Sandra Wiley

Why a “Firm Summit” and not a “retreat”? “Retreat” implies that you are looking to the past and moving backwards.  “Firm Summit,” on the other hand, implies a more ambitious approach—one that incorporates a broader participation base that will distinguish your firm from its competition.  The purpose of a Firm Summit is to bring leaders and firm members together along with outside expertise and facilitation in order to initiate strategies for exponential growth.

Most firms spend too little time working on the firm and too much time working in the firm, especially where governance is less defined.  In those firms everyone believes he or she is in charge but is too busy to lead—so little growth happens.  Too often firms put the same people in a room year after year, hold a retreat and call it good.  But you can’t expect exciting and revolutionary results using this formula.

Break out of the CPA mold

Now is the time to change your format, make these meetings fun and create some excitement.  If you don’t know how, ask your spouse!   The following suggestions will improve your Firm Summit’s results as well as make it a much more enjoyable experience.

Select a relaxing venue away from the office

Get people out of their daily routine. Meetings at the office just don’t work.  There are too many interruptions, and participants have trouble focusing on strategicthoughts. Choose an out of town location—preferably a resort—so there are leisure activities available.  One firm recently conducted its Firm Summit on an overnight sailing trip.  If you’re afraid to sail, try a ski lodge or even a sports arena.

Encourage everyone to participate during parts of the Firm Summit

Be inclusive rather than exclusive—fresh ideas and “new blood” should be welcomed.  Management’s participation is also a must. While transportation and lodging expenses are always a consideration, off-season rates at many venues make them easily affordable.

Utilize a professional facilitator as your leader

Use an experienced facilitator to keep participants focused and on the agenda. It is difficult, if not impossible, to facilitate your own Firm Summit.  You might be surprised at how focused participants become when an outsider is involved. Using a professional facilitator also ensures the Firm Summit will happen as scheduled. (We've helped facilitate these kind of sessions for hundreds of firms.)

Start your Firm Summit with a positive focus exercise

Take time to celebrate and be grateful for your successes. This exercise requires mere minutes but is often overlooked.  Take a little time to reflect on the most positive events during the past year, why they were important and if any follow-up is needed. Better decisions result when participants feel confident and positive.

Work from an agenda and stay on time

Don’t surprise participants. Solicit agenda items in advance and distribute an agenda with meeting materials. Do your homework prior to the meeting. Keep each item strategic and stay on time.

Avoid the numbers, stick to the concepts

Force participants to think in terms of the big picture. The tendency is to focus on tactical rather than strategic issues.  Tell participants up front to avoid restraints such as budget and time. It pays to dream. You will find the time and budget for great ideas and strategies. The chances of identifying great ideas and strategies are diminished greatly if you start with the premise, “We can’t afford that.” Think in terms of who can “pull this off” or “whom do we know that can help us?”

Keep minutes of the Firm Summit and share with the entire firm

Document the “who” and “what.” Accountability is essential, and minutes help you avoid conflicts later on while keeping participants focused.  They also can become very valuable as a resource in years to come.

Think strategic rather than tactically

Utilize your agenda to avoid tactical discussions. Also highlight the benefits of strategic thinking when you announce the Firm Summit date as well as the beginning of your session. An experienced external facilitator is especially helpful in maintaining focus on the “big picture.”

Take breaks of 10-15 minutes every hour

People need time to move around and interact. Strategic thinking is hard work.  Most people and organizations avoid it simply for that reason. A good rule is to work for 45 minutes and break for 15.

Mix the sessions in with activities such as golf, tennis, or boating

Plan for social activities and make a special effort to include those who are more introverted.  Team activities such as a scramble in golf are fun and allow those with less skill to participate and still enjoy the event.  Every firm outing needs a driver for the “beer cart.”

Invite outsiders such as experts or even clients

Outsiders bring a fresh perspective and generally command respect. Don’t expect them to provide answers to all of your problems. You should expect them to have opinions and ask penetrating questions.

Name task forces for follow-up with a responsible person and due date

Each person must be held accountable for his or her part. Allow those responsible an opportunity to agree upon due dates, which will ensure the chance of each project being completed on time.  This is all part of leveraging your firm’s resources.

Conclude the Firm Summit with a brief statement from all participants

Take a few minutes at the end of the Firm Summit to allow all participants an opportunity to voice their perspectives. What did they find to be the most valuable aspects of the meeting, and what changes would they like to see in the future?

Create a One-Page Laminated Game Plan

A one-page laminated game plan is critical to success. It allows you to easily communicate vision to members inside the firm as well as to stakeholders outside the firm. Include your firm’s vision, mission, core values and strategic initiatives on one side.  On the other side, list strategic initiatives with one or more measurement methods, key steps, due dates and responsibilities. No one throws away a laminated document. Review it frequently and hold people accountable, because many firms have great ideas—but few execute.

Firm Summits can be fun and productive!  Thoughtful planning, facilitation and location contribute to their value.  Delegate the planning if it’s not your unique ability.  Every firm has or should have a social chairperson.  Give that person a reasonable budget.  Don’t wait—schedule your Firm Summit today!

Randy Johnston

Whether your firm is moving to the "new” model of computing , Cloud Computing as we discussed last issue, or staying with more traditional in-house methods of servers and networks or virtualization, there are techniques that your IT team should be using. The ideas are to have 1) lower costs, 2) more reliability, 3) greater speed, 4) shorter recovery time, and 5) more consistency. We want these results regardless of where the servers live or how the desktops and laptops are deployed. The following are the key items to ask your internal IT team or your IT outsourced provider if they are using.

Backup Appliances

Tape backup and backup to Network Attached Storage (NAS) or removable hard drives is not the most effective backup method today. Today’s appliances, like NetRescue, can back up your data every 15 minutes, restore individual files in seconds, copy the data to another appliance in another firm location or into the cloud, and can be running a replacement virtual machine for your firm in 8-12 minutes. Backup Appliances today can replace 1,2,4,8 or 16 servers and backup 25 locations or more with 2-20 terrabytes of storage being quite common.

• http://www.nmgi.com/netrescue/

Virtualization

It is almost always cheaper to virtualize than to run traditional servers in any size firm. Oddly enough, the servers run faster, more reliably and are quicker to recover if needed. From the free VMware ESX to the full high availability capability in VSphere 4, virtualization can be a key strategy in both your short term in house approach as well as your long-term cloud or in-house methodology. Virtualizing your desktops is the next natural step.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization
• http://www.vmware.com/virtualization/

Managed Services

There are technical details of your networks that need to be looked at daily, weekly and monthly, and there are benefits to monitoring some parts of your IT infrastructure continuously. There are higher value things for your IT team to be doing than to look at server logs. Managed Services is the concept that with sophisticated software tools, an outside vendor can watch most of your day to day operations freeing your IT talent up for more important tasks. The outsourced provider can also serve as a backup to your IT team while watching, alerting and/or repairing items that have gone wrong on your network, using a collection of sophisticated software that you probably could not afford as a firm.

• http://www.nmgi.com/netcare

Talent Management

The most valuable resource you have are your people. Affordable Software as a Service (SaaS) Human Resources software allow you to align your business plans with your strategies. An example of a product in this class is Manage to Win, recently selected by CRN as a Top100 Emerging Product. Additionally, you can do action items, reviews and other proactive business management using these tools. If you’d like to have a continuous learning plan for future partners/shareholders/owners, you can add this option with the Professional Excellence Path program.

• http://www.nmgi.com/m2w
• http://www.nmgi.com/pep

Business Continuity

One of the easiest things to put off is developing a business continuity plan. Not having a plan could be one of the worst business choices you have ever made. There are two tools that can help you get a comprehensive plan in place at low cost, Survivor or Statistic (SOS), and Agility Solutions. SOS is a self-documenting 64 step approach to documenting a business continuity plan. Agility Solutions provides a plan authoring tool as well as a contractual relationship for placing generators, servers and workstations at your location in the event of a large scale disaster.

• http://www.nmgi.com/sos
• http://www2.agilityrecovery.com/

Transferring Files with Encrypted Email or Portals

There are a number of products that can be used for encrypting email, but nPEN provides encrypted email with firm branding. The difficult job of setting up a portal is done in minutes by using ShareFile if you are not using NetClient CS Portal or the CCH Portal. ShareFile brands to fit your firm, and can easily move very large files. A newly added feature to this product is Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for full text search of all the documents in the portal.

• http://www.nmgi.com/npen
• http://www.sharefile.com/

Windows Deployment Services and Windows Sync Center

A surprisingly large number of IT teams don’t know about the new desktop and laptop image capture and deployment system that is part of Windows Server 2008 R2. When used in conjunction with the Sync Center feature of Windows Vista & 7, you can copy software, user settings and data from an old machine to a new one in less than 20 minutes. If a machine fails, rebuilding a new one with all the settings is pretty trivial. To keep yourself legal on software licensing, you do need to be on an Open License agreement.

• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771670(WS.10).aspx
• http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Sync-Center-frequently-asked-questions

Encryption with PGP or Windows 7 Bitlocker

With the security breach laws that are in force and with more coming, we are recommending using disk encryption on all desktops and laptops. PGP has been our traditional recommendation for around $170, and this product was recently acquired by Symantec. That could be good or it could be a problem. Alternatively, if you obtain Microsoft Open Licensing for your firm for Windows 7, you will have access to Windows 7 Enterprise, the edition that includes Bitlocker encryption software for around a $90 cost of upgrade.

• http://www.pgp.com/
• http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/bitlocker

Boomer Circle members have membership discounts available on many of these products or services. Contact your Boomer liaison today to understand your opportunity.

L. Gary Boomer

Some of what I write you will already say you know. But the question is, do you execute or are you caught in the traps of procrastination and tangents?

Most accountants (particularly partners) complain about wasted time during meetings. I suspect this is because many, if not most, meetings in accounting firms are poorly managed. By improving meetings your firm can increase performance with a focus on solving issues rather than just identifying and discussing them. Open discussion is healthy, but resolution is what differentiates high performers.

Let’s begin with the basics of partner meetings, because problems often start there. Develop and stick to an agenda. Doing so requires discipline and structure. Record decisions and assign tasks with due dates to people whether they are in attendance or not. Doing this ensures accountability and can be easily tracked with tools such as Microsoft SharePoint and Outlook. Get rid of paper and utilize a flat panel or projection system in order to keep everyone focused. Links to any relevant documents should be sent to attendees in advance; however, people do not need to bring paper to the meetings. Any relevant documents can be displayed on screen.

The following is a sample agenda for a monthly partner meeting that includes suggestions to reduce time and be more efficient.

Now that you have a format, let’s move on to improved meeting management and how to reduce time and accelerate results. Most partners are great at identifying issues. They are not as great at openly discussing the issues (especially the "elephants” or tough issues) and tend to get caught in the "tangent trap.” I challenge you at your next meeting to count the number of tangents people take when trying to solve a single issue. Doing so is human nature and requires discipline, leadership and a culture of trust to overcome. With a high level of trust, the number of issues that make it to a partner meeting is few. Most will be resolved and tasks assigned by firm management. Procrastination is the other enemy.

Accountability is a process and not a slogan. It starts at the top by addressing issues head on and resolving them. Non-accountable partners tend to:

• Avoid specific measurements
• Demand equality
• Talk in abstracts
• Ridicule excellence

Accountable partners will:

• Strengthen standards
• Welcome measurement
• Take initiative
• Deepen commitments

While this list is not thorough, the tone is set during firm meetings. How your firm discusses and solves issues is a process. Processes can be efficient or inefficient. Great meetings are not about the technology, but technology can be utilized to assist the leader or manager and to hold participants accountable.

"Edge” or the ability to make a decision is one of the top criteria of a partner. Many in the accounting profession have a propensity to gather more information and organize it for presentation purposes. You can live with an issue, end it or change it. The decision is yours. Putting off the decision and justifying procrastination because you can emerge yourself in client problems is not an acceptable excuse. Napoleon Hill said, "Lack of decision and procrastination are the major causes of failure.” Your firm should come first, and resolving issues promotes confidence, clarity and the capacity to perform at a higher level. You must have accountability in order to get to the next level.

If your firm is having troubles in these areas, Gino Wickman in his excellent book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, provides 10 commandments for dealing with issues that apply to both your firm and your clients.

• Thou shall not rule by consensus.
• Thou shall not be a weenie (strong will, firm resolve & willing to make tough decisions).
• Thou shall be decisive. Don't procrastinate.
• Thou shall not rely on secondhand information.
• Thou shall fight for the greater good.
• Thou shall not try to solve them all.
• Thou shall live with it, end it or change it.
• Thou shall choose short-term pain and suffering. Solve it now rather than later.
• Thou shall enter the danger. The issue you fear the most is the one you most need to discuss and resolve.
• Thou shall take a shot. Propose a solution.

Jim Boomer

In my recent blog posting "Windows 7 – Just Do It!,” I gave a brief overview of the reasons you should move forward with upgrading your machines to Windows 7. In this article I will dive into a few more details for why you should move forward sooner rather than later. We upgraded several months ago and our experience has been nothing but positive. A handful of our Boomer Technology Circle members have already made the move as well with some being leading edge enough to upgrade before tax season. The reports from those firms have also been positive.

Compatibility

As I said in my blog posting, think of Windows 7 as Microsoft’s prime-time release after a long (and somewhat painful) beta that was known as Vista. This new operating system is what Vista was supposed to be and is based on the same foundation. As such, the primary software providers have had quite a bit of time to make their offerings compatible with Windows 7. Both CCH and Thomson Reuters have certified all their applications as compliant. You can check the compatibility of software applications at the Windows 7 Compatibility Center.

New Features

There are a number of new features in Windows 7. In fact, there are too many for me to cover them all so I will cover the most beneficial items in terms of increased productivity.

• Libraries – These are virtual folders that allow you to logically group and view content. In other words, you file it once and can retrieve documents in multiple views using filters. Along with the libraries, the windows explorer interface was revised to make it more user-friendly.
• Taskbar with Aero – The new task bar with Aero preview gives Windows 7 much more of a Mac look and feel. The real benefit of this new feature is the ability to hover over running applications for a quick preview. By cutting out mouse and keyboard clicks, the potential time savings is huge.
• Aero Peek, Snap & Shake – These three features are also all about increasing efficiency by reducing the amount of time end users spend switching between applications. The peek feature allows you to see your desktop without minimizing all open windows by hovering over the Show Desktop button. This makes all open windows on the desktop temporarily transparent. The snap feature is an easy way to split the screen by dragging a window to the side of your monitor causing it to resize to half the width of your monitor. If you do this with two applications you will have a split screen. Shake allows you to drag a window back and forth (shake it) to minimize all windows but the one you are working on. This is an easy way to quickly clean up the number of open windows on your desktop.
• Jump Lists – These were designed to provide quick access to documents and tasks associated with applications. Jump Lists appear by right clicking on applications in the task bar or on the start menu.
• Pinning – For added time savings, users can pin regularly used applications to the task bar or start menu. This gives you quick access to your most commonly used applications.
• Snipping Tool – You no longer need a 3rd party tool like SnagIt to grab simple screen shots. Simply launch the snipping tool and select the area of your screen you want to copy. For those that never had a 3rd party tool, this is a major efficiency gain over pressing Print Screen and pasting the image into an image editing tool to crop and resize.
• Location Aware Printing – Windows 7 can detect if you are at home or in the office and automatically route print jobs to the correct printer.
• Problem Steps Recorder – This feature is a major improvement for end user support. When you encounter a problem with an application, simply launch the problem steps recorder to capture all the steps taken to cause the error. This eliminates lengthy emails or phone conversations to describe the problem. Just email the recorded file to support and they can see what you did to cause the error.

Benefits for CPA Firms

So what are the benefits you will recognize by upgrading? It really comes down to time savings and increased efficiencies in multitasking. As you probably noticed, most of the new features I outlined above are about making the end user more efficient in completing their daily tasks. As I mentioned in the blog, Windows 7 also offers tremendous time savings in terms of speed and performance. Boot time is drastically reduced because the OS starts and stops services in parallel. In other words, it doesn’t have to wait for one service to start or stop before moving on to the next. This leads to both faster startup and shut down. And, Windows 7 really trimmed down the number of services that must be running. It is also a much thinner OS leaving a 5GB average footprint as opposed to Vista’s 11GB average.

Additionally, Windows 7 is the first Microsoft OS in a long time where you can get away with upgrading existing machines. You don’t necessarily need to wait to replace your hardware to make the leap. This can extend the lives of your existing desktops and laptops. We were able to extend most of our machines by upgrading to Windows 7 and moving to solid state drives.

Just Do It!

If I haven’t sold you by now, let me offer up a couple more reasons you should go ahead and make the move to Windows 7. First, no matter how great you think Windows XP is, you can’t stay on it forever. General availability of XP has already been phased out as well as mainstream support. Extended support runs until 2014 but I would highly advise against using that as your target upgrade date. Second, the other software vendors are going to begin phasing out XP support and developing for the future. This means that new applications and new features for existing applications will be developed to take advantage of Windows 7. As with anything in technology, it is less costly in the long-run to stay current rather than trying to pay catch-up once you’ve fallen behind. So go ahead and make the leap. I think you will be happy you did.

Jim Boomer

We recently wrapped up the first round of the 2010 Boomer Technology Circles. Firms convened for the spring meetings in Kansas City at the Westin Crown Center over a period of 4 weeks spanning late April through Mid-May.

Fresh off another busy tax season, members were ready to renew acquaintances, meet new members, and resume sharing experiences, best practices, and lessons learned. While the discussions varied from meeting to meeting, there were a number of topics and trends that were consistent across all firms in the program.

BTC Metrics – Interesting Trends

In addition to Gary's Vision and Strategy and my Mad Lab sessions, we shared the results of the metrics we collect each year. With about 65% of member firms reporting thus far, we presented the numbers as well as some interesting trends that occurred during fiscal year 2009. While firms' revenue per full time equivalent (FTE is defined as total hours divided by 2080 hours) was slightly down at roughly $138,000, technology spending was actually up at 6.1% of revenue.

Despite the drop-off in revenue per FTE, our members are continuing to recognize the importance of investing in technology to gain a long-term strategic advantage. How much firms are spending is not as important as where they are spending IT dollars though. Investment in internal infrastructure and platforms is out, while spending on technologies that promote innovation, efficiency and revenue production are in.

Cloud Computing

The most discussed topic at each of the meetings was cloud computing. We heard from firms across the spectrum in terms of readiness and willingness to migrate to this new model. We had some excellent member presentations in Circles #1, #2, #4 & #7 that provided a comprehensive overview of the topic as well as some great examples of "low hanging fruit" to begin moving to the cloud.

One of these was given by Peter Henley from Clark Nuber (BTC #2) who provided a complete overview of Microsoft Online Business Productivity Online Suite. This offering provides hosted Exchange, Live Meeting, SharePoint and Office Communicator for $10/user/month. For minor additional fees you can also get encrypted email, email archiving, Blackberry support and much more. Boomer Consulting, Inc. has been using this service for over a year now and we have been very happy with it.

The general consensus amongst firms is there is tremendous value in moving the technology infrastructure outside the firm walls. However, valid concerns still exist.

• Availability/Connectivity – The example of auditors in the field without an Internet connection was top on the list of concerns. With coverage improving daily, this is becoming less of a concern but it still is possible. Technologies already exist that allow for work to continue when you're offline and seamless synchronization when you are back online. This will need to be a primary focus of the vendors offering web-based solutions moving forward.
• Security & Control – Many feel that you give up control and expose yourself to security risks when you move to the cloud. How many firms have a SAS 70 data center internally? The data centers that are hosting these services are much more secure than most (if not all) accounting firms across the country. In addition, Microsoft is putting their weight behind new cloud computing laws to address privacy and data security that will address many of these concerns.
• Flexibility – When you move to a hosted solution, you may lose some of the flexibility that you would have if you had the systems in-house. Too often firms get caught up on minor functionality that they could learn to do without. If an existing solution meets 95% of your needs, doesn't the cost savings (and decreased frustration) outweigh the 5% of features you would be giving up? Sometimes the answer will be "no" but I don't think that is the norm.
• Readiness of Core Application Providers – Concerns still exist about the readiness of the vendors to move to this model. Some already have components that are ready while it might take some time for others but the providers' focus is definitely on cloud computing. I believe we will see them make great strides over the next year.

Windows 7 Migration

Many firms plan to migrate to Windows 7 during the summer and we had a handful of firms that did so prior to tax season. The initial reports are all positive in terms of improved performance, security, user adoption and compatibility. The question of compatibility with CCH and Thomson Reuters products was asked several times.

Thomson Reuters' position is that all their products are Windows 7 compatible. Similarly, CCH's products are all compatible with the exception of foundation Document. Based on the member presentations and discussions, these reports are accurate and no major compatibility issues were reported. Bottom line, go for it!

Office 2010

Office 2010 is already being tested in many firms ahead of the general release sometime this month. Similar to Windows 7, most reports were positive. CCH and Thomson aren't able to guarantee compatibility with Office 2010 before its general release but both providers plan to do so as soon as possible after the release.

If your firm is already on Office 2007, the learning curve will not be as steep in terms of the ribbon functionality. Outlook will be the big change as it will adopt the ribbon feature in Office 2010. Firms will recognize the most benefit from Exchange and SharePoint as well as the free online versions which may be an alternative for employees that use minimal features in the Office products.

Virtualization

Server virtualization has been addressed by a majority of our member firms over the last few years. We are now seeing several of them attack desktop virtualization. They are virtualizing desktops or laptop computers in a private cloud. This reduces cost of ownership as well as increased data security and privacy. Richard Romano from Perkins & Company (BTC #2) gave an excellent presentation on their use of Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 to create a secure and accessible private cloud.

Workflow & Automation

Firms continue to look for efficiency improvements in the form of workflow tools. We saw a number of presentations on what firms are doing in this area over this round of Circles. This is an important area that can have a major impact on the operational efficiency of your firm and one that needs focus in every firm. If you are still relying on Microsoft Excel to track workflow, you should move this up on your priority list.

Don't Get Left Behind!

If your firm is not yet a Boomer Technology Circle member and the kinds of issues shared in these meetings sound intriguing to you, it's never too late to join! Simply contact Eric Hunt at 888-266-6375 or eric.hunt@boomer.com. He will get you started on the first steps toward joining these great firms getting better together.

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