This year we will begin featuring guest blogs from several members of the PKF Texas Consulting Solutions team. Craig Abbott, one of our managers in charge of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV accounts, has written a post about the cost effectiveness of going to the cloud. This is Part I, look for Part II on Monday.
Most startup companies are interested in keeping it simple and keeping it inexpensive when it comes to accounting software. Cash flow is often a luxury and focus on sales is the priority. Often the only required financial statement is checking to see if there is cash in the account. But what hits most company owners like a ton of bricks is how fast that little startup company grows up. Now banks are asking for financial statements for financing growth. For the first time they realize both their business processes and their accounting system cannot provide accurate and timely historical financial data and current data to make good decisions.
Now with their backs to the wall they start the search for new accounting software. What business owners will find is there are a lot of products in the market; even Microsoft offers four different accounting or ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software. Of course PKF Texas offers the best of the four, Dynamics NAV! So many choices on the market and not a lot of assessable information to get you started. So you start watching and scheduling demonstrations about supply chain management and key performance indicators. You start seeing terms like “On Premise”, SaaS and the Cloud. By the way “On premise” means you buy the software, “SaaS” is software as a service, you rent it and the “Cloud” is rented network where rented software lives.
The more time spent on the project the more confusing the issue becomes. So with their back to the wall a decision is made, let’s hope it was the right one! But there are three things that should be considered that get left out of the scenario described above. The first we will talk about today and the next two on Monday.
- Why not start out on the right software,
- While spending a lot of attention on the software, don’t forget about the people implementing it,
- Don’t forget about the skills required to use the software when it has been implemented.
Quoting the Microsoft commercial where the mom has to edit the family photo lets head to the “Cloud”! The Cloud is making more sophisticated software more affordable. Consider software that will let you grow into it and at the same time is easy to use and well documented. The cost of a simple conversion can run in excess of $35,000 to a better ERP system. This does not make that $39.99 a month sound so cheap does it?
By the way, it seems like this would be a good time for me to tell you that PKF Texas does offer Microsoft Dynamics Nav in the Cloud!