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Showing posts with label ecosystem engineering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ecosystem engineering. Show all posts
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Project based businesses - Apps for QuickBooks Online
Do you want to know more about apps for project-based businesses? Check out this article on Apps.com featuring these five awesome apps that work with QuickBooks Online:
Friday, July 10, 2015
The Artful Engagement - Close More Business with Practice Ignition
If you've been taking advantage of live education over the last 12 months, you have probably seen the adorable astronauts passing out Tam Tam's in the expo halls of many accounting conferences across the globe...
But what do they do?
If you are not familiar with or already using Practice Ignition (PI), let me give you the scoop:
PI is an amazing app that creates and manages proposals/engagements letters and their approvals on a web based platform. Using this app streamlines the time it takes to prep an engagement letter, send it to a client, make potential revisions, get it approved and get paid.
We started using PI about 6 months ago. Prior to using PI we had word templates that we would have to comb and revise, making sure that the client company names were changed everywhere and that dates and services were accurate. We would cut out irrelevant portions depending on the project and add more stuff in where needed. Once an engagement letter was accepted we would collect project deposits and relay the information to team member assigned to the project. IT SUCKED. On top of all that, we had to store the signed engagement letter in client files either in a drawer (yes, those do still exist) or in their folder on the drive.
Since moving over to PI, we simply enter the client, choose our template, assign services and hit SEND. I am able to assign the managing team member so that once the engagement is approved, they can invoice for the deposit through QBO (or we can send an invoice for deposit simultaneously with the engagement, OR we can insert our own custom deposit hyperlinks!).
The potential client received a beautiful, professional engagement proposal that allows them to provide an electronic signature. They love this because it cuts out the step of them printing, signing, and returning. It's so fast! We can even insert hyperlinks to our client portal so that they can begin uploading the documents required from them in the client contributions sections.
Deets on the US Platform:
But what do they do?
If you are not familiar with or already using Practice Ignition (PI), let me give you the scoop:
PI is an amazing app that creates and manages proposals/engagements letters and their approvals on a web based platform. Using this app streamlines the time it takes to prep an engagement letter, send it to a client, make potential revisions, get it approved and get paid.
We started using PI about 6 months ago. Prior to using PI we had word templates that we would have to comb and revise, making sure that the client company names were changed everywhere and that dates and services were accurate. We would cut out irrelevant portions depending on the project and add more stuff in where needed. Once an engagement letter was accepted we would collect project deposits and relay the information to team member assigned to the project. IT SUCKED. On top of all that, we had to store the signed engagement letter in client files either in a drawer (yes, those do still exist) or in their folder on the drive.
Since moving over to PI, we simply enter the client, choose our template, assign services and hit SEND. I am able to assign the managing team member so that once the engagement is approved, they can invoice for the deposit through QBO (or we can send an invoice for deposit simultaneously with the engagement, OR we can insert our own custom deposit hyperlinks!).
The potential client received a beautiful, professional engagement proposal that allows them to provide an electronic signature. They love this because it cuts out the step of them printing, signing, and returning. It's so fast! We can even insert hyperlinks to our client portal so that they can begin uploading the documents required from them in the client contributions sections.
Deets on the US Platform:
- Full disclosure - payment processing within PI is not yet available in the US - but they are expecting to have it rolled out in about 90 days. Use my method of inserting payment hyperlinks or sending an invoice with the proposal
- PI can push invoices over to Xero or QuickBooks Online upon engagement acceptance
- Pricing plans are based on the number of engagements and can fluctuate each month as your proposals scale up and down
- The trial period does not require you to enter your credit card info! SWEET.
- The have an AWESOME website plug in that allows your clients to get real time quotes and submit an engagement request!
- If you're using Xero Practice Manager, a whole new world features opens up to you!
- Available in US, UK, Austraila, Canada and New Zealand. Word on the street is that also have clients in South Africa (where I also hear Sage is about to roll out some cool stuff....)
Want it? Of course you do. Sign up to get started for free, and if you are ready to sign on before August 9th you can enter the discount code MAKEACCOUNTINGFUN for an additional 10% discount on an annual plan, which is already discounted at 20% below the monthly plan! It doesn't get much better than that ;-)
Saturday, November 8, 2014
QB Connect HACKATHON!!!
I am SO EXCITED to finally be getting this blog post together! The QuickBooks Connect Hackathon was the highlight of the event for me. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing all of the ideas that the developers came up with, and it was great to be able to offer some extended feedback to those who I was able to meet up with later in the event. I was sooo tired afterwards, but when I got back to my room to lay down I was suddenly wide awake trying to process all of the information that I has just taken in! I literally had dreams about apps that night.... which is when I realized I may have an accounting technology addiction (that may be why I had to take a break before diving back in to write this!).
I have notes from the Hackathon and wanted to share my thoughts about some of the contestants. I have more to say about some than others, but everything had potential in its own right. Let's also remember that each team only had 3 minutes to present and up to 2 minutes for judges questions, so there could be much more detail about these apps that I know nothing about.
Credibles
This app is for pre-paid tabs with gift marketing. I LOVED IT. It enables shop owners to offer rewards to frequent customers as well as letting customers pre-pay for their tabs from their phones. SUPER COOL. My only concerns were the security of someone else not being able to use your tab, along with how that information is going to sync into the accounting platform. You would have to have the tabs sync in as a liability (like a gift card) and have the sales deplete from that. For this to be super successful I would recommend adding it on to a POS that syncs up with QB by posting a daily sales summary via sales receipt.
Pay Deal
Rewards/loyalty program app with a cool beacon thingy for customers to check in via Bluetooth on their phones. Allows for customer activity monitoring and discount/rewards offers to be sent out via mobile device. Unique part was the beacon and monitoring.
Linqto ProAdvice
This one was an emergency button from your phone that hooks you up with a ProAdvisor. I had many thoughts and ideas about this... My first thought was any PA who can answer a Facetime call at will was probably not busy for a reason... and my second thought was this would be so badass if it were specific to me and all of my clients could download it! In my opinion, this whole concept would be way more successful if it were targeted toward contacting a single ProAdvisor, then we as PA's could have our clients download the apps and they would connect to us from the button. It could even have availability settings for call/text/email. Run with that and let me know how it goes!
MonthEnd Apps
This was an awesome tool to consolidate QBO company data for reporting. Awesome for creating personal financial statements or consolidated reports for clients who own multiple companies. They said it would pull from different international versions of QBO as well, it would be cool if it synced up DT and imported data too.
Tree Ledger
Hole, Ee. Crap. This thing was cray cray! I had data overload. It looked like a REALLY awesome way to pull and manipulate data. I was disappointed that we only had 3 minutes for this one, I probably could have looked at it for an hour. The 'judge' in me was asking what does this do that I cannot already do in Excel? It was much better looking than Excel, but realistically I wasn't sure if it was just taking the spreadsheet and making it prettier and easier to manipulate.
OpStarts / Big2Small
Looked like a comparable solution to Finagraph, Essential CFO, etc. My notes say 'projections and forecasting'... The biggest problem I see with SMB's is lack of cash flow forecasting and projections. OpStarts should take the best of LivePlan and Finagraph to make an awesome white label solution that we as accountants can roll out to all of our clients.
Hubdoc
I really enjoyed the time that I was able to spend chatting with the Hubdoc guys on Wednesday! If you are a developer who has a hard time figuring out your target demographic, these guys know how to ask the right questions and take in answers. I loved their solution - it is a super clean interface and I foresee them being a potential Bill.com competitor. Their new feature was 1-Click Bill Pay which I believe allowed you to upload/pay bills in Hubdoc and have that info sync back in to QBO. Hubdoc with bill pay looks like a great solution for small team clients that so not require an approval process for A/P. LOVED IT!
TransferMate
I had the pleasure of already knowing about these guys prior to the Hackathon. The bottom line is that if you make international payments via wire, you should be using TransferMate. There is no better solution for wires, just do it.
Debbie/Voice/AllConnect for QuickBooks
There were a handful of 'Siri for QBO' apps at the Hackathon. They were all fairly equal in my eyes, only one (Voice) had pulled in the 'filters' field to make it more valuable and malleable once you do a voice search. I liked 'Debbie', but I think it would be cooler if you marketed to accountants to push the product and white labeled it with their name... Actually you could hook up with Linqto ProAdvice and make a nice custom app for PA's to use with their clients!
Social Insight / Insights Central / Autofy
The surplus of apps that were trying to make a KPI out of social media posts in relation to sales was a turn off. They were all great in theory, but the fact that there were so many took away from the 'originality' of the whole idea. I'm not sure how these comparisons even really ring true, unless you have a link from the post to the purchasing site that can directly link a sale to a social media post. This is not really a key indicator for brick and mortar as you cannot really correlate the date of the post to the date of the transaction (unless of course you are offering a discount code that can be cross references with the post). Good idea- needs some work to be valuable from an accounting perspective.
NoBrainer Rev Rec
Looked AWESOME. We all know that recognizing deferred/unearned revenue SUCKS. This app supposedly fixes that! I would love to learn more than the 3 minute special about this one and share it with the world.
Easy Assets
Basically a fixed asset manager for QBO. Looked great, my notes say that it should pull in asset postings from QBO so that you can map them in Easy Assets (this would prevent the client from making a manual posting and not enter the asset details in the asset manager). You're welcome for the free advice ;-)
Clariti by SalesPad
This was basically a process outlining app that (from my understanding) would enable you to structure workflows with notifications, rules, etc. Basically you setup the workflow so that when 'x' happens the system notifies 'whoever' then 'z' happens after that... It would be awesome if you could structure these workflows between different apps, but that would probably take a lot of work and collaboration with way too many people ;-). I'm excited to see where this one goes.
TractionBooks
This one was basically a client stalker app so that you can get leads based off of your existing customer list. My understanding is that is syncs your customer list, finds them online, then combs through their networks to report back with more potential clients. Could be great for the right company - only QBO integration is pulling the customer list, so no room for accounting errors.
Saasphault
I had the pleasure of meeting with this developer the next day to share my insights. This is a great app with many potential applications, so my advice to him was to widen the branding or have multiple branding options to apply his measurement calculation tool to more industries (like flooring, paint, etc). I suggested that he take a hint from Jobber and their industry specific advertising on their website (which really all goes to the same product).
Workpop
This app is crazy for automated hiring. It is pretty awesome, though it could 'robustified' by integrating/adding on with some competency screening and aptitude testing systems. This would broaden the application and make it usable for many more industries than just the restaurant industry that it was aiming at.
VISCO ITA
Landed cost calculator. My thought was that a company who needs to calculate landed freight probably has inventory that is too complex for the current QBO. It does look like an awesome app to use with Enterprise or other inventory management solutions.
Labels for QBO
I am just going to start this one by saying that the gal that presented this seemed like a pretty awesome person! Great attitude and presentation, and great concept. That being said, my first thought was holy crap you have to carry that stuff around with you to print and scan??? No thanks. My advice here would be to stick with your awesome label printer, but have some sort of integrated IPad POS scanner so that all you need to do is hook the label printer up to the Ipad (preferably via bluetooth). I feel like there is more to this app then I was able to hear about in 3 minutes, hopefully I can see more of it in the future!
Perkville
This was a great little app with one big problem, but luckily I was able to meet with the developer and offer them my suggestion after the hackathon. It was basically a loyalty app that allowed for rewards, digital punch-cards, points, etc. The app would allow you to assign a reward points value to specific goods you were selling, which was awesome, but the tracking was by CLASS. I told them to throw that out the window right away and map by item. That was really the only thing they needed as far as I was concerned :-). The team was nice too!
Dataraunt
App for posting info from your POS into QBO. Great in theory for those who are still using POS's that do not offer a sync. I have one piece of advice for Dataraunt and every other POS that does a daily summary posing in QBO: USE A FLIPPIN' SALES RECEIPT. No one wants 365 journal entries a year in their file along with adjustments and other necessary journal entries. Use a zero sales receipt, number it with a date code, let people map their own items/accounts. That is all.
Payments Cloud/SalesForce Invoicing & Payments for QBO/Babblework
To me, all of these Sales Force apps looked the same. I'm sure they were all unique, but to me it didn't seem like anything really unique or way different from other things on the market. Payments Cloud was a winner (yay!)
Service Titan
Another winner! YAY! I love Service Titan and I think that it is a very robust and powerful solution for service management. This app was in the 'Existing Application' bracket, for which the perimeter was to make a significant change in the app. The significant change here was that the QBO integration was built (which is awesome). Personally, I did not see significant value in the QBO integration as Service Titan is focused more on franchises, most of which depend on hosted QB Desktop files that the franchise can tap in to. There are many comparable solutions for service management that have a much lower price point for independents that have the freedom to move to QBO. HOWEVER: This could potentially be an influencer, allowing franchises to be master admins for QBO companies in their franchises and eliminating the need to cloud host the desktop files... Lets see where this goes!
SafetyNet by Jobber
Yes, you may recall this is the app that received a standing ovation from me (and I'm sure many more would have stood if the room had been full of accountants...). Many people were looking at me crazy with this one, wondering why my favorite app would be something so simple. The simplicity of this app is the beauty of it. One of the biggest hurdles that I encounter in persuading clients and peers to move to QuickBooks Online is the inability to make a period copy or backup of their data. This app meets a need not being fulfilled, has no competition on the market, and is a simple solution to a huge problem. YAY!
Method: Donations
The winner of the grand prize! I love you guys and I am VERY pleased that you have developed a solution that opens QBO up to the Non-Profit sector. This app allows you to track donors and donations and syncs the info back to QuickBooks Online. I am very confident that this app is going to be the best NP solution on the market, mostly because they are consulting with Gregg Bossen of QuickBooks Made Easy who is the non-profit king and won't let them screw it up! Method is truly a blessing in the QuickBooks ecosystem and I cannot wait for this app to go live on Apps.com. This app did everything it needed to do: solved a big problem with no existing solution, works well with QBO, and different/better than existing apps.
For contestants that I did not mention specifically, it is just because I have no valuable commentary or I feel that it was covered in the commentary already written out above. If you want specific feedback, feel free to contact me directly. If you have a link to your app that I was unable to find and include in this article, please post it in the comments! Thank you all for participating and for being so open to my opinions!
I have notes from the Hackathon and wanted to share my thoughts about some of the contestants. I have more to say about some than others, but everything had potential in its own right. Let's also remember that each team only had 3 minutes to present and up to 2 minutes for judges questions, so there could be much more detail about these apps that I know nothing about.
Credibles
This app is for pre-paid tabs with gift marketing. I LOVED IT. It enables shop owners to offer rewards to frequent customers as well as letting customers pre-pay for their tabs from their phones. SUPER COOL. My only concerns were the security of someone else not being able to use your tab, along with how that information is going to sync into the accounting platform. You would have to have the tabs sync in as a liability (like a gift card) and have the sales deplete from that. For this to be super successful I would recommend adding it on to a POS that syncs up with QB by posting a daily sales summary via sales receipt.
Pay Deal
Rewards/loyalty program app with a cool beacon thingy for customers to check in via Bluetooth on their phones. Allows for customer activity monitoring and discount/rewards offers to be sent out via mobile device. Unique part was the beacon and monitoring.
Linqto ProAdvice
This one was an emergency button from your phone that hooks you up with a ProAdvisor. I had many thoughts and ideas about this... My first thought was any PA who can answer a Facetime call at will was probably not busy for a reason... and my second thought was this would be so badass if it were specific to me and all of my clients could download it! In my opinion, this whole concept would be way more successful if it were targeted toward contacting a single ProAdvisor, then we as PA's could have our clients download the apps and they would connect to us from the button. It could even have availability settings for call/text/email. Run with that and let me know how it goes!
MonthEnd Apps
This was an awesome tool to consolidate QBO company data for reporting. Awesome for creating personal financial statements or consolidated reports for clients who own multiple companies. They said it would pull from different international versions of QBO as well, it would be cool if it synced up DT and imported data too.
Tree Ledger
Hole, Ee. Crap. This thing was cray cray! I had data overload. It looked like a REALLY awesome way to pull and manipulate data. I was disappointed that we only had 3 minutes for this one, I probably could have looked at it for an hour. The 'judge' in me was asking what does this do that I cannot already do in Excel? It was much better looking than Excel, but realistically I wasn't sure if it was just taking the spreadsheet and making it prettier and easier to manipulate.
OpStarts / Big2Small
Looked like a comparable solution to Finagraph, Essential CFO, etc. My notes say 'projections and forecasting'... The biggest problem I see with SMB's is lack of cash flow forecasting and projections. OpStarts should take the best of LivePlan and Finagraph to make an awesome white label solution that we as accountants can roll out to all of our clients.
Hubdoc
I really enjoyed the time that I was able to spend chatting with the Hubdoc guys on Wednesday! If you are a developer who has a hard time figuring out your target demographic, these guys know how to ask the right questions and take in answers. I loved their solution - it is a super clean interface and I foresee them being a potential Bill.com competitor. Their new feature was 1-Click Bill Pay which I believe allowed you to upload/pay bills in Hubdoc and have that info sync back in to QBO. Hubdoc with bill pay looks like a great solution for small team clients that so not require an approval process for A/P. LOVED IT!
TransferMate
I had the pleasure of already knowing about these guys prior to the Hackathon. The bottom line is that if you make international payments via wire, you should be using TransferMate. There is no better solution for wires, just do it.
Debbie/Voice/AllConnect for QuickBooks
There were a handful of 'Siri for QBO' apps at the Hackathon. They were all fairly equal in my eyes, only one (Voice) had pulled in the 'filters' field to make it more valuable and malleable once you do a voice search. I liked 'Debbie', but I think it would be cooler if you marketed to accountants to push the product and white labeled it with their name... Actually you could hook up with Linqto ProAdvice and make a nice custom app for PA's to use with their clients!
Social Insight / Insights Central / Autofy
The surplus of apps that were trying to make a KPI out of social media posts in relation to sales was a turn off. They were all great in theory, but the fact that there were so many took away from the 'originality' of the whole idea. I'm not sure how these comparisons even really ring true, unless you have a link from the post to the purchasing site that can directly link a sale to a social media post. This is not really a key indicator for brick and mortar as you cannot really correlate the date of the post to the date of the transaction (unless of course you are offering a discount code that can be cross references with the post). Good idea- needs some work to be valuable from an accounting perspective.
NoBrainer Rev Rec
Looked AWESOME. We all know that recognizing deferred/unearned revenue SUCKS. This app supposedly fixes that! I would love to learn more than the 3 minute special about this one and share it with the world.
Easy Assets
Basically a fixed asset manager for QBO. Looked great, my notes say that it should pull in asset postings from QBO so that you can map them in Easy Assets (this would prevent the client from making a manual posting and not enter the asset details in the asset manager). You're welcome for the free advice ;-)
Clariti by SalesPad
This was basically a process outlining app that (from my understanding) would enable you to structure workflows with notifications, rules, etc. Basically you setup the workflow so that when 'x' happens the system notifies 'whoever' then 'z' happens after that... It would be awesome if you could structure these workflows between different apps, but that would probably take a lot of work and collaboration with way too many people ;-). I'm excited to see where this one goes.
TractionBooks
This one was basically a client stalker app so that you can get leads based off of your existing customer list. My understanding is that is syncs your customer list, finds them online, then combs through their networks to report back with more potential clients. Could be great for the right company - only QBO integration is pulling the customer list, so no room for accounting errors.
Saasphault
I had the pleasure of meeting with this developer the next day to share my insights. This is a great app with many potential applications, so my advice to him was to widen the branding or have multiple branding options to apply his measurement calculation tool to more industries (like flooring, paint, etc). I suggested that he take a hint from Jobber and their industry specific advertising on their website (which really all goes to the same product).
Workpop
This app is crazy for automated hiring. It is pretty awesome, though it could 'robustified' by integrating/adding on with some competency screening and aptitude testing systems. This would broaden the application and make it usable for many more industries than just the restaurant industry that it was aiming at.
VISCO ITA
Landed cost calculator. My thought was that a company who needs to calculate landed freight probably has inventory that is too complex for the current QBO. It does look like an awesome app to use with Enterprise or other inventory management solutions.
Labels for QBO
I am just going to start this one by saying that the gal that presented this seemed like a pretty awesome person! Great attitude and presentation, and great concept. That being said, my first thought was holy crap you have to carry that stuff around with you to print and scan??? No thanks. My advice here would be to stick with your awesome label printer, but have some sort of integrated IPad POS scanner so that all you need to do is hook the label printer up to the Ipad (preferably via bluetooth). I feel like there is more to this app then I was able to hear about in 3 minutes, hopefully I can see more of it in the future!
Perkville
This was a great little app with one big problem, but luckily I was able to meet with the developer and offer them my suggestion after the hackathon. It was basically a loyalty app that allowed for rewards, digital punch-cards, points, etc. The app would allow you to assign a reward points value to specific goods you were selling, which was awesome, but the tracking was by CLASS. I told them to throw that out the window right away and map by item. That was really the only thing they needed as far as I was concerned :-). The team was nice too!
Dataraunt
App for posting info from your POS into QBO. Great in theory for those who are still using POS's that do not offer a sync. I have one piece of advice for Dataraunt and every other POS that does a daily summary posing in QBO: USE A FLIPPIN' SALES RECEIPT. No one wants 365 journal entries a year in their file along with adjustments and other necessary journal entries. Use a zero sales receipt, number it with a date code, let people map their own items/accounts. That is all.
Payments Cloud/SalesForce Invoicing & Payments for QBO/Babblework
To me, all of these Sales Force apps looked the same. I'm sure they were all unique, but to me it didn't seem like anything really unique or way different from other things on the market. Payments Cloud was a winner (yay!)
Service Titan
Another winner! YAY! I love Service Titan and I think that it is a very robust and powerful solution for service management. This app was in the 'Existing Application' bracket, for which the perimeter was to make a significant change in the app. The significant change here was that the QBO integration was built (which is awesome). Personally, I did not see significant value in the QBO integration as Service Titan is focused more on franchises, most of which depend on hosted QB Desktop files that the franchise can tap in to. There are many comparable solutions for service management that have a much lower price point for independents that have the freedom to move to QBO. HOWEVER: This could potentially be an influencer, allowing franchises to be master admins for QBO companies in their franchises and eliminating the need to cloud host the desktop files... Lets see where this goes!
SafetyNet by Jobber
Yes, you may recall this is the app that received a standing ovation from me (and I'm sure many more would have stood if the room had been full of accountants...). Many people were looking at me crazy with this one, wondering why my favorite app would be something so simple. The simplicity of this app is the beauty of it. One of the biggest hurdles that I encounter in persuading clients and peers to move to QuickBooks Online is the inability to make a period copy or backup of their data. This app meets a need not being fulfilled, has no competition on the market, and is a simple solution to a huge problem. YAY!
Method: Donations
The winner of the grand prize! I love you guys and I am VERY pleased that you have developed a solution that opens QBO up to the Non-Profit sector. This app allows you to track donors and donations and syncs the info back to QuickBooks Online. I am very confident that this app is going to be the best NP solution on the market, mostly because they are consulting with Gregg Bossen of QuickBooks Made Easy who is the non-profit king and won't let them screw it up! Method is truly a blessing in the QuickBooks ecosystem and I cannot wait for this app to go live on Apps.com. This app did everything it needed to do: solved a big problem with no existing solution, works well with QBO, and different/better than existing apps.
For contestants that I did not mention specifically, it is just because I have no valuable commentary or I feel that it was covered in the commentary already written out above. If you want specific feedback, feel free to contact me directly. If you have a link to your app that I was unable to find and include in this article, please post it in the comments! Thank you all for participating and for being so open to my opinions!
See you at #Solutions14 in Vegas!
Friday, June 20, 2014
Does this App Belong in my Ecosystem?
Yes?
No?
Maybe?
All of the above.
But how do we know? We encounter too many scenarios with our clients where they are looking for a cut and dry response that we cannot provide for them. Just like nearly every other question when it comes to apps, accounting and taxation - it depends.
What does the app do?
We all know the phrase - there's an app for that! But what, exactly, is that? Is your app a time tracker, a payroll add-on with time tracking, a POS, a POS with time tracking, an inventory manager, an inventory manger with POS, an inventory manager with POS and time tracking, blah blah blah? There are a million different things that your app could be capable of, and the first thing that you need to know is exactly what the capabilities and limitations are. Once you know what your app can and cannot do, you can decide on the next question.
What is the app's role in the Ecosystem?
Many of us have taken the term 'Appify' and ran with it. Some of us ran the course, and some have gone off-roading... The biggest problem I see are app stacks instead of app systems (no relation to AppStack mobile site builder). Piling one app on top of another on top of another and so one just creates a huge mess. Many times an app will be integrated and later you find out that it is missing a feature, so you get another add on to fill that need and you end up with a million apps that no one can keep track of. There are plenty of awesome ecosystems that involve a strand of apps working together, and knowing each role and result in depth will help you decide which ones qualify as a system and which ones just make a crap pile.
Stack vs. System
When we are designing an ecosystem for a client, we look at multiple options for each process that requires a solution. A good saying here would be 'if you fail to plan you are planning to fail'. Let's compare two examples of a landscaping company:
A: Implements When I Work with GPS for time, Zen Payroll for processing, and SalesForce for appointments while using QBO for back-end accounting.
B: Implements Jobber for time/appointments/field management and QBO with payroll for back-end accounting.
(If you are not sure which of these is a stack and which is a system, please send me a private email for a consulting session...)
The moral of the story is that both of these examples fill the need, but they are not created equally. You need to know your end goal and choose the apps that work together effectively to make the most streamlined system.
Stack vs. System
When we are designing an ecosystem for a client, we look at multiple options for each process that requires a solution. A good saying here would be 'if you fail to plan you are planning to fail'. Let's compare two examples of a landscaping company:
A: Implements When I Work with GPS for time, Zen Payroll for processing, and SalesForce for appointments while using QBO for back-end accounting.
When I Work > Zen Payroll > QB Online < Sales Force
B: Implements Jobber for time/appointments/field management and QBO with payroll for back-end accounting.
Jobber > < QBO/QBOP
(If you are not sure which of these is a stack and which is a system, please send me a private email for a consulting session...)
The moral of the story is that both of these examples fill the need, but they are not created equally. You need to know your end goal and choose the apps that work together effectively to make the most streamlined system.
How much control do you need/want over the data?
I have overheard waaaay to much whining that all app data needs to 'sync seamlessly into QuickBooks' to be perfect. I say NO WAY!!! One of the BIGGEST benefits I see to appification is that you can choose an app based on its ability to feed information into your back-end accounting system. We all have 'that client' that no matter how much we train them, they will always mess up their books. I love that I have platform options so that I can put 'that guy' on the POS that allows me to look at their beautiful reports and post them as journal entries (rather than automatically sending every erroneous transaction into QB for me to clean out). I believe that the best apps are those that give you options on how you retrieve your data.
What does your data look like once it is in the back-end system?
My answer to this: who cares? As long as it is accurate and not redundant, I prefer ONE posting from the app to summarize the information. Most people ask my why I would not want every transaction to come through... Well, if I wanted every transaction spelled out in QuickBooks then why the heck did I buy the app??? Of course the expectations for import will vary depending the goal you are trying to achieve, and if you have completed the proper ecosystem engineering process then you should be able to assess the part quite simply. Just remember that you are looking for a streamlined system, not a redundant stack.
I have overheard waaaay to much whining that all app data needs to 'sync seamlessly into QuickBooks' to be perfect. I say NO WAY!!! One of the BIGGEST benefits I see to appification is that you can choose an app based on its ability to feed information into your back-end accounting system. We all have 'that client' that no matter how much we train them, they will always mess up their books. I love that I have platform options so that I can put 'that guy' on the POS that allows me to look at their beautiful reports and post them as journal entries (rather than automatically sending every erroneous transaction into QB for me to clean out). I believe that the best apps are those that give you options on how you retrieve your data.
What does your data look like once it is in the back-end system?
My answer to this: who cares? As long as it is accurate and not redundant, I prefer ONE posting from the app to summarize the information. Most people ask my why I would not want every transaction to come through... Well, if I wanted every transaction spelled out in QuickBooks then why the heck did I buy the app??? Of course the expectations for import will vary depending the goal you are trying to achieve, and if you have completed the proper ecosystem engineering process then you should be able to assess the part quite simply. Just remember that you are looking for a streamlined system, not a redundant stack.
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The Pro-Apptive Approach to Working with Developers.
I have been hearing a
lot of talk and questions from my peers about apps. What they love and what they
hate, but mostly what they wonder... There is always a question of why... Why don't you have this, why does this do that, why does this import, why doesn't
that export... In my opinion, many of these whys aren't really whys at all,
they are When's. What we really want to know is when will it do this, when
will that fixed, when can I use this app the way I want too? Basically,
we suck at explaining ourselves to developers. I was given some great
opportunities to speak with developers at multiple companies this week. Aside from being able to communicate my ideas to them, I was able to learn how
they need to receive information I order for it to have any value to their
teams.
They don't know what
you're saying because it doesn't make sense.
Draw a picture,
compare a competitor, remind them that you don't speak their language. I am
constantly reminding developers that I have no idea what they have to do on the
back end to make my dream come true, and encourage them to re-direct my
thoughts according to technical feasibility. Most of the time when we are
trying to explain something we are looking at it from a 1-client view or an 'I
want' perspective. The most effective way to validate your suggestion is to
prove that your 'want' adds value not just to you, but to the platform as a
whole. Paint them a picture not just of the what, but also of the why. The how is up to them.
We give input without implementation experience.
Many times we turn
away from a product due to the 'feature lack' that we see in a demo. We may not
implement that product because of one little thing that is missing, therefore our
only experience is the demo. Once we have made the decision NOT to try a
product, we need to accept that since we have absolutely no working experience
with the program, we have no place discrediting it's application. For
example I wanted to integrate Lettuce for a client but I needed a more robust
sales tax module, so I only demoed it. I know of some other industries it would
be great in and I would apply it in a heart beat. The fact that I
implemented Vend instead of Lettuce does not make Vend a better app, it makes
it a better app for that client. We need to quit pretending like every
industry should have a shoe box solution and work on becoming educated
ecosystem engineers.
When you divorce a
vendor, forget the no contact order.
I'm sure ALL of us
have had bad experiences with apps... Spending hours fixing things that we
can't bill for because it was our dumb@$$ that suggested the implementation. I
have divorced many an app (I even took a year off from QBO once), but we need to remember to be civil. You are much better off leaving
amicably so that you can keep yourself educated on any new things that may put that app ahead. We need to forgive developers of their past mistakes so
that we can take advantage of their future triumphs.
Fool me once, shame
on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
When I demo a product
I usually go in super excited about where I want to use it and the clients
that I'll put on it. By the end of the demo I generally have a huge
paradigm shift and realize that it is not what I thought it was at all. If they
fool you once with their sales rep, email, or misleading advertisement, then
shame on them for not being clear. I always look at this thankfully with a
'crisis-averted' attitude and throw the app in my toolbox for future use. Now
if you choose to implement the product anyway because it's pretty or cheap or whatever,
and it turns out not be the right fit, that is YOUR OWN fault. If you have
demoed a product thoroughly and asked
all of the right questions then there should be nothing that they told you
that you did not verify before implementation. Test Test Test!! It is up to you
to be the expert.
What's your opinion? Feel free to post, tweet or email your thoughts on the matter.
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