From Greg's Head

I wrote in a previous blog about the need for Houston to move into the 21st Century with city-wide WiFi access.

I’d like to think city officials are reading my blog – and were convinced it’s time to act on this. At any rate, a story in the Houston Chronicle recently confirmed that the city is seeking proposals for WiFi.

The story also said the city will work on agreements with jurisdictions outside its boundaries (Harris and nearby counties and cities) to further extend the network to the entire gulf coast area.

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Welcome back to the top issues affecting accounting firms and the clients we serve. As promised, here are my thoughts on two more of the American Institute of CPAs’ Top 10 Technologies:

#3: Disaster and Business Continuity Planning – While disaster recovery has always been important, most business executives felt like the cost of this "insurance" outweighed the benefits.

However, as we have seen in the post-9/11 world, disaster recovery should be at the forefront of every CEO's or business owner's game plan. We have to be prepared for any type of disaster that may strike our cities and businesses. And, as we have seen in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, natural disasters can be as devastating as those caused by terrorists.

#8: Application and Data Integration – We have many new applications and software tools that allow us to work with a multitude of solutions. The process of developing standards for data mining and sharing of information can help us do more with the tools that we have everyday.

Share with me your own thoughts about these technologies – how do they affect you and your organization?

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Understanding how technology affects the delivery of accounting and consulting services is not only good for firms; it’s good for clients too.

A more informed and educated client or customer = a higher value placed on the services it receives from professional services organizations, including accounting firms.

The American Institute recently released its list of Top 10 Technologies for 2006 – and to no one’s great surprise, Information Security was once again #1 – for the fourth consecutive year!

Why such continued interest in security? As the always-on wired world continues to grow and become more a part of our daily lives, security and confidentiality become exposed much more often.

However, this vulnerable state also creates opportunities for those who seek to exploit these new venues by creating significant revenue opportunities. I know of at least a dozen folks who experienced some form of identity theft or piracy of information.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg …. Take a look at the rest of the Top 10 list:

1. Information Security
2. Assurance & Compliance Applications
3. Disaster & Business Continuity Planning
4. IT Governance
5. Privacy Management
6. Digital Identity and Authentication Technologies
7. Wireless Technologies
8. Application and Data Integration
9. Paperless Digital Technologies
10. Spyware Detection and Removal

Through the year, I’ll continue to bring you more information on the Top 10, and in fact, stay tuned for Wednesday’s blog when I cover Disaster Recovery and Data Integration.

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Here are two upcoming and noteworthy tech events:

Friday February 17, 2006
MBA Tech Transfer Challenge at Texas A&M University.
Sponsored by Ford Motor Company

75+ MBAs and 125 judges from a variety of business, professional firms, investors and those with connections to emerging markets will review ideas and submissions to the Texas Center for Commercialization. For some MBAs, this is the first attempt at working as a entrepreneur in planning and building a business. Participants have real-life experiences with feedback from investors and potential investors on their presentations.


Friday March 3, 2006
Rice Alliance
5th Annual Life Science Technology Venture Forum
Showcasing Promising Life Science Start Ups

Each year, the Life Science Forum showcases the most promising early stage life science, biotechnology, medical device and information technology-related companies. Leading life science venture capitalists and investors discuss their investment strategies. In 2005, more than 340 entrepreneurs, investors, business leaders, researchers and members of the life science community attended the program.

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The Texas A&M Center for New Ventures & Entrepreneurship (CNVE) recently completed its 2005 Fundraising Survey of Texas companies seeking capital. Richard Scruggs, executive director of the CNVE, has made this survey available for the public.

This is a statewide survey, and several organizations across Texas participated in the information-gathering process. The survey is intended to provide the leaders of young companies with a foundation from which to build their capital-seeking efforts. Successful and unsuccessful companies, and their representatives, were contacted to provide the background on their results.

Some key findings include the following attributes:

• A formal board of directors is an attribute for success.
• Investors continue to fund deals/industries with which they are comfortable.
• Participation in an incubator was helpful, but a not a clear indicator of success.

Additional insight can be gained from reading the entire report. It's a free download.

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As a person who rarely considers himself "old" and likes to stay connected with the future, I had a chance to participate in a recent recruiting event that left me with a wonderful range of emotions.

One emotion that left me feeling very old is the satisfaction that our future, the young people of our profession, and this country, are indeed headed in the right direction.

On Thursday Feb. 2, the PPA (Professional) program for the Mays School at Texas A&M hosted an event in which 15 middle-market firms met future graduates to provide them information about our people and the firm. As a member of the Executive Committee for the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship with the Mays School at Texas A&M, I was on campus that day and joined several colleagues from my firm to meet and greet the students.

From time to time, I work with students from a variety of universities; the folks we made contact with at Texas A&M are outstanding. In fact, I would rank the students in the top five of the schools I visit or work with in the country. Applause to Dean Strawser and Professor Daily for putting together a great program. To the students … it’s hard work to finish in the PPA program, but when you come out on the back end, the rewards will be great and your future will be very bright, indeed.

You know your getting old when you meet students who went to kindergarten and elementary school with your oldest child (mine is almost 21!). I was also very impressed with the students’ questions and what they wanted to learn about the profession and our firm. They not only have a very good grasp of the profession, they have a real sense of what they need to focus on for their professional and personal futures.

If you are student (Texas A&M or otherwise), please feel free to post questions on the blog regarding career choices, accounting matters or practically anything else related to your future. I will try and get them answered for you.

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As most readers know, we launched the blog only a few short weeks ago, and thanks to industry insiders like Larry Bodine, we are grateful for the continuous coverage we are receiving. I espcially wanted to single out Larry and his Professional Marketing Blog - with a very special "thank you" to him for covering us.

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I’m following up a previous blog entry on another advantage to achieving Gold Certified Partner status in the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) competency.

At a time when cash flow management is becoming critical to success, the single most important cash investment is in your receivables. Yet, in the past, all you have had to manage this critical asset is an aging report.

I believe every company should be using some kind of software-driven collections process. This just makes good business sense. Depending on the current status of your outstanding accounts, you could reduce receivables by 5+ percent. Although this does not sound like a significant amount, multiply your current receivables balance by percent and consider the resulting cash flow!!

The Collections Management Solution for Navision allows a business to systematize its collections process, reduce receivables significantly, and, as a result, generate what could prove to be a substantial cash flow.

In essence, Collections Management Solution is a specialized contact manager designed specifically to support the collections process. You define who is going to be responsible for collections and when overdue invoices are passed to the application. All of the information you need to discuss this invoice with a customer is right there at your fingertips. During the process, you record who you talked to, what they said, when they promise to pay and when you should call them again, as well as determining if you need to you can collaborate with other people in the organization to collect this account.

Based on my experience, this system can be installed and become operational in under one hour – not a bad investment of time for a 5 percent increase in cash flow!

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To upgrade or not to upgrade … a question clients, customers and even my co-workers ask me on a very frequent basis.

In its February issue, Inc. magazine examines the pros and cons of what it refers to as “upgrade madness:”

“The price tag for licensing a new version of a software product isn’t the only cost to consider. A midsize company upgrading its financial or customer relationship management software might have to slog through a year’s worth of information technology headaches to get the job done."

"Among the hassles: the bugs that invariably appear; the loss of all the customization performed on the old version; and the incompatibilities between the software and other types of software you might be running.”

Good points, but I think the KEY point is to upgrade on a case by case basis. Not everyone needs to upgrade every time a new release comes out.

However, you NEVER want to drop maintenance because of the downside. It’s really going to cost you time and money down the road if you ever do upgrade to new features. And in the case of Microsoft's business applications, a common code base is coming sometime in the next 2-3 years. Users will want the option of looking at the new code base when it makes sense.

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