cloud financials

Article Dean Dorton

Is the Cloud Right for My Finance Organization? 6 Questions to Ask Yourself

Choosing a financial management solution is a major investment of time and money, and you want to make the right decision. There are many options, one of which is the cloud. The cloud offers compelling and unmatched advantages for deploying business software, and particularly financial applications. IDC estimates that worldwide spending on software-as-a-service (SaaS) will double, going from $29.8 billion in 2013, to $62.1 billion by 2017.

While your next financial solution very well could be a cloud solution, it doesn’t have to be. And it certainly should not be a choice based on “what everyone else is doing.” To discover if the cloud is right for your organization, conduct a quick gut check with these six questions.

1. Does my team need to work outside the office? Anytime, anywhere access to systems and data is a key benefit of moving to the cloud. Your finance team can work anywhere—literally—with only a standard and secure Web browser and Internet connection. There’s no need for extra security hardware or software, or a VPN connection.

2. Does my business need to accelerate financial processes—without increasing headcount or IT budget? Organizations who move to the cloud often enjoy a high ROI and rapid payback on their investment. A recent study by Nucleus Research found that cloud-based financial management and accounting implementations deliver 1.7 times more return on investment than on-premises ones.

3. Does my financial system need to integrate with Salesforce.com or other applications? Easy integration is what the cloud’s all about. API and Web services enable systems to connect so your organization can use the best applications for each area of your business—sales, operations, marketing, etc. You can eliminate costly programming and maintenance from your overstretched IT budget.

4. Do my managers want or need self-service access to their relevant KPIs? Real-time visibility comes standard with the cloud. You can provide access to both finance and non-finance users across the business. The management team can easily view the key performance indicators that apply to their department via real-time dashboards. Employees can also view dashboards as well as enter and approve expenses, and create purchase orders. Lenders, auditors, CPAs, and board members get real-time access to key information—improving visibility and building trust.

5. Does my organization struggle with inefficient processes? Gain company-wide efficiencies with the cloud. Standard finance processes such as consolidations and closes are streamlined. You can also leverage the Internet to connect other company functions and processes, as well as your customers and suppliers. For example, you can deliver a 360-degree order-to-cash process that links finance and sales. And you can create budget dashboards for department managers and help increase operational alignment. What’s more, the cloud helps companies avoid the pitfalls of spreadsheets and the limitations of single-user systems like QuickBooks that isolate information in silos.

6. Do we need to compete with bigger businesses—on a smaller budget? With the cloud, you get the power of a world-class infrastructure. Your vendor amortizes costs over thousands of customers, so they can maintain this infrastructure while providing 24×365 operations, continuous backups, disaster recovery, and superior security. That means you get far greater performance, reliability, and security than you could likely afford on your own. In addition, cloud applications can be provisioned immediately and are highly scalable, enabling you to get started—and change—quickly.

Ultimately, cloud computing is about capitalizing on a new software delivery model that accelerates payback of a larger ROI and better aligns the financial organization with the new dynamics of growing businesses.

Have more questions about moving your financials to the cloud? Talk to the experts at Massey Consulting—we’re here to help!

Get the 2018 Buyer’s Guide to Accounting and Financial Software

Download our free copy of Sage Intacct’s 2018 Buyer’s Guide to Accounting and Financial Software, where you’ll learn:

– The challenges of finding good financial software
– How to successfully go down the decision-making journey
– Comparisons of software delivery models
– How Sage Intacct comes into place in delivering the leading financial management solution for mid-market companies

Article Dean Dorton

MSPs and professional services companies that work heavily in project management are constantly juggling complex and detailed tasks.

By sending out bids, multiple ongoing projects to manage, and more in the pipeline, your company needs to work as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.  However, in this environment, team members can easily become overloaded with tasks.

To work smart, you and your teams need the perfect lineup of resources and tools at your company’s disposal to make the most of everyone’s time and effort.

The biggest drain on project management resources comes from searching for information you need to do your job and populating data into multiple disconnected systems.

Project management teams spend countless hours digging up who’s best for the task at hand, inputting key details into CRM, documenting where projects are in the process, or sleuthing out new ways to save on already tight margins.

These tasks create productivity bottlenecking weaknesses and that eats into your budget.

High productivity MSPs and professional services companies that work with subscription models see the most benefit from using project management tools that can automate as many tasks as possible to keep costs within margins.

Sage Intacct, a best-in-class cloud-based financial management solution, helps service-based companies manage the complexities of subscriptions with design features that also support project management. Sage Intacct offers:

Strong integrations with your CRM solutions to see into financial and non-financial data in one place, without having to re-enter it into multiple systems.

Automated subscription support for billing by offering detailed customization options for unique billing formats and tracking milestones, schedules, and upcoming renewals, to speed the process and eliminate spreadsheets.

Fast revenue recognition with easy click-of-the-button contract modification, templates to simplify the recognition process, and entire transaction history tracking for cleaner audits.

Resource management tools like automated talent and schedule tracking, and routing rules to notify team members of pending actions, placeholder resources for standardized bids, and T&E report notifications that go straight to team member dashboards.

Deep insights using the cloud from your dashboard, featuring customized KPIs and a comprehensive look into the quote-to-cash project cycle, with reporting wizards for financial statements, operational reports, and utilization reports.

Sage Intacct handles your project management accounting from beginning to end and all of the fine, but important details in-between.

We are here to help you find the right solution to bring more zen to streamline the way you do things.

Contact us to learn about the best resources that will help calm the chaos to support productivity and growth.

how service businesses benefit from cloud-based project accounting

Article Dean Dorton

Essential Financial Management Practices of Biotech Companies – A 5-Part Series

Article 3: Collaborative Systems to Support Flexible Reporting, Forecasts, and Budgeting

For Biotechnology companies, forecasts and budgeting is a high stakes balancing act.  It’s necessary to find the right spending cadence and application of funding.

Collaborative forecasting and budgeting are essential to keep projects moving according to plan – maintaining an optimal pace while closely monitoring cash flow. Not spending enough could delay projects while spending too much could prematurely deplete cash before additional funding becomes available.

Biotech companies dependent on disparate systems spend hours – even days – combining spreadsheets to deliver comprehensive information managers need to make informed forecasts.  When decisions need to be made quickly, those manual processes are a liability to the company.

What is your cash balance and how long is it going to last?

The big question for pre-revenue companies is, “What is your cash balance and how long is it going to last?”

“The forecast is crucial,” explains Andrew Graham, CFO at AgBiome, a biotechnology company located in Durham, North Carolina.  “It’s not something that’s done in a vacuum with just the Controller and CFO putting it together – you have to get everybody in the company involved to get reasonable assumptions about funding and revenues, headcount and hiring.  Because the majority of the expense in small biotech companies are headcount and expenses related to headcount.”

From cradle to market: collaboration not just limited to forecasting

“Successful teams are collaborating constantly and want technology tools to facilitate that communication,” observes Philip Massey, CPA and founder of Massey Consulting.  “Certainly within budgeting and forecasting, but also within financial accounting.”
Perhaps there is a $2,500 expense related to general supplies that should be split between Project A and Project B.  However, the entire amount gets assigned to Project C.

“Nobody wants to have another meeting or sift through email threads to get the issue resolved,” says Massey.  “Within Sage Intacct, there is a secure social layer embedded in the financial management called Collaborate that lets the Project C manager to drill into the transaction and alert the accounts payable staff that the expense was assigned to the wrong account. ”

Sage Intacct Collaborate allows team members to deal with non-routine transactions such as clarifying policies, gathering missing information, resolving exceptions.  And, it keeps track of the conversation: with a single click, team members can see all messages related to a particular issue, putting the matter in context and on its way to resolution.  A faster path to resolution keeps expenses associated with various projects accurate.  Project Managers can move forward with complete confidence in their budget to actual reporting.

“It’s all made possible by the flexibility of cloud technology and the strength of modern financial accounting software features – capabilities that simply aren’t available in old, legacy software,” explains Massey.

Throughout this series we have stressed the three important benefits of cloud technology:

  1. A single source of information
  2. The ability to respond quickly to change
  3. Reducing risk aided by data visibility

All businesses benefit from this trio of capabilities, but the importance is more acute within biotech companies that are moving towards new rounds of funding, public offering or merger and acquisition.

This concludes ‘Collaborative Systems to Support Flexible Reporting, Forecasts, and Budgeting,’ part 3 of the Essential Financial Management Practices of Biotech Companies series.

Click on the links below to read other parts of the Essential Financial Management Practices of Biotech Companies series:

Read Part 1: Accurately Track Costs with Project Accounting

Read Part 2: Automation Batch/Lot Tracking to Ensure Traceability

Read Part 4: Streamline Business Processes for Biotech Companies

Article Dean Dorton

“I’m a very loyal customer for good products and good people, and that’s exactly what I get from both Massey and Sage Intacct- good products and good people”.

Massey Consulting’s goal is to build close relationships with our customers, and stick with them as they grow, to see their company succeed every step of the way. That means we need to offer products that are a great solution for our customers now, and as much as in the future.

Hear from Ellen Grantham, the CFO at K4Connect and a current Massey Consulting and Sage Intacct client, on how these two companies work together as a powerful combination to make your business scale.

K4Connect is an Internet of Things company, offering software solutions that serve and empower older adults and individuals living with disabilities, enhancing their lives by integrating the latest in smart technologies into a single responsive system.

Article Dean Dorton

Change is inevitable as your company expands, and if you’re still using Quickbooks for your financials, it might be time to ask yourself whether it’s still the best fit for navigating growth’s tricky course. Here are 5 signs that your company is treading water with outdated systems and processes.

1. You’re having trouble remembering when you last updated your systems.

If you’re using outdated software that has since released new versions, or sticking with an older system because it’s what you know, you may be doing your business more harm than good. Running your financials on outdated software sets your business up for system reliability and data accuracy risks.

2. Your systems don’t integrate.

If Quickbooks isn’t integrating with the other software solutions you use, your teams are doing more work than they need to, while also risking data accuracy. Re-keying data into your other systems invites data errors. Relying on spreadsheets for critical reporting also invites data errors and consumes your team’s time. Trudging through tedious workarounds slows productivity too. These are all unnecessary risks your company can avoid with integration-based automation.

3. You can’t track your business like you once could.

The data you’ve always worked with in the past may not be the data you need now. Fast-growing businesses also have fast-changing metrics. However, on-premises systems can’t produce inventories, marketing conditions, or location and entity performance metrics with the speed or accuracy the way a cloud-based solution can.

4. Growth and compliance demands seem harder and harder to meet.

Modern businesses – especially subscription-based businesses, need to meet modern customer demands. With the increasingly complex product or subscription models come more complicated customer tracking and revenue recognition that meets the new ASC 606 and IFRS 15 compliance requirements. Outdated on-premises Quickbooks versions just can’t meet those demands without headaches, costly software retrofits, or less-than-perfect workarounds.

5. Your financial processes aren’t adequately scaling to your company’s financial needs.

It’s only a matter of time until your growing company needs something from your Quickbooks software that on-premises software just can’t do. Growing companies – especially fast-growing companies need to work in the cloud for growth tasks like adding new entities, or locations, quickly performing global consolidations, or converting multiple currencies.

A cloud-based financial management system like Sage Intacct supports today’s growing businesses:

  • Automatic, behind-the-scenes updates and maintenance happen for reliability and performance confidence.
  • Seamless integration with other best-in-class cloud-based solutions ensures data accuracy, and team collaboration to give fast answers to potential and existing customers, and to streamline accounting processes and project management.
  • Real-time 24/7 updated visibility into key metrics and reporting on your personal dashboard means no waiting or guesswork when it comes strategic data analysis.
  • ASC 606 and IFRS 15 compliant software makes revenue allocations for contracts faster, easier and more automated.
  • Growth-focused features speed new entity set-up, GL entries, currency conversions, and global consolidations.
View our free on-demand webinar “You’ve Outgrown QuickBooks, How Do You Make the Switch?” to learn how Peter Nesbitt, Director of Finance at Bit.ly, the category leader in link management, managed their spectacular growth by moving from QuickBooks to Sage Intacct.
Think You’ve Outgrown QuickBooks?
View our free on-demand webinar “You’ve Outgrown QuickBooks, How Do You Make the Switch?” to learn how Peter Nesbitt, Director of Finance at Bit.ly, the category leader in link management, managed their spectacular growth by moving from QuickBooks to Sage Intacct.