As cloud applications continue to grow at a lightning pace, the word “cloud” finds itself in nearly every conversation regarding technology advancements and improved business efficiency. Virtually every business today is leveraging cloud-based services in some shape or form, including having a customer-facing website and using online banking.
It is important to understand how your business can use cloud-based services to drive efficiency and improve security and compliance posture. If your clients are not yet demanding that you start working with them through the cloud, they soon will be.
Businesses are growing, and the most successful ones are leveraging cloud services, mobile apps, social networking and analytics to fuel growth and efficiency in their business. Latest research states that small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) use an average of five cloud services, and that number is expected to grow to an average of nine services by 2016. The business application category, alone, saw a 60% growth in cloud adoption, with instant collaboration, file sharing and online accounting taking the top three spots.
Your clients are already experiencing the benefits of cloud technology in their business, and will drive more collaboration with their accounting partners to deliver anytime, anywhere access to financial data and documents.
Today’s progressive firms are offering clients full-scale business advisory services that allow them to lead their clients to more efficient business processes, guided by comprehensive, real-time financial insight. As a trusted advisor to clients, practitioners also need to lead by example by operating at peak efficiency in their own practices. Today’s “new-era” firms are doing just that.
The adoption of cloud technologies has helped accelerate operational efficiency in all aspects of the accounting professional’s workflow. Accounting professionals who understand the value of a more efficient workflow know that they can:
- increase productivity and efficiency;
- move away from high-transaction to higher-value services;
- gain a competitive advantage over firms that are reluctant to evolve their processes; and
- work smarter and cut costs, all without having to cut fees.
The next major step forward for the accounting profession was the advent of the open platform. In simple terms, this allows new features and capabilities to be seamlessly plugged into other applications, adding functionality and enhancing workflows.
With this integration, accounting firms benefit from:
- An integrated client portal that can be custom branded for securely sharing bookkeeping files, tax returns and other documents with clients, which further enhances the client-accountant relationship.
- Easy setup using existing client data and templates to automatically set up users, security permissions and folder structure for each client.
- Batch email functionality using customizable email templates.
- Audit reports to track employee and client activity.
- Automated email alerts to notify when files have been uploaded or viewed.
- All the benefits of cloud storage, such as continuous offsite backup of documents, mobile access, and professional security monitoring and management.
- Remaining in compliance with IRS rules around data privacy, and the exchange of information containing personal or sensitive information
Technology provides you with choices! It is up to you to decide on how to steer your business towards providing a more efficient and higher-value service to your clients.