If it's true that plain-vanilla accounting software is a maturing line of business, your career and your company could depend on grasping business solutions holistically.
by Rick Telberg
At Large
Sometimes accountants can forget the fact that business is more than just about accounting, or finance or tax. It's also about customer service, marketing, business intelligence, and human resources -- all the things, really, that make business go ka-ching!
CPAs are doing a masterful job of automating accounting and finance processes. An entire industry -- the accounting software world -- has been created to fill the need for computerized accounting.
But the business of accounting as seen through the lens of the accounting software business is changing fundamentally. And too many CPAs may be unprepared for the next stage of development.
"Accounting was just one part of the business problem we were trying to solve," according to Taylor MacDonald, now executive vice president in charge of channel and sales operations for mid-market products at Best Software. "Today America is looking for business management solutions. It's not just about debits and credits anymore. It's about customer-relationship management, business intelligence, key performance indicator reporting, human resources, and so on. All the things that a business does."
MacDonald is worth listening to. He's spent 20 years or more in the accounting trenches, much of that running his own business. And now he's carrying the flag for Best, a subsidiary of the United-Kingdom-based Sage Plc., which is covering as much of the small business market as it can with brands like Peachtree and Act!, MAS 90 and SalesLogix, FAS and Timeslips, and, most recently, with the acquisition of AccPac. With $1 billion in annual revenue, Best is bigger than Microsoft in its market. Few other companies can say that.
To Best, Microsoft and Intuit, basic accounting software, maybe like basic accounting, has become commoditized in the marketplace--its price and value marginalized. To put it starkly: Accounting software is dead. Dead as a business. Dead as typewriter repair, buggy whip manufacturing, or buggies.
So savvy CPAs are moving fast to the next level. Beyond mere accounting, they are finding bountiful new frontiers in customer-relationship management, business intelligence, logistics, analytical reporting, and a whole range of human resources functions.
Still, like many CPAs, business owners are hunkered down, according to MacDonald. They may already have a system that works and that's enough for them. Or they haven't been convinced of the competitive advantage new technology can deliver. Or they are simply fazed by the maddening failure of producers, installers, or consultants to offer a complete solution of inter-operability between programs.
Smart CPAs and technology dealers know their limitations. So what they can't do alone, they're finding partners for. In Dallas, for instance, MAS 90 dealer ERG has teamed with SalesLogix reseller Ascendix. They haven't merged. But they are sharing office space. It's a little like shacking up, but not getting married.
And yet, "There's no reason CPAs can't be equipped for this," MacDonald said. Because CPAs remain the trusted advisor, they have a responsibility to be knowledgeable of the systems on the market and the providers locally."
The message is clear: Get with it, or get left behind.
