Accounting Today - June 2011

technology
Case studies: Business intelligence
technews

BY seth fineBerg

What’s more, with the availability of lower-cost offerings, and a user base that is more educated about what business intelligence is and can do for them, there’s been a rise in the use of BI tools and software at the firm level.

Below are three examples of how firms have been using BI to better their practices and gain new business. based in its SharePoint system. Business intelligence has emerged as a valuable and easy-to-use tool to improve efficiencies for accounting firms, as well as their clients.

Three firms share their experiences with implementing BI tools

CCH INTRODUCES PRACTICE INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM RIVERWOODS, ILL. — CCH has released ProSystem fx Practice Intelligence, a new system that provides accounting firms with on-screen dashboards showing key information about how well they are performing. The system, developed with the help of accounting firm Armanino McKenna, aims to bridge the gap between business intelligence systems and office productivity applications. Key features include a KPI dashboard that speeds up analytics and automates reporting of key performance indicators. In addition, a one-click management report helps managers visualize relationships among multiple sets of firm data.

Standardizing processes

Firm: Clark Nuber / Bellevue, Wash.

Size: 142 people

Product: SharePoint plus SQL Reporting Services (Microsoft)

Commencement date: 2007

On record: Chief information officer Peter Henley

Challenge/objective: The firm wanted to streamline operations, acquire new clients and better serve existing ones. Within those parameters, Henley knew that finding out more about what the firm does for every client at a moderate-sized firm was a challenge, and they needed to discover which industries were being served well and which were not.

Amount spent: SQL Reporting Services is free with SharePoint. The firm paid $5,000 for the SQL server and client access license. For small firms, there is a free SharePoint tool (SharePoint Foundation).

Process: The firm’s practice management software has all of the firm’s time-and-billing information in it. SharePoint and the Reporting Service were used as a search engine for all client documents in the system. SharePoint was also used as a document management tool, as well as the firm’s intranet. Henley noted that there was minimal training needed for the system — just the time to roll it out to everyone who needed to use it and get them used to the system.

“The tough part wasn’t figuring out how to
use the system, it was standardizing the pro-
cess,” he said. “Once you digitize it and create
the workflow, it makes a change because a
good portion of the staff never did it that way
or you see the problems in the old way.”
In a short time, Henley and his team began
to look closely at each process of streamlining
the firm’s operations, including simple tasks
that they wanted to automate, such as the
process of sending an audit engagement let-
ter. “If SharePoint is the main extraction tool,
SQL Reporting Service is the engine and the
Web browser is the front end to it all. Those
three tools helped us make up the BI we do,”
he said.

‘The tough part ...
was standardizing
the process.’

up the client, see the address of the letter, and
construct it from there,” said Henley. “Now
you can just go into SharePoint, and it can
access the practice management database,
fill in the particulars and start the workflow.
Then a document gets created and at the end
you have a document that can be mailed to
the client and they can sign it.”
Henley also noted that, in terms of return
on investment, firms looking to invest in busi-
ness intelligence tools need to consider not
the cost, but the objective. “As you expose
more of the intelligence, employees will in-
teract with clients differently,” he said. “If you
expose this data and act on it, how smart is it
going to make your people? You can’t write
an ROI for that.”

Next steps: Later this year the firm is planning to unveil an audit workflow that will be

Better benchmarking

Firm: WithumSmith+Brown / Princeton, N.J.

Size: 400 people

Product: ProfitCents (Sageworks Inc.) Commencement date: 2005

On record: Partner Jim Bourke

Challenge/objective: The firm had clients in many different industries, and often conducted its own benchmarking during the comparatively slower summer season, but needed a better way of doing it beyond simply using Excel.

Amount spent: The firm received ProfitCents free as a test, but basic pricing ranges from $948 to $1,668.

Process: Bourke was introduced to ProfitCents at a technology conference and saw the detailed industry and market data that the product provided. He realized that the firm was spending too much time trying to produce what ProfitCents already provided. He decided that WS+B needed to have ProfitCents and selected an “internal champion” to help install it and train the staff. The decision was made to deploy it slowly through the firm, and Bourke used his own office in Red Bank, N. J., to conduct initial testing during that summer. By the end of the summer, the firm was able to show reports to some clients and “they loved the data,” according to Bourke.

Shortly after, more offices began training and use. Within two years, everyone in the firm was able to use the product, and many started to use it for audit engagements in an effort to win new clients.

Results: “ProfitCents gives you the database to access tremendous industry-specific data. Initially it was as a replacement to our internal benchmarking, but now with all the data we can use it within the firm,” explained Bourke. “Even for non-clients such as an industry we don’t know as well, or have no clients in, we can go to ProfitCents, grab the industry data we need and put it in our audit engagements. We’re become more intelligent

See CaSe STudIeS on 25

SIMPLE OFFICE SOLUTIONS RELEASES NEW SOFTWARE FALLBROOK, CALIF. — Small-business accounting software developer Simple Office Solutions has released My Simple Office, a new accounting system offering multi-user capability, integrated image and document management, and the ability to connect directly to the Android mobile system. Priced at $5,900, the software includes a client server component and all client programs. Other key features include payroll and job cost systems; remote time-card entry; sales lead and contact management; order entry and billing; sales tax tracking and reporting; and the ability to convert spread-sheets to shared-access applications.

EFILECABINET INTEGRATES
WITH QUICKBOOKS

LEHI, UTAH — Document storage software developer eFileCabinet Inc. has released an integration tool for Intuit’s QuickBooks, which provides users with a direct link between their QB records and documents in eFileCabinet. Users can now link information for customers, vendors, invoices and bills between eFileCabinet and QuickBooks. Saving this information into eFileCabinet allows users to search for keywords and quickly retrieve files.