Preparing for the Future
Yesterday I participated in a day-long program of Intuit titled “Future-Proof Your Practice”. Intuit is the maker of the QuickBooks small business accounting software and appropriately, the speakers addressed the accounting needs of small businesses. In addition to executives from Intuit, the roster of speaker included representatives from companies that are part of the QuickBooks ecosystem, fellow Wiley author Ron Baker who shared with us copies of his book Implementing Value Pricing, and accountants who are Certified QuickBooks Pro Advisors. Intuit kicked off the day with a presentation on the four macro trends impacting small businesses: social media, mobile devices, cloud computing and big data. What struck me was that each of the speakers, and this was not by design, touched on an aspect of small business disaster preparedness, largely aligned with the benefits of hosting data in the cloud.
For example, Barry MacQuarrie CPA mentioned that most of the commercial office buildings in the city where he works have only a single pipe for an Internet connection, underscoring the importance of redundancy. If the Internet connection is interrupted, many small businesses would lose sales and productivity. Dawn Brolin CPA presented the example of a client undergoing an acrimonious divorce whose estranged wife burned all of the receipts for his business expenses, with the result that the IRS disallowed most of the deductions. Had the client scanned in and digitized his receipts and stored them in a secure online facility, he would have been protected. MB Raimondi CPA shared how she had to take her laptop to the nearest Starbucks to use a Wi-Fi connection to continue working when SuperStorm Sandy caused a power loss in her office. The examples were compelling and the insights very helpful. If Intuit offers a “Connect Local” event in your community, do not miss it. It was time well spent to improve my business.