Intacct takes advantage of open web services to enable you to connect Intacct to all your current and future business systems – both on-premises and on-demand. The Intacct Marketplace offers our customers a growing pool of integrated applications you can use to easily and cost-effectively assemble a broader, more valuable portfolio of best-in-class applications that work for your business. You can even build entirely new applications using our web-based development tools.

In the latest addition to the Intacct YouTube Channel, you can hear first-hand from several Intacct customers and partners about how they benefit from Intacct’s “infinite flexibility”…

Can't view the video? Watch it on YouTube at: http://youtu.be/BSDIW0H0NVg

Whether you're a fast growing single entity business, a medium-sized organization with multiple domestic locations and international clients, or a global public company, Intacct will serve your needs now and long into the future. And through the power of Intacct and cloud computing, you can do it all – around the world, in real-time.

Want to see Intacct’s flexibility first-hand? Attend one of our upcoming 45-minute Product Tours.

Be sure to connect with Intacct on our Social Media channels: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube!

The Outstanding ROI from Cloud Financials

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 23:11:00 +0000

Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a topic that comes up often when discussing the advantages of cloud financial applications. Moving your financials to a cloud-based system helps drive down TCO by eliminating the needs to purchase and maintain things like servers, databases, firewalls, and back-up/disaster recovery. But that is only half the picture... a cloud financial management system like Intacct also delivers outstanding return on investment (ROI) from things like process improvements and better financial visibility.

We've worked closely with Nucleus Research to develop tools to help companies quantify and capture the ROI they can expect to see by moving to Intacct. We've also had Nucleus interview several Intacct customers to profile the impressive results they have achieved. For example, Virtual Hold Technology saw payback in just eight months, with an average annual benefit of nearly $100,000. [Download the full case study.]

Intacct customers are more than happy to share their successes, take for example these recent quotes:

Gregg Leach, CFO at Able Engineering: “We grew 23% last year and expect to grow another 25% this year. Because of the efficiencies we’ve gained with Intacct, we fully believe we will be able to handle that growth without having to add any additional finance or accounting staff. Our labor savings in finance alone more than covers all of our costs for Intacct. We no longer look at our financial system as a necessary evil; it is now a strategic advantage for our organization.” [See more...]

Todd Vick, CFO at Superior Global: "We've gained a powerful financial system that will scale with us as we continue to grow. From better financial visibility to improved processes, switching to Intacct has really paid off for us. Intacct will pay for itself within the first year we've been using it." [See more...]

Dave Stalker, Co-Owner of Savory Sandwiches: "We are a multi-million dollar operation, with nine separate operating entities, and Intacct enables us to manage all of this using only about one and a half full time finance employees. Between streamlined financial processes, automated consolidation, enhanced real-time reporting, and improved decision-making from better management visibility, Intacct has been an outstanding investment for our business. The labor savings from automating financial consolidation, reporting, and inter-entity transactions saves me more annually than the cost of the entire Intacct system.” [See more...]

We also just added a new video to the Intacct YouTube Channel that focuses on the ROI from cloud financials. On the video, Intacct customers and partners discuss their results and the ways Intacct helps companies achieve impressive return for their investment.

Can't view the video? Click here to watch on YouTube: http://youtu.be/rUogeGhizU0

If you want to learn more about how cloud financial applications can help your company achieve outstanding ROI, I would encourage you to join us this Thursday at 10am PT for a free webinar we're hosting with Financial Executives International entitled: "The Strategic CFO – Using Cloud Computing to Change the Game for Finance." Intacct's CFO, Marc Linden, and Jaye Connolly, the CFO of PathCentral, will discuss how cloud financial management applications are transforming finance. Register here.

You can also click here to find out more about how Intacct delivers the rapid, relevant, measurable ROI that savvy financial professionals demand.

Be sure to connect with Intacct on Facebook and Twitter.

From QuickBooks to Successful IPO and Beyond with Intacct

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 20:31:00 +0000

We’ve discussed many times that Intacct is a great fit for emerging companies that have outgrown QuickBooks. What people sometimes forget is Intacct is equally well suited for mid-size and larger companies that have often established complex global operations. Whether you’re already a publicly traded firm or you’re headed toward an initial public offering, Intacct offers broad functionality that delivers visibility, automation, and compliance.

For example, in just the first two and half months of 2012, three Intacct customers have gone public – Guidewire in January, Brightcove in February, and now Demandware’s successful debut yesterday. Both Guidewire and Demandware initially graduated from QuickBooks to Intacct and have been on the system for more than four years – Guidewire is actually closing in on six years with Intacct. This is a great illustration of the flexibility and scalability of Intacct to grow with you as your business evolves.

When you’re making the change to a new accounting and financial management system, the last thing you want to do is box yourself in with rigid functions and inflexible processes that might require a system change again down the road? Intacct is designed to be the last financial system your business will need by delivering exceptional flexibility and easily adapting to your business – today and in the future.

Is your company aspiring to the lofty goal of going public? Learn more about how Intacct can help public companies, or those looking to go public.

On a related topic... Before you go public, you will likely expand to a point where you have some level of global operations. As I mentioned a few weeks back, even small and medium-sized organizations are adding foreign entities and transacting business in multiple currencies these days. We just launched a new video on the Intacct YouTube Channel that dives further into the value of Intacct for global businesses. In the video, also posted below, you'll hear results from finance executive at companies like ProKarma, which has 23 international offices and transacts business in three different currencies, and Mozilla, which is now operating in 20 countries and growing.

Can't view the video? Click here to watch it on YouTube: http://youtu.be/YhH49LlmD9k

Want to learn more about managing a global business with Intacct? Click here.

Have you connected with Intacct on our Social Media channels? Be sure to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter.

The Power of Multi-Dimensional Reporting for Finance

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:12:00 +0000

Transforming your finance organization from just logging the numbers to becoming a strategic business resource requires unlocking the power of your business data, to gain faster time to insight and improved performance across all of your business units. In the past, this typically required companies to export their financial data into a separate data warehouse and/or use an expensive business intelligence tools.

Intacct changes all that with our multi-dimensional general ledger. This flexible underlying architecture, with up to 13 separate dimensions, enables you to capture the most granular details of your business transactions, unleashing the power of your data for rich reporting and analysis. In addition, eight of those dimensions can be renamed or repurposed to whatever is most important for your business or industry – and you can do all this without cluttering your chart of accounts.

Intacct’s multi-scenario management capabilities also give you deep and actionable insights into your business performance, enabling you to move beyond accounting reporting to true business management. For example, you can monitor GAAP profitability by month, by region, by customer, or actual vs. budget gross margin by quarter, by product, by location, by project.

Intacct also streamlines the process of operational reporting. Users can also create reports that support any range of non-financial data such as rooms per hotel or tables per restaurant, allowing real-time operational reporting of room occupancy or tabletop management. You can easily report on earnings per share, or revenue per employee — the numbers you really need to manage your business, not just the numbers available from your financial system.

In the video below, several Intacct customers and partners discuss the value of using Intacct’s multiple dimensions and powerful reporting functionality:

Can't view the video? Click here to watch it on YouTube: http://youtu.be/zP8Goc0CHWM

Intacct provides the power to see your business in ways never before possible. As Todd Vick, the CFO at Superior Global Solutions, mentioned regarding their move from QuickBooks to Intacct: “The ability to track information along multiple dimensions in Intacct was very important. There was no way for us to get that level of reporting and analysis in QuickBooks. With Intacct we can easily capture, organize, and analyze both financial and operational data to manage the business more accurately and in much greater detail than ever before – which helps us make faster and better business decisions.”

You can learn more about transforming your finance department at one of our upcoming educational webinars or an Intacct Product Tour. Check out the full schedule here: http://us.intacct.com/about-us/events.

Be sure to connect with Intacct on our Social Media channels: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube!

Intacct Customer Spotlight: Mozilla

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:36:00 +0000

Today we launched an outstanding new Intacct "voice of the customer" video on our YouTube Channel featuring Jim Cook, the CFO of Mozilla (Twitter: @jcook123). Mozilla is an innovative company that showcases how Intacct can scale with you as you grow. As a start-up, Mozilla used QuickBooks but eventually outstretched its capabilities before moving to Intacct in the Fall of 2005. Nearly seven years later, Mozilla now operate in more than 20 countries, with five international subsidiaries and more than 600 employees. There is a good chance you're reading this post in their Firefox web browser, which is used by nearly half a billion people worldwide.

In the video, Jim Cook discusses Mozilla's selection of Intacct and what went into his decision. He talks about demystifying the cloud and how the security concerns are overblown. He also discusses some of the benefits and outstanding ROI Mozilla has seen from Intacct – from real-time financial visibility to streamlined processes – that have easily saved the company the equivalent of one full-time employee.

Click below to watch the video:

Can't see the video? Click here to watch it on YouTube: http://youtu.be/JeGrW_RLInQ

Is your company outgrowing the capabilities of QuickBooks? Are you looking for a robust cloud financial management system that offers infinite business visibility and unmatched ROI? Take a closer look at Intacct at one of our upcoming 45-minute Product Tours.

Be sure to connect with Intacct on our Social Media channels: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube!

How to Buy Cloud Financials: Step 5 – Go Live and Beyond

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 21:39:00 +0000

OK… we’ve come to the last part of our week-long series on best practices for “How to Buy Cloud Financials.” If you missed the previous posts, you can view theme here: Step #1, Step #2, Step #3 and Step #4. Today we will take a look at what to expect once you go live on Intacct.

Step 5 – Go Live and Beyond

After identifying the need to change, determining what you wanted in a new financial system, evaluating and choosing your new system, and configuring the new system… now comes the really fun part: going live on the system! At the end of the last step you trained your users and now you’ve fully tested the new system. You’re now ready to cut over to Intacct in production mode. For those who are switching from an old on-premises software solution, that means an end to wasted IT resources, maintenance headaches, and upgrade hassles. With Intacct, you’re always on the current release and we manage all the operations and system maintenance for you. Best of all, our regularly scheduled upgrades won’t “break” any configurations, customizations, or integration you’ve created – you get full backward compatibility.

Here’s the exciting thing – there’s plenty more Intacct can do beyond the boundaries of just finance. From integrations with your other business applications to custom-built extension on our platform to additional application modules, Intacct helps you deploy Intacct to more users across your organization to ensure all approved stakeholders have access to the information they need to be successful. You can make Intacct information available to people in sales, operations, purchasing, professional services, shipping, or other areas of the company – often times right in the other applications they use for their role. You can even extend the system to your external stakeholders.

Most Intacct customers deploy dashboards with key performance indicators throughout their organization, so that everyone from the CEO down has visibility into financial information they need. And you can restrict individual access to just the areas they focus on, so you know sensitive business data stays secure. The magic of cloud computing means that every approved stakeholder can access Intacct anytime, from anywhere they have an Internet connection, maximizing their productivity.

Another area where our customers see an instant improvement and a nice return on investment is in the area of electronic procurement and expense management processes. Intacct Time and Expense Management helps companies improve efficiencies and maintain tight control over expense management processes with flexible, multi-level approval work flows, paperless entry and tracking, and streamlined reimbursement. Gone are the days of cumbersome spreadsheets and duplicate data entry for your expense reimbursement process.

As your company grows, Intacct gives you the capacity to expand – without any scalability traps, do-overs, or restarts. Today, Intacct works with companies that have just a few employees all the way up to multinational public enterprises with several thousand employees spread across the globe. We have yet to have a customer outstretch our system, so you don’t really have to worry about whether the system will scale with you as your business grows.

Intacct also gives you the flexibility to adapt as your business changes. If you decide to switch to a new CRM system, a new e-commerce application, or a new payroll package, Intacct will adapt to work with it. Unlike jack of all trades, master of none "suite" vendors that force you to make compromises, when you choose Intacct you get access to our network of the world’s best applications and the most experienced business partners. It is all about offering unsurpassed flexibility to our clients.

Hear what several Intacct customers have to say about their experience with Intacct post-implementation:

Can view the video? Click here: http://youtu.be/o_QK_0PDAC8

Whether you need to add new product lines, new business units, new geographies, new acquisitions, go public or go global – Intacct can handle it all. That’s why Intacct is the last financial software your business will ever need!

I hope this series has been useful for you and I encourage you to take a closer look at Intacct and optimize your financials today. Want to see Intacct in action... watch a self-guided tour or register for one of our upcoming live web demonstrations here: http://bit.ly/Iv9EEs.

Be sure to connect with Intacct on our Social Media channels: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube!

How to Buy Cloud Financials: Step 4 – Deploy Your New System

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:27:00 +0000

Let’s move right along in our week-long series on best practices for “How to Buy Cloud Financials.” If you missed the previous posts, I encourage you to read Step #1, Step #2, and Step #3 before moving on with this post. Today we will switch gears and discuss what happens once you’ve made your selection. We’ll look at what it takes to get up and running on Intacct’s world-class, cloud-based financial applications in less than 60 days.

Step 4 – Deploy Your New System

First off… congratulations for selecting Intacct as your new cloud-based system! I knew all along you’d make the right choice. In the past, with on-premises solutions, the next step was something most finance and IT executives would dread – the implementation of a new system. Good news, that no longer has to be case.

When you choose Intacct as your financial management system, you can be up and running in as little as a few weeks. The nice part, compared with on-premises software, you can get started immediately – no need to deal with costly IT capital expenditures like server upgrades, etc. Best of all, with our FastTrack implementation program, you can take advantage of industry best practices and pre-built templates honed from thousands of implementations at companies just like yours.

To begin with, let’s kick off the project. You'll work with your implementation specialist to create a timeline for the project. The fastest Intacct implementations can happen in just a few weeks, while we typically complete more complex projects in less than a quarter. Obviously, deployment timing will vary based on your previous system and the complexity of your business.

As you get started, be sure to meet with your key internal stakeholders to ensure there’s agreement on your specific business processes. During implementation you have an opportunity to work with Intacct or one of our implementation partners to determine areas where the system can adapt to your current processes, but we can also work with you to improve your existing processes using industry best practices.

From there we’ll work to configure your company profile. We’ll help you select process work flows and data templates. This is where you can use the process analyses and user requirements you've already developed during the selection process to guide your choices. Intacct's flexible architecture puts you in the driver’s seat to tailor work flows, data fields, transaction definitions, invoices, report formats, and much more to precisely match your business or apply best practices.

We then move on to the task of uploading your existing data into templates for things like your chart of accounts, customers, vendors, projects, items, and general ledger balances. For reporting and analysis – a key component of any deployment – you can choose from more than 150 pre-built reports and dashboards based on the best practice implementations of your peers. You can also easily customize and create your own Intacct reports, dashboards and analyses using our powerful reporting and analysis tools. You can even combine financial and operational data in reports and dashboards, and leverage our multi-dimensional general ledger to report data using up to 13 dimensions – allowing you to compare an unlimited number of actual, budget, and forecast scenarios for incredible business insight.

Now comes an important item – train your stakeholders. I can’t stress enough the value of taking the time to help every participant become familiar and comfortable with your new financial applications. Intacct and our partners offer a variety of classes to fit every learning style and schedule – whether that’s live, online instructor-led training, or self-paced training through on-demand webinars and podcasts. Your employees can take as many online classes as they want, at any time, included free with your subscription fees. You can also talk to our training consultants and business partners about customized education programs to meet the specific needs of your organization.

Hear what several Intacct customers and partners have to say about their experiences getting started with Intacct's cloud financial applications...

Can't see the video? Click here: http://youtu.be/LI7izFgydU8

Of course, there will be additional considerations in the deployment process, depending on what you are looking to accomplish and which modules are included. Whether during your initial implementation or taking a phased approach over time, you may want to connect Intacct to your other current business systems like CRM, project management, etc. In addition to custom integrations, you can also check out the Intacct Marketplace to see a growing library of pre-built integrated applications.You can even work with our partners to build entirely new applications using our web-based development tools. Take advantage of the unprecedented ability to integrate, customize, and extend Intacct to adapt your financial system to the precise needs of your organization – that is one keys to getting the highest value and return on your investment.

OK... ready for the last step? Move on to Step #5, where we look at going live on the system and what to do from there.

Ready to see Intacct in action? Watch a self-guided tour or register for an upcoming live web demo here: http://bit.ly/Iv9EEs.

Be sure to connect with Intacct on our Social Media channels: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube!

How to Buy Cloud Financials: Step 3 – Choose the Right System

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 00:06:00 +0000

This week we are walking through a five-step process on best practices for “How to Buy Cloud Financials.” Each post includes a new Intacct customer and partner video relevant to the topic, so you can also get some perspective from your peers. If you missed the previous posts, I encourage you to read Step #1 and Step #2 before moving on with this post. Today we will look at some tips to create a short list, and find out how to put prospective vendors (Intacct included) through their paces.

Step 3 – Choose the Right System

OK, so you’ve completed steps one and two. You’ve identified that it is time to make a change to a new system and you’ve analyzed what isn’t working and what you want your new system to help you improve. Now it is time to make that all-important decision. If you haven’t done so already, it’s not too late to consult a local expert to guide you through the choices. As I noted yesterday, this expertise is invaluable and can help you avoid common pitfalls during this crucial stage – ensuring that you end up with the best financial software for your organization, that you’ve thoroughly documented your needs, and that you’ll have no surprises.

While there are a myriad of potential new systems you could choose, you’ll want to whittle things down to a managable short list. You don’t have the time or resources to do a full review of hundreds of choices, so narrow your options to no more than five vendors (three is ideal). Your short list will be used to drive a detailed evaluation of the finalists. Even if you have already decided you want a cloud-based system, you might want to include one on-premises system as a benchmark.

Now is your chance to dig a little deeper. Attend some vendor webinars. View the online demos. Then ask each vendor for a personalized demo that closely matches the requirements you’ve defined in Step #2. Ask for customer references and published case studies. As with Step 2, you can also tap into your social network – including places like Facebook and Twitter – for additional references and independent opinions.

Ben Kepes from Diversity Limited, a consultancy specializing in Cloud Computing/SaaS and general business strategy, published a whitepaper in 2010 that is still very much relevant today looking at Ten Questions to Ask Your Cloud Vendor. I would encourage you to download a free copy and give it a read through. You might identify some additional questions to ask vendors on your short list that you hadn’t already thought about.

Before making a final decision on your new financial system, you should also identify how each system will work for you. Understand how you can customize each application to meet your specific needs. How will it integrate with the other key applications and databases you already have in place? Does that functionality already exist out of the box – or will it need to be custom-built? Understand if the vendor is trying to steer you into a one size fits all “suite” or if they will support your desire to have the best applications for each of your departments? There are a lot of trade-offs with selecting a suite, but we’ll save that topic for another day.

For cloud vendors on your list, you will need to understand what Service Level Agreements they offer for things like availability, security, and reliability for those financial applications. For example, Intacct offers customers our Buy withConfidence™ guarantee. This outlines, with full transparency, the level of service you can expect from us.

The last step is to run your numbers. Comparing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of an on-premises system with a cloud-computing system isn’t necessarily apples-to-apples. [Download: Moving to the Cloud: Understanding the Total Cost of Ownership] Be sure to factor in the fully loaded costs of everything needed to support that piece of software (hardware, software, maintenance, security, back-up, IT, and so on). Then finalize the ROI model you started in the previous section.

In the following video, Intacct partners discuss how they work with prospects to select a new system and customers and several Intacct customers discuss their decision process and why they chose Intacct.

Can't view the video? Click here: http://youtu.be/Xm06GXXeXNI

Sure, there is a self-serving aspect to some of this – after all, this is the Intacct blog. But the fact remains, when companies do their homework, an overwhelming number choose cloud computing and Intacct to transform their finance organizations into strategic, forward-thinking business leaders. More than 1,000 companies switched to Intacct in 2011, so we must be doing something right.

Now you are ready to move to Step #4, where we will look at what happens once you’ve made your choice and it’s time to deploy your new system.

Want to see Intacct in action? Watch one of our self-guided tours or register for a upcoming live web demonstration here: http://bit.ly/Iv9EEs.

Be sure to connect with Intacct on our Social Media channels: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube!

How to Buy Cloud Financials: Step 2 – Define Your Needs

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:46:00 +0000

This is the second entry in our week-long series looking at “How to Buy Cloud Financials” featuring videos from our customers and partners. Yesterday’s post was all about identifying when it is time to make the switch to a new financial system. Now we’ll look at how to figure out what you need your financial management system to do for you – the second step in our five-step process.

Step 2 – Define Your Needs

Financial professionals know the best outcomes happen with careful planning and analysis. Well, I have some good news: cloud computing rewrites the rules for rapid deployment, accessibility, simplified maintenance, deep and easy customization, and strong security and operations. Of course, you still need to do your homework.

A good place to start is to document the issues with your current system. Talk to your team and other related departments so you have a solid understanding of their current obstacles and their aspirations for a new system. Look at things like: What is it about your current business management and accounting software that's causing them pain? What do they wish they could accomplish? How would it impact the business if they could accomplish those items?

From there, you can prepare a top-down strategy. This is the time to figure out what you want to achieve with your new system. What type of information does management need to make better business decisions? What is the business impact of that? Which processes can you automate? What processes do other departments want to improve? And how much savings would that create? Where can you eliminate manual and paper processes? Where can you increase revenue or reduce revenue leakage with a new financial system? And where do you see the largest potential for labor savings – in finance, in other departments, and in IT?

Your financial system should not be a silo, so you’ll want to identify what other systems will need to interact with the financial system. It is important to make sure any new system plays well with others. Factor in how the other systems you already have in place, like CRM, project management, payroll, etc. must interact with a new accounting/finance system. What are the critical integration points and business processes that need to span systems?

One area people often talk about, but sometime don’t spend enough time on, is return on investment (ROI). Be sure to document expected improvements and ROI. Naturally, you need to tie your needs and vision to an expected return on your investment. Take advantage of the many tools available to help analyze/calculate your expected return.

Now, it's not every day you think about changing your business management and accounting software. It is a critical decision and you might want to consider tapping into outside experts. They can be an invaluable resource to help simplify and accelerate the process. At Intacct, for example, we’ve built relationships with hundreds of local experts – from industry analysts to leading CPA firms to local VARs – that can not only help with identifying your needs but may also help with selection and even implementation.

You should also consult your peers. Today, the Internet makes it easy to find the information you need – and dramatically lower your risk – by tapping the wisdom of your peers through social networks. Try broad channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, or more focused financial channels like Proformative. You can also tap into other resources like the Salesforce.com AppExchange to see what companies think about different applications.

Speaking of your peers… the video below features a variety of Intacct customers and partners discussing what they were looking for in a new financial management and accounting system and other best practices in assessing your needs.

Can't view the video? Click here: http://youtu.be/DEyod9PWqxY

While this series of blog posts is about how to buy cloud financials, I’m sure many companies will continue to look at both cloud and on-premises options. That’s great. Compared to running traditional on-premises software in your own IT department, cloud-based financial applications offer important advantages in performance, security, data ownership, and ROI. I’m confident it will be abundantly clear how compelling cloud applications are once you’ve taken a closer look.

Now it is time to move on to Step #3, where we’ll discuss choosing the right financial system for your business.

Want to see Intacct in action? Watch one of our self-guided demos or register for an upcoming live web demonstration here: http://bit.ly/Iv9EEs.

Be sure to connect with Intacct on our Social Media channels: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube!

How to Buy Cloud Financials: Step 1 – Embrace the Change

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:33:00 +0000

Switching financial management systems can often seem like a daunting task. This week we are running a series of blog posts, each with an accompanying customer/partner video, designed to help you get up and running on world-class financial software... in five easy steps!

Step 1 – Embrace the Change!

The road to world-class financial operations may be paved with good intentions, but sometimes that road leads to frustrating dead ends. As your business succeeds and you expand, those problems grow – exponentially.

Maybe you’re struggling to get the information you need out of your current system; you’re tired of managing hundreds of disconnected spreadsheets; you’re slogging through manual consolidations; or you’re concerned about patching questionable security risks.

Maybe you’ve managed to get by for a while using outdated on-premises software, putting up with a myriad of limitations. You’d love to have real-time access to your financial information over the web, more frequently added new features, support for modern devices like tablets and smart phones, and more integration and automation in general. You need a financial management system where the vendor isn’t focused just on that annual maintenance contract – one that embraces innovation.

Perhaps your business is changing – you’ve added new products/services or you’re selling into new markets. All of this adds complexity and you suddenly find your existing financial software isn’t keeping up.

Maybe you think a new system means unacceptable costs and disruptions. But the hidden costs of doing “business as usual” are often far greater.

Eventually the light goes off and you realize – there has to be a better way. Good news… it’s a lot easier than you thought. Modern applications coupled with cloud computing completely change the game when it comes to moving to a new financial system. It no longer has to be painful, risky, or expensive to switch financial systems.

Cloud accounting software, like Intacct, shifts the bulk of the cost and risk of transitioning from you (and your IT team) to the vendor. In the cloud world, it’s our problem to get you up and running quickly and cost effectively. We need to earn your business every month. That’s why tens of thousands of companies have already made the shift to cloud financial applications. And that’s why organizations like the AICPA recommend that their members adopt cloud accounting software. It really is that much better.

But don’t just take my word for it. In the video below, several Intacct customers and partners discuss when you’ll know it’s time to move to a new financial system.

Can't view the video? Watch it on YouTube at http://bit.ly/Iv8Uzj.

Once you're ready to embrace the change, the next step is to define your needs. Click here to go on to Step #2, where we'll focus on ways to improve your transition with careful planning and analysis.

Want to see Intacct in action? View one of our self-guided demos or register for one of our upcoming live web demonstrations here: http://bit.ly/Iv9EEs.

Connect with Intacct via Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Managing Your Global Business with Intacct

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:51:00 +0000

Business today is more global than ever. Even small and medium-sized organizations are adding foreign entities and transacting business in multiple currencies. Some of the greatest financial management and accounting challenges arise within multinational organizations that must contend with complex regulatory frameworks, geographies, laws, currencies, and other issues. It is important to have a financial management system designed not only to handle this complexity, but ideally, to shield the finance team from that complexity.

In 2003, Intacct became the first cloud-based financial management system to allow companies to manage their multi-currency and multi-location businesses in real time. Intacct now has more than a thousand companies operating multiple entities and transacting in multiple currencies. It's an area our customers and partners cite all the time as a key driver of significant return for their investment.

Just today, we launched a new video on the Intacct YouTube Channel with several Intacct customers and partners discussing the benefits of Intacct's multi-currency and multi-entity capabilities. The video, linked below, features the CFO of Linux Professional Institute, the CEO of AccessTek, the Corporate Controller at 3Tier, the CFO of ProKarma, and the CFO of TM Forum.

For example, on the video, the CFO of ProKarma mentions that Intacct's consolidation functionality saves them around 30 hours of work per month. He notes: "Global consolidation prior to Intacct was a very, very painful process. Now, with Intacct, our consolidation process is about as close to a one-button consolidation as you can get." There are many other great examples included on the video.

If you run a global business, Intacct can help you master your financial complexities with an innovative technical foundation and the right functionality to handle the complex tactical and strategic challenges of multinational accounting, financial reporting, and regulatory requirements. If you want to learn more, here is a good starting point.

Have you connected with Intacct on our Social Media channels? Be sure to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter.

Maximizing Business Value with Cloud ERP

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:51:00 +0000

Earlier this week, Intacct was joined by Liz Herbert, a principal analyst from Forrester Research, and Ken Cucarola, the CFO at Teachscape, for an interesting webinar on maximizing business value with cloud ERP. If you missed the session, you can access an archived version of the webinar here.

There were a lot of useful insights during this informational webinar. Liz Herbert took attendees through several key cloud computing trends and drivers for adoption, including findings from several Forrester research reports. For example, Liz discussed what companies see as the key benefits to a cloud-based application – the top five responses to their survey were:

Lower implementation costs
Faster time-to-market from the ease of implementation
Faster delivery of new features
Lower ongoing costs
Better support for large numbers of mobile/remote users, suppliers, and partners

Liz also discussed ways companies can look at the overall business value of cloud-based financial applications like Intacct. She outlined some of the areas that Forrester looks at as part of their Total Economic Impact (TEI) methodology, which goes beyond traditional TCO and ROI calculations. With TEI, companies can also account for risk mitigation and risk-versus-reward, as well as the strategic impact of the technology including scalability and flexibility. Liz also discussed some of the criteria companies should consider when evaluating cloud vendors.

As for real-world examples, that is where Ken Cucarola stepped in to discuss his experiences at Teachscape, a leading provider of professional development resources for K-12 teachers. Teachscape moved from QuickBooks to Intacct back in 2010. On the webinar, Ken highlights some of his lessons learned and also the key benefits Teachscape achieved by moving to Intacct, as illustrated in the image below:

Click to Enlarge

Time and time again, our customers mention that not only does Intacct improve the productivity of their finance team, it also reduces direct costs and eliminates capital expenditures to deliver a higher ROI and shorter payback period. You can learn more about the ROI benefits of Intacct here or find out why Intacct is the best choice for companies that are outgrowing QuickBooks.

If you missed Tuesday’s webinar, I encourage you to listen to the archived version and hear the full session with Forrester and Teachscape. You can also register for other upcoming Intacct webinars here.

Connect with Intacct via our Social Media channels: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

The Power of Intacct's Adaptability

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:41:00 +0000

Today we launched a new Intacct customer video on our YouTube Channel. The focus for this video is all around the power of adaptability. At Intacct, we know that no two businesses are alike. That's why we've designed our system to be flexible and adapt to meet your needs. The CFOs and controllers from several Intacct customers and one partner discuss what Intacct's adaptability means to them, including:

Helping you get more value from your existing investments
Continuously developing new and improved functionality
Staying ahead of market, regulatory, and industry challenges
Providing financial management and accounting software you'll never out grow

The video features the CFO of TM Forum, the Corporate Controller at TOA Technologies, the CFO of FlightWorks, the Corporate Controller at EZShield, the CFO of Linux Professional Institute, the Corporate Controller at 3Tier, and the Director of Client Services at High Street Partners.

Be sure to subscribe to the Intacct YouTube Channel to receive updates when future videos are posted. You can also connect with Intacct on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Taking Back Control of Your Accounting Engagements

noreply@blogger.com (Amy Vetter) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 18:15:00 +0000

After spending hours and hours working late at night or on a weekend fixing a client’s accounting in order to get the information you need to complete your work, have you ever thought …if only I had been involved with this client throughout the year, collaborating with them real time, I would not be having to do this now? Maybe when you had this thought in the wee hours of a late night working, your thoughts possibly had more explicatives included – we have all had those moments! We end up in these situations if our clients drive the accounting and software decisions, and we are left cleaning it up and then duplicating efforts to get the work done that we need to do in our firm’s software, often having to write off some of that duplication of effort or clean-up. Because of this situation, we are tied to the accounting cycle of too many hours this time of year and being chained to our desk. We are people too after all; some quality of life would be nice! If we have more control of the accounting, true collaboration with the client and real time access to their financials, would that help provide the quality of life we need and streamline the work throughout the year?

Well, let’s take a look back at how we got here…

When Accountants worked with their clients before there were computers, clients were completely dependent on their Accountant to get an understanding of what their financials for their business looked like. This left clients receiving old financial information since typically they had to wait for months after the business activity actually occurred to get their financials from their Accountant. For people like my mother and grandmother that were running businesses before the age of automated accounting, this kept them blind to current day operating and financial decisions that needed to be made in their businesses. This made business owner unhappy since they had a lack of control of how fast they could review their financial information from their Accountant and make decisions.

Then the tables turned - desktop accounting software was developed which was easier to use and targeted to business owners that allowed them to take control of their accounting. Business owners could finally learn how to do their own accounting and better predict their financial situation. Now in a perfect world, that is how it would be, and there are a small percentage of business owners that do this very well. However…it doesn’t always work out so nicely as most of us know…most business owners are not experts in accounting and designate “free” staff (i.e. themselves, wives, or someone else with a lack of accounting training that have no idea what the difference is between a debit and credit) to do the “accounting”. This leaves the accounting profession cleaning up their clients’ mess and taking a back seat in the decision making of how the accounting is going to be run and which software is the best tool for the Accountant to do their work. There are many Accountants that are experts in cleaning up what the client does in their desktop accounting software and sell that as a service. However; many others don’t want to be left to clean up the accounting their client does and have to duplicate work into a second accounting software in their firm so they can get their work done. I have heard the cry of so many Accountants over the years that they would prefer it be right in the first place, which ultimately saves time and allows them to provide more value added services like analyzing the financials and helping their clients improve their cash flow and profitability.

Now…enter the cloud! We have the best of both worlds now – a meeting of the minds as you will! As Accountants we can take control back so that we have insight into the clients’ books real time and the client also has the same real time access to their accounting records. No one is left in the dark. It gives the option back to the client to have their Accountant perform the accounting work, and they can view what they need in their Accounting system real time – and be more comfortable that what they are looking at real time is accurate! Most importantly, it provides the Accountant the platform of their choice to offer to their client. It becomes a part of the engagement. When proposing to Client Accounting Services to a prospect, the software fees are a component of the overall fee to the client from the firm (stay tuned for future blogs on how to price this!). By delivering services this way we are no longer at the mercy of the client of which software they choose. Instead we choose the accounting platform that is right for the client and has all the accounting tools we need. Additionally, it provides consistency for all of the staff of the firm to utilize, creating more profitable engagements and eliminating duplication of work.

Additionally, there is no more clean-up! Instead an Accountant can be on the front end of the accounting work and make sure it is accurate from the get go. This eliminates the chaos at year-end of trying to make sense of numbers provided by a client that did their books on their own and putting in extra hours that may or may not be billable. Busy season can be more streamlined since the Accountant is part of the client’s business all year. By being an integral piece to your client’s business, you become a fixture in the business. Your client will confide in you more on more areas of their business which typically drives additional revenue/services and especially loyalty to the firm.

As always, it is always about the relationship. What the cloud offers is an improved experience with your client by being more collaborative on a real time basis, more control over what each user on the system sees and can do, have more value-added discussions on your client’s business rather than being knee-deep in data entry discussion and provides the client the opportunity to make better decisions in their business on a daily basis. If you haven’t already started the process of moving toward the cloud and changing how you interact with your clients – it is time to take the first step. If not, you are going to be left behind by the Firms that have already started down this path and developing strong, profitable practices, as well as getting some freedom back in their life. The efficiencies you are able to drive streamlines work in your firm, provides the platform you need to do the accounting the way you want to and opens the door to new services and opportunities with clients you would have never had before. Take the first steps to regain control of the accounting and deliver your services the way you know is best for you and your client, with the flexibility to offer it the way the client wants – you and your client will both be happier in the long run!

Why Healthcare Companies Should Switch to Cloud Financial Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 21:17:00 +0000

Cloud financial management systems are becoming increasingly popular with healthcare organizations – especially those with distributed employees and offices. Intacct was joined recently by Dan Orlinski, the CFO of Renal Ventures Management, and Aaron Brandwein, a healthcare solutions specialist at Business Solutions, for an insightful webinar looking at how cloud financials can help healthcare organizations. Renal Ventures Management is an Intacct customer that operates 32 dialysis clinics across multiple states – with each clinic operating as a separate joint venture. Business Solutions is an Intacct Business Partner. [Watch the archived webinar here]

On the webinar, there was a great discussion about some of the key pain points for finance teams at healthcare organizations. Here is a graphic that show some of the top pains our clients often struggle with prior to their move to Intacct:

Cloud financial management applications, such as Intacct, deliver real business advantages to healthcare finance teams. For example, Intacct allows healthcare firms to increase revenues through faster and more accurate billing; reduce costs by automating manual processes; and make better, faster business decisions by gaining real-time visibility into operational and financial data.

As you can see in the following slide from the webinar, Intacct enables healthcare organizations to automate complex, inefficient healthcare accounting workflows to improve their financial operations:

Click Image to Expand

On the webinar, Dan Orlinski specifically discussed their move from QuickBooks to Intacct. He highlighted a variety of milestones they have achieved over the two years they have been using Intacct, including:

Consolidated financials are now printed from Intacct, instead of from a cumbersome Excel spreadsheet
Shortened the financial close by 2-3 business days
Geographically dispersed regional management now has real-time access to their financial data
Now have robust reporting by location and location groups
Accounts Payable workflow now offers remote approval and signature to speed processes
Finance team supported company growth of more than 50%, with no additional headcount

Dan commented that for Renal Ventures Management, moving to a cloud-based system has been a really good experience. He specifically highlighting the flexibility a system like Intacct provides by allowing you to scale the system as you grow.

If you missed the webinar, I encourage you to listento the archived version and hear the full Renal Venture Management story from Dan Orlinski. To learn more about the ways Intacct helps healthcare organizations, please visit http://bit.ly/ylLwhA. Or, if you are ready to see Intacct in action, view our self-guided demos or register for a live web-based product tour at http://bit.ly/Iv9EEs.

[Be sure to connect with Intacct on our Social Media channels: Facebook, Twitter & YouTube]

The Value of Intacct for Multi-Entity Businesses

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Olson) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:58:00 +0000

This week’s Intacct customer spotlight is Able Engineering, a leading aircraft component repair and overhaul services company that switched from MYOB to Intacct’s cloud financial applications. Able highlights one of the areas where Intacct really differentiates itself in the market – multi-entity management.

Able operates as four distinct business entities. Managing a business with multiple entities typically cause significant headaches for finance teams using traditional, on-premises financial applications – and even most of the other cloud-based financial applications on the market. In the case of Able Engineering, with their previous financial system they had to maintain separate databases for each entity and process manual intercompany journal entries every month to close the books. They were struggling with manual financial consolidation, limited reporting and analytics, no audit trail, and minimal security and financial controls.

This led Gregg Leach, Able’s CFO, to look for a new financial system. He notes: “We looked at all of the leading options on the market – both on-premises and cloud applications – including Epicor, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Sage MAS 90/200, NetSuite, and Intacct. We were most impressed with Intacct due to the ease in which data could be entered, accessed, consolidated, reported on and analyzed. But what really won us over was Intacct’s depth of functionality matched with very low upfront costs and a high annual return on our investment.”

Business today is increasingly distributed. Whether you’re a multinational corporation with domestic and overseas operations, or a franchise with multiple outlets, you can’t run a distributed business effectively with disconnected silos. Choosing the right underlying architecture for your financial system is critical to get the performance, scalability, accuracy, compliance, and security you need. The heart of Intacct is our professional strength, multi-everything architecture that helps multi-location and multi-entity companies manage distinct operations both locally and centrally, and generate the reports, analyses, models, and plans required to move business forward.

Previously, Able was forced to combine intercompany entries into a single month-end journal entry which only provided very basic, summary information for each entity. To analyze account balances in any detail required manual investigation through multiple documents and screens. Leach notes that many times this process simply couldn’t be completed, wasting a huge amount of time and making it impossible to truly understand what was driving the business. With Intacct, intercompany consolidations, transactions, eliminations, and allocations are now automated and detailed history is instantly available for every business entity.

Intacct also includes built in workflow and document management capabilities designed to allow distributed and multi-entity businesses to achieve paperless operations. With Intacct, Able now attaches digital copies of documents like invoices directly to transactions in the system, allowing for instant drill-down analysis from summary to detail to transaction to supporting document. Leach estimates that streamlining and automating the invoicing process alone has saved Able’s finance staff as much as 40 hours of work per month.

Reporting, at both the corporate and entity level and across both financial and operational data, is another key area where Intacct helps Able improve business performance. “Intacct allows us to analyze financial and operational information from multiple dimensions, including month-to-month comparisons and budget versus actual, both of which were extremely difficult and time consuming with our previous system,” commented Leach. “In addition to increased business visibility, we’ve also enjoyed important financial process improvements. Our month-end closing process is already 33% faster than with our previous system and our expectation is that it will be another 50% faster by the end of the year.”

The bottom line… Intacct provides Able with more functionality while saving them money, and they can do more with less. Leach notes: “Able Engineering grew 23% last year and we expect to grow another 25% this year. Because of the efficiencies we’ve gained with Intacct, we fully believe we will be able to handle that growth without having to add any additional finance or accounting staff. Our labor savings in finance alone more than covers all of our costs for Intacct. We no longer look at our financial system as a necessary evil; it is now a strategic advantage for our organization.”

Ready to see Intacct in action, but pressed for time? Check out one of our upcoming 45-minute product tours - http://bit.ly/AitD7O. To learn more about how Intacct’s multi-entity capabilities can help your organization, visit http://bit.ly/yrUMzR.

[Have you connected with Intacct on Facebook? Visit http://www.facebook.com/intacct and “Like” us today!]