Ramblings

In this blog entry, I want to take on the financial case for moving your business to the Cloud. First, let's discuss what the Cloud is and what it isn't in the context of business applications. According to NIST (National Institute of Science and Technology) “Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.”

NIST further defines that there are 5 Characteristics
1) On-Demand Self Service
2) Broad Network Access
3) Resource Pooling
4) Rapid Elasticity
5) Measured Service

The Cloud, for purposes of ERP and CRM applications, will be discussed in the context of Software as a Service (SaaS) and in a Hybrid Cloud model. This means that we won't discuss Platform as a Service or Infrastructure as a Service nor will we discuss community or public clouds.

Now, let's tackle the financial case for the Cloud. Having been in this industry since 1994, here are my observations about business applications. First, every business needs business applications. Typewriters are replaced with Microsoft Word and related applications. 13-column ledgers (yes, remember those big green sheets in the Accounting Department?) are replaced with Excel and accounting applications such as Dynamics GP (Great Plains) and SL (Solomon) or at the very least, off the shelf software like QuickBooks. Rolodexes are replaced by CRM systems of varying sophistication such as Act or Dynamics CRM. So the conclusion is that business applications are here to stay. Are you willing to give up your e-mail or your smart phone?

How did we get where we are at? In the 1980's, the microcomputer began replacing the mainframe and became prevalent in business. This grew into a multi-billion dollar industry over the course of the next few decades. Solutions grew up around the networked PC and then quickly transformed into individualized computing power. Every user now has the ability to create their own Word documents, enter accounting transactions and track sales. This functionality is available for every business that can pull out a laptop or desktop and setup a business. This disruptive change has lowered the barrier to entry for every individual and company. We need only to look at the music industry changing from powerful record labels to individual musicians publishing their music to iTunes.

Today, disruptive forces abound. I am not an economist but I see the effects of the economy on business. It affects almost every industry and every company. Businesses today are forced to watch every dollar they spend and tie it directly to revenue and profit. Therefore, businesses are very smart about their investments and therefore are spending on assets that directly improve their bottom line. Since 1994, I have said many times that accounting and CRM systems are necessary for every business whether in good times or bad. In good times, businesses need to capture more customers than their competitors. In bad times, businesses need to serve their existing customers so they don't leave and they need to control costs.

However, business applications that were bought just five years ago do not provide the critical functions needed in this economy. Further, what if this economy doesn't turn around for a few years? What is a business to do in order to either maintain their market share or ideally capture market share from the competition?

Investing in a new ERP (Accounting) or CRM (Sales) system has historically required a significant amount of capital to be used up front to buy software and an equal or greater amount of capital to implement the software. This is capital that most business advisers would recommend being used for new machines, labor or other revenue and profit initiatives.

The solution is to research and deploy cloud-based solutions such as Microsoft's Exchange Online, NjevityToGo ERP (Dynamics GP & SL) or NjevityToGo CRM (Dynamics CRM). These solutions have the same low barrier to entry that every business expects today. Most businesses pay $100 to $150 per user per month for a smart phone and service. For the same cost per month with a much smaller number of users in the business, you can deploy Microsoft Dynamics GP Accounting software to provide full financial, distribution, reporting and business intelligence functionality.

This is a great leveling in the playing field between you and much larger competitors. In fact, you as a small business, have the upper hand! You have an unprecedented opportunity to implement a new system whereas your larger competitors will still be spending money on their old system with old capabilities.

Our approach to implementation, the other major expenditure you have in a system change, is the key to a successful low cost solution. With our QuickStart and SmartStart implementations, we provide you with project plans, templates, online training and a host of additional resources to reduce the costs of implementation. This approach puts the majority of the data conversion, training and report writing work on your team. The result is that you do not need to pay consulting fees and your team learns the system much quicker. There is also an ownership of the new system that results from this approach.

In conclusion, the time to make a business application change is now. It is time to capture market share from your competition. It is time to streamline your business processes. It is time to finally be able to make informed business decisions. If you have further questions, contact me: Robert Houdeshell rhoudeshell@njevity.com for a custom presentation. I am willing to work with you to lay out a plan to improve your business and capture more of the revenue and profit your company deserves.

When you open multiple Microsoft Word documents, you are able to put one on your main monitor and one on your secondary monitor to compare, copy and paste from one document to another. However, if you open multiple spreadsheets from Excel, you can't do the same thing! This has annoyed me since 2007 when Microsoft introduced the functionality in Word but not in Excel.

Well, I found a way around it. Here is how.

1) Open your first Excel spreadsheet. Place it on the monitor you wish to work with it.
2) DO NOT open the second spreadsheet with the Excel program that is open. Instead, go to your Start Menu and open Excel from there. Then do a File >> Open and open your second spreadsheet.
3) Place the second spreadsheet on the monitor you wish to view the spreadsheet.

As far as I can tell, since you're opening a second instance of Excel, you can place it wherever you wish.

Have you ever deleted an Active Directory user in error? This recently happened to us. We were cleaning up our Microsoft Exchange environment as a preparation to migrating to Microsoft Online Services, part of the NjevityToGo offering. Somehow we managed to delete the account of our company's president. Not good. An Active Directory user account can control all aspects of a user’s computing life. The security for email, user folders and profile are all controlled from the Active Directory account. Almost immediately Chris could no longer connect to email.

We could create a new account, give that account access to the old account’s data and migrate everything over but I've done something like that before. Years ago we migrated a client network from a workgroup environment to Active Directory. It was time consuming and laborious. Neither my boss nor I was looking forward to that process.

Microsoft has a recovery process if you have a backup of the System State of a Domain Controller. It is also a slow methodical process. If you feel like using their supported method you can find it at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/840001.

BUT, WAIT! When you delete something in Active Directory it doesn’t get deleted immediately. It gets “tomb stoned.” The object gets its IsDeleted property set to True. The object doesn’t actually get deleted for at least 60 days. GREAT, but how do you get to it. Easy, thanks to Guy Teverovsky, an MVP from Israel. Some time ago he wrote a command line tool for recovering deleted objects. He followed that up with a GUI version. You can download it for FREE from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963906.aspx. Once installed you can “enumerate” the tombstones, preview the attributes and restore. Once the object is restored you may still need to move it to the correct Organizational Unit and add it back to the correct Security Groups but that is much easier than migrating data from a deleted account.

This too will pass. It has not come to stay---it has come to pass.

Remember a few days ago I suggested we could all help each other in these difficult economic times by just making an business referral for a product or service that you have been impressed with to a business associate. Well the Referral Week is almost over, so make a referral and then go to www.makeareferralweek.com and record your referral.

Tell your friends, networks and colleagues on email and social networks to visit http://www.makeareferralweek.com and make a referral too.

If you are on twitter, consider posting a tweet about your referral, something like: "I just made a referral during Make a Referral Week - the small biz stimulus package, hope you will too"

I'm sure you'll think of something - thanks a bunch.