July 2007 Circle Update
June saw the resumption of the Boomer Technology Circle spring meetings cycle. BTC #4, consisting of the largest firms, met on June 18 and 19, followed by BTC #8—another Circle with many large firms—on June 20 and 21, 2007. Both groups had opportunity to network for the first time since last December.
Both Circles followed many of the standard agenda items which are common to all Circles: They began with an Accountability Review and ended with a 90 Day Game Plan designed to enhance accountability for planned actions.
Gary Boomer presented his vision for the future of the accounting profession and strategies to deal with it, and a Mad Lab session featured vendor updates, new products of interest, and the Boomer Advantage Guide to Client Filtering.
Each Circle spent time in breakout sessions, with partners focusing on management topics while the technical professionals shared their expertise on technical topics of their own choosing. Each Circle featured member presentations on best practices and lessons learned from Tax Season 2007.
Document management, IT staffing and more!
As often happens during Circle meetings, the two agendas diverged on the second morning—focusing on topics chosen by the Circle members themselves during their prior sessions.
BTC #4 heard a member presentation on document management strategies, focusing on the interface among multiple applications. That was followed by a presentation and discussion of IT staffing and organization within a firm experiencing explosive growth rates.
A tale of two Erics
A tale of two Erics
Both presentations served as springboards for energetic discussion among the other member firms. During its meeting, BTC #8 focused on prudent security policies as presented by industry security consultant Eric McMillen, founder and president of the The McMillen Group LLC. Eric’s presentation prompted many questions from the group and generated “to do” entries on more than one 90 Day Game Plan!
The BTC #8 meeting ended with a presentation by a different Eric: Eric Benson of Boomer Consulting, Inc., who shared his knowledge about Microsoft SharePoint 2007. This powerful tool has a variety of applications within an accounting firm and becomes even more useful when integrated with other Microsoft tools. Eric’s presentation offered a starting point for firm planning.
These Circle meetings marked the end of the spring 2007 meeting cycle. Member firms now have a few months’ break during which to apply the ideas they took away from the spring meetings and will reconvene in late August and early September. If your firm is not yet a member of this dynamic group of great firms getting better together, now is the perfect time to join! Contact Eric Hunt (erich@boomer.com) at 888-266-6375 to take the next step. You’ll be glad you did.
