Business headlines point to two important technology trends that involve the business world today. One presents a challenge to your company. The other potentially provides your solution.
TREND #1 DRAMATIC DATA GROWTH
You have more information than you can easily gather and evaluate. Data creation has increased dramatically in recent years, with IBM reporting that 90% of all the world’s data has been created in the past two years alone. That means that as data continues to expand, so does your need for capacity to analyze it. News points to potential data management issues that could challenge your internal capabilities or use more of your time to take care of them. This may not seem important to your company, because of its size. In fact, strong data management and analysis – especially financial data analysis – leads to better business strategy and outcomes for all sizes of companies.
TREND #2 EFFECTIVE OUTSOURCING SERVICES
Your business management has access to more talent and resources than ever before. The growth in online business apps and virtual office services provides a range of outside offerings that many small businesses are adopting. From noon lunch delivery to company sales and marketing pros, small companies have embraced this outsourcing trend to supplement their internal resources, while controlling their budgets.
Roman Kepczyk, CPA/CITP, CGMA and Director of Consulting at Xcentric LLC, sees “gig-type workers” with specific technical skills converting traditional business structures to more of a “Monopoly House” shape – where there’s a small team of leadership/owners at the top and a structure below that is staffed by both online services, gig workers and specialists.
Your most critical business information and planning resources can now be comfortably outsourced. Sophisticated applications, like unravel, “the small business financial system in a box”, can save you money and allow you access to high-level financial talent and advice at the same time. While traditional mom-and-pop online bookkeeping services have been available for some time, you can now access CFO-level financial talent and CPA-level tax advice electronically.
Many benefits, in addition to lower costs, include:
- No more inhouse bookkeeper turnover. The challenge of trying to replace internal human resources dedicated to your company’s financial data and systems is eliminated. And along with it, the time to interview, hire and manage a replacement.
- No additional overhead for office space, computers, taxes, employee benefits and training. Along with inhouse bookkeeping people, you can eliminate the fixed costs associated with their employment.
- Virtual financial resources companies are more secure. No access to initiate transactions in your company’s bank accounts compared to employee bookkeepers.
- Cost is sometimes half as much as a traditional mom-and-pop bookkeeping shop. Primarily driven by the efficiencies of the virtual business model, you’ll also see information quicker with this model.
- Finally, the time that you save by outsourcing bookkeeping can be put into the growth of your core business. You’ll also get information and advice useful to expanding your business and increasing its success.
Using cloud-based systems, these services take a systematic approach to creating business solutions for a range of small companies – where the business owner is often trying to take care of many of these things himself. Combining well-known, proven accounting software, such as Xero, QuickBooks, Gusto and others in a systematic, repeatable process, this solution can work with you from anywhere in a virtual office space. According to George Birrell, Partner at unravel, “we’ve developed a system that can solve the data collection and analysis needs of small businesses and support it with senior professionals to review and analyze the information and net it out for you. We see this as a big step in improving service to our small business clients.”
Many small business owners and accountants see the trend toward virtual bookkeeping support. Sage Accountancy Index, indicates that around 75% of the accountants currently predict that providing virtual bookkeeping support will become the largest part of their working regime in the years to come. Today’s virtual financial system providers are ahead of the curve and have already created the solution to many of your small business data needs.
