After all the campaigning, rhetoric and spin, the choice of our next president boils down to numbers and their reporting. And what has the entire campaign been about, if not numbers—polling numbers, calculations of electoral votes, use of those numbers to motivate constituents, and the like?
How the numbers themselves are determined has been a subject of much discussion and controversy. Different analyses have yielded highly divergent results.
Think about this the next time you view your company’s accounting services as ho-hum. In reality, much of what goes on in a national election process is a macrocosm of what happens—or should happen—every day in your business.
Data must be collected. It must be reported and recast in ways that are pertinent to different audiences. It’s information critical to evaluating how your company is doing, what trends to be aware of, and how resilient you can afford to be in these challenging times.
Your company’s accounting services also are the critical link to financial backers. And it’s not just the raw numbers. It’s how they’re reported, recast and recorded.
Given the weighty role that accounting system software plays in your business, you would think that companies would employ the most effective accounting solutions. Instead, the decision-making process often hinges on finding the most well-known accounting services, often at a lower price. Only after embracing this popular accounting software does a company realize there are shortfalls they didn’t consider.
Once again, this sounds eerily like the nation’s election process. In the rush to embrace popular technology, our country faces uncertainty about how well voting machines will perform, how accurate they will be, how vulnerable they are to tampering.
Popular accounting solutions are just that—popular. It doesn’t mean they are right for your business or unique needs. So, before investing in any accounting system software, investigate the following as part of your overall assessment:
1. Security. Consider multiple versus single layers of protection. Assess how valuable your accounting data may be to a competitor or disgruntled employee, then make sure to protect yourself adequately;
2. Power. If you have employees waiting around to use the system, that’s a problem (in some ways, not unlike voters waiting for hours at under-powered polling places). Think of the lost productivity employers suffer on Election Day because of those long waits—then think about how much money is going down the drain when employees are waiting around waiting on slow or balky accounting system software;
3. Reliability. Evaluate whether or not present or prospective accounting services give you what you need, when you need it, in the ways you need it. Think about connectivity with other critical systems, such as customer relationship management (CRM). Think about ability to tailor reports to various departments (e.g., salespeople and accountants generally do not read off the same page).
Numbers, and how they’re accounted for, are a critical part of any corporate structure. Staying on top of them by using the right accounting software will keep your company at the top of its game.
