In 1910 you were considered educated if you possessed the total knowledge found in that day’s paper.
Today, 2010 – what’s the apples to apples comparison?
An example.
If I asked you if you knew what Sarcomatoid Mesothelioma is – would you know?
Most likely not.
But if I asked you to find me the answer would you know where to go?
Yes. Google. (they have 70% or so world market share)
So does that mean you actually did know what Sarcomatoid Mesothelioma was the first time I asked?
Hmmmm.
If you live in a ‘connected culture’ your definition of knowledge (or Epistemology) has radically changed over the last 100 years. If you live in a hut in the Amazon (therefore not reading this post) then your epistemology has changed very little if at all.
So what does this mean? Niche knowledge industries are becoming commodities. You see this with how audits and how they are being shopped in the market place right now. Price wins….unless…..
you know what is not becoming a commodity: relationships, trust, & ability to communicate. Knowing Tax law has been delegated to the power of search and tax applications. If your practice’s ability is built on knowledge then you are headed for destruction. If your practice has the ability to communicate, thus breaking knowledge into wisdom (actionable knowledge) then you will steal market share. This is true for Xcentric, we are thinking.
Below is Google’s Super Bowl ad – also their first ever commercial. An example of what I mean.
A friend of mine says that most people aim at nothing and hit it with amazing accuracy. I tend to agree. One exercise to go through with your team is to ask them what their tax season goals are (they don’t need to be professional).
Here is what I have heard:
*Don’t gain weight.
*Go to all my daughter’s basketball games.
*Take Sundays off.
*95% of my jobs on budget.
*Get every return done where we have all the information.
Happy Tax Season. Seems to be ramping up.
I bit into a Mounds bar and half my tooth fell out. Clearly, I had a problem. I was 18 years old at the time, and it had been about 10 years since my last dentist visit (no insurance and no $). Not to mention, 8-18 were my worst diet years, filled with jolly ranchers, laffy taffy, and Mounds bars and, as I said, no dentist. Not a good scenario.
A day later I found myself in ‘the chair’ with that haunting light over me, hearing deep sighs from the dentist. “Son, we have a problem. You not only need one root canal, you need THREE.” Horrible news, especially for an 18-year old. But at least I’d found someone who could fix it; someone experienced with helping people get their mouth back in good form, right?
Fast forward 10 years later to a few weeks ago. There I sat in the dentist chair once again, only to hear another deep sigh from the dentist, “Son, you need a root canal.”
What? How on earth? I brush regularly, now with a Sonicare toothbrush nonetheless (Link to my Sonicare post), and haven’t had a single cavity in 10 years. How could this happen?
Turns out the last dentist hadn’t cleaned out the infection properly during the root canal. I won’t go into specifics, but basically tooth #14 has 4 canals, of which the 4th is hard to find. My previous dentist didn’t find it, which means it didn’t get cleaned out. Thus I have had an infection for possibly 10+ years in tooth #14.
Why hadn’t the dentist gotten to the root of the issue (in every senses of the word)? In short, he wasn’t a specialist. He was a generalist. He was actually a great dentist, but he wasn’t a skilled Endodontic Specialist. In certain cases a specialist is needed and, in this case, the dentist didn’t possess the lens needed to find the 4th canal in tooth #14. Luckily my current dentist knew he wasn’t a specialist in this matter so he referred me to an Endodontic Specialist. He was the expert and, for him, finding the 4th canal was routine.
In summary:
I had an issue.
I found help.
It wasn’t the right help.
I had another issue.
I found the right help.
How does this relate to your technology?
Glad you asked. As a CPA firm your technology needs are more complex than SMBs, ie. your clients. Most technology companies are generalists and have 90% of the tools (staff and/or technology) for 90% of the businesses out there. But what happens when your audit application won’t sync? What happens when an update blows up? Most likely a generalist technology company won’t find that 4th canal and may even have no clue how to help you…unless they spend multiple hours looking for a needle in a haystack, which they may or may not find, but will most certainly bill you for.
Why won’t they find it? Like the generalist dentist, they don’t have the right lens. They don’t possess that skill. They are generalists and they may be a great generalist at that…but that’s not what you need. You need a specialist.
*Article was written approx 30 minutes after completing the root canal, I blame typos and non-sense on the drugs!
Xcentric grew 50 percent in our 2009 Gray Matter user count despite the economic challenges of the past year. This growth not only reflects Xcentric’s continued success, but also the accounting industry’s shift toward the Cloud. More and more firms are leveraging the Cloud so they can enjoy the benefits of secure and reliable technology, without needing to have their hands in it.
Xcentric was one of the first to offer a totally outsourced solution to the accounting industry back in 2004, with the introduction of Xcentric Gray Matter. Since then Xcentric has released several new versions of Xcentric Gray Matter and also offers managed services and online backup in the Cloud.
Xcentric has also recently been ranked as the top outsourced technology provider by both the CPA Technology Advisor magazine Readers’ Choice Awards and the Association for Accounting Administration 2010 SaaS Survey.
It’s a widely accepted fact people are happier when they are busy. Put another way, team members of accounting firms are happier during tax season. One of the things I have noticed inside of firms is the increase in “chatter” when team members aren’t busy. I define chatter as unproductive conversations. The chatter could be about the firm and/or another person etc.. One firm I work with added a “guiding principle” that team members were not allowed to be negative about the firm, another team member or client unless the person they were being negative about was in the room. It worked. Feedback from the Managing Partner is a lot less chatter and team members are being forced to confront issues head on.
Xcentric
Michael Lynton
Roy Keely
Trey James
Shannon Vincent
Chris James
Jason Conger
Jason