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On Boarding Your New Software

Executive Summary: Once you recognize that your current financial software needs replacing or updating this article helps you assess your business financial reporting needs and takes you through the steps from pain point recognition through training and implementation. We tell you everything you need to know about onboarding new software, including identifying pain points, targeting needed features, acquiring software, planning the transition to new software, training and implementation. Because we are QuickBooks Solution Providers, and the small to midsized market is dominated by Intuit, our implementation project plan focuses on a successful QuickBooks Enterprise Software Implementation, but the thought processes can be used with Sage and Microsoft products as well… We just happen to prefer Intuit.
As your business grows you will find that your accounting and financial reporting needs also grow. One of the most challenging tasks you could face in your professional career is selecting an accounting package that fits your needs, is responsive to your business needs and one that you will not outgrow within a couple of years. If you are the CEO, you can delegate some of the tasks but you need to understand and control the process. The product must be just right: It shouldn’t contain more features than you need (which adds to its cost and makes it more complicated and difficult to use), it should incorporate features that streamline the operation of your business and it should be easy enough to customize to your unique business needs so you don’t have to take on more manual accounting operations to compensate for the software’s limitations. The product you select should be one that will be able to expand as your business grows. Finally, you should feel confident during the many years the software serves you that its publisher will be able to provide upgrades and bug fixes as needed. While price is important, understanding pricing involves understanding how the software functions, i.e. where does the underlying data reside, a single database or expandable by module or add-ons.
This document provides you with all the steps to consider from software choice through verification of converted data. After you begin the search, you’ll discover it’s not enough to examine a package’s specifications and understand its myriad of features; in fact, that’s just a small part of the investigation. To be able to recognize the right product, you first must have both a comprehensive and intimate understanding of your organization’s business operations, the various processes it uses and how they translate into business “solutions”—the industry term for how the software handles tasks such as payroll, banking, inventory, invoicing and accounts receivable. For some businesses, that includes tracking and managing employees’ work hours, product-production cycles, sales commissions, Internet use as a marketing tool and the company’s various metrics as a way to evaluate its performance, to name just a few. These steps guide you through the actual implementation of software and considerations that need to be proactively addressed. As you can appreciate, the search is not an afternoon assignment. It can sometimes take months of research and evaluation if you happen to be at the Enterprise Level. 1 But there is a bright side to this effort: If you do the job diligently, you’ll discover you’re developing a panoramic picture of your organization that is far more comprehensive and detailed than you imagined. In the process you will see how your various business processes interface, or don’t interface, with one another. Those insights will provide you with the opportunity to redesign processes that, in the long run, will make your business stronger.
You’re probably thinking, “But I thought today’s accounting software was so smart that it could adapt to run any kind of business.” There’s some truth to that statement, but that’s not the whole story. Even today’s $99 accounting software is “smarter” and, given its capabilities, far less expensive than the most sophisticated packages of a generation ago, whose one and only job was to keep the company’s books. But price notwithstanding, users expect today’s accounting software to do more than just bookkeeping. Loaded into the latest packages are hundreds, if not thousands, of sophisticated solutions capable of fully running a multitude of business processes. Since each software product has its own unique set of solutions, in addition to basic bookkeeping— which remains common to all accounting software—it’s not hard to understand why the search for the right product, one that matches solutions to your needs, is so complicated. Another reason why the selection process is so important: Fully installing a new accounting system is expensive and requires many hours of management’s and accounting/IT staff’s time. If you later learn the product is not up to the job, you may have to repeat the whole process. So you want to get it right the first time. You may have an idea of how much you want to spend. You know you don’t want to spend $250, but you don’t want to spend $20,000 either. Two hundred & fifty won’t get you much, but $20,000 seems astronomical. Ballpark it for now.
In most companies, as time goes by, the software and the organization tend to accommodate each other—that is, management customizes the product to better suit its needs, while at other times, it may have to readjust its business processes to either compensate for the product’s shortcomings or take advantage of the software’s better way of undertaking a business process. At better-run companies that use relatively well matched software to begin with, most of the adjustments result in streamlined and automated operations. In a less-well-run business with ill-fitting software, more of the tinkering to accommodate software deficiencies results in slower and more manual accounting processes, including excel spreadsheets. In effect the company becomes a slave to the software. If truth be told, many companies are either fully or partly enslaved by their accounting software, which is why installing a new system is an opportunity to redesign the business process. Time incurred in connection with on boarding of this nature vary and are dependent on skills and competency levels of the individuals involved, both of your internal personnel and outside consultants. In addition to motivation and commitment to implementing the software, successful projects have the following characteristics: open communication, responsibility and accountability by all parties. With that in mind, as the chief executive charged with this responsibility, you must have everyone’s complete buy-in. Many projects are implemented with a C- success factor when the missing component is buy-in. When you’re ready to determine which accounting software product best suits your business’s needs, as the project leader you should follow these steps to ensure a successful search, installation and implementation.

What triggered the overwhelming need? In other words, why now?

What triggered the need to replace the software you are currently using?

Answering this question should help define features that you need or want in the new software.

Pain Point Assessment. Next in your analysis either formally or informally, come up with a pain point assessment. The national poll information above should help you define and focus where your current software is lacking, improvements can be made or additional features desired. A feature comparison for QuickBooks Enterprise can be downloaded from Intuit’s website.
We also frequently get inquiries similar to the following from companies searching for a solution: A company feels like they have outgrown their lower level program, their number of simultaneous users or the complexity of the information they want. The others have previously been at an ERP level and find the pricing and complexity of the software is no longer what it needs. These are from users of older programs which have now been acquired by Sage. The “old names” for these software products are Peachtree, Sage, Great Plains, MAS 90, Navision, Master Builder as well as some old DOS-based programs. The decision to move away from these programs is easy. A lot are pricey to bring current. In addition, when these programs were out initially, there was no comparable product at the Intuit Enterprise Level. By 2012, Intuit had released a number of enhancements that improved the Enterprise features to the level of some of these once higher level offerings. Examples are Advanced Inventory with multiple warehouse and bin and serial number tracking, Field Service. One trigger for existing QuickBooks users might be a corrupt file. Corruption happens for a variety of reasons, bad sectors, power failures, power surges, virus damage, malfunctioning antivirus software and negative inventory. Don’t panic, just call.
Top reasons for replacing software based on a national poll are as follows:• Missing functionality (41%)• Improve efficiency/accuracy (32%)• Automate processes• Update/modernize (17%)• Consolidate systems• Improve customer support• Too slow/cumbersome (11%)• Improve ease of use• Too Complex•Reduce cost• Need industry software• Bring accounting in-house and other
  • Top requested Accounting Applications
  • • Core Accounting (67%)
  • • Financial Reporting (48%)
• Billing an invoicing (44%)• Budgeting and forecasting• Inventory management• Fixed Asset Accounting• Payroll management• Project Accounting*• Human resources• Work order Management
Deployment Model Preference
• No deployment preference (76%)• Of those with a preference, preference is almost evenly split Cloud deployment (52%) On Premise deployment (48%)
While these preferences are currently dictated by the end user, in the next 5-10 years the selection will be dictated by the vendors. The world is moving to the cloud, whether we like it or not.
Pain Point Assessment. Next in your analysis either formally or informally, come up with a pain point list. The national poll information above should help you define and focus where your current software is lacking, improvements can be made or additional features desired.
We also frequently get inquiries similar to the following from companies searching for a solution: A company feels like they have outgrown their lower level program, their number of simultaneous users or the complexity of the information they want. The others have previously been at an ERP level and find the pricing and complexity of the software is no longer what it needs. These are from users of older programs which have now been acquired by Sage. The “old names” for these software products are Peachtree, Sage, Great Plains, MAS 90, Navision, Master Builder as well as some old DOS-based programs. The decision to move away from these programs is easy. A lot are pricey to bring current. In addition, when these programs were out initially, there was no comparable product at the Intuit Enterprise Level. By 2012, Intuit had released a number of enhancements that improved the Enterprise features to the level of some of these once higher level offerings.
  • Examples are: - Advanced Inventory with multiple warehouse and bin and serial number tracking.
  • - Field Service Management, a dispatch add-on,
  • - Multi-currency, consolidations, bank feeds, always on audit trail,
  • - User controls & permissions, Fixed Asset Manager,
  • - Plus the release of the Application Program Interface and Software Development Kit which opened up the database to literally tens of thousands of add-on programs available through the Intuit Market Place.
Assuming you are using one of the older products, an upgrade is probably not the answer, so you’ve now reached the point where you brainstorm with select key members of the management team— that is, identify products that approximately fit your needs based on your organization’s size and complexity.