I am still surprised by the number of CPA and IT professionals - from firms both large and small - who are unable to articulate their core values, or the guiding principles of their firm. That is why I wanted to write this article, in the hopes that you would be motivated to define, communicate and then model your firm's values.WHY WOULD YOU?

The end of the Doug Burgum era in accounting software era has come with a jolt, and a probable change of direction. Microsoft reached into the Microsoft Business Division, into which Burgum’s Microsoft Business Solutions has been nested for some time, and pulled out Kirill Tatarinov, corporate VP of Microsoft’s Enterprise Management and Solutions group and the leader of MBS, which markets the Dynamics accounting software and CRM lines. Tartarinov joined Microsoft in 2002, coming from BMC Software, where he was senior vice president and chief technology officer, a background with some relevance. The big guns were rolled out, notably Jeff Raikes, the vice president who is one of the top three executives and responsible for about $15 billion in revenue. There’s not much to be learned in a 15-minute phone conversation with someone at Raikes’ level in a joint call with Tami Reller. But it shows a commitment to MBS, especially at a time when people are leaving, including Reller, a corporate VP over the Dynamics lines and a long-term Burgum team member.. Key people have left MBS in the last two months. Craig McCollum moved to the worldwide small and midmarket solutions and partners group. Lynn Stockstad, VP of strategic marketing, is now in charge of worldwide marketing for the enterprise customer segment marketing. Whatever will happen, it is going to happen under people who have not worked with the channel and who seem to have in common a much stronger technology background. Back in March, in what can only be described as a botched public relations effort, the company slid in Klaus Andersen, a Copenhagen-based VP to the position of VP of sales and operations just as Satya Nadella was being yanked away from his intended role as Burgum’s replacement. At the same time, the channel is changing. Witness the June acquisition of Iteration2, a $27 million reseller. by Hitachi Consulting earlier this month. I once said that Iteration2 made its living poaching off the bottom of the Oracle market and that is an important concept. Coupled with the personnel moves, and the continuing gossip in the market that AX is the product of the future, the element that could tie these things together is that Microsoft will move upstream aggressively to take business away from Tier 1 companies. Look at Tatarinov’s largely enterprise experience. After all, the lower end of the market is being closed off by products like QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions. In the middle of the midmarket, everyone is competing in the same price range. But for Tier 1 customers, AX is a bargain. From a strategic point of view, it makes sense—that’s where the most money is--if Microsoft can steal business away from the likes of Oracle and SAP. As they say, follow the money.

Online business management applications provider NetSuite has filed a Form S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for its planned initial public offering. NetSuite said that Credit Suisse Securities will be lead manager of the IPO and WR Hambrecht + Co. as co-manager. The number of shares as well as the price ranges have yet to be determined. Copies of the preliminary prospectus for the offering, when available, may be obtained from Credit Suisse Securities at (800)-221-1037.

Sage Software has released the latest version of its billing application, Timeslips by Sage 2008. The new offering allows greater capability for determining when clients should be billed based on billing criteria set up by users. For example, Timeslips can be set up to create bills for clients who have not been billed in 30 days, when they hit an established billing limit, or other user-defined billing scenarios. New user-defined accounts receivable and funds reports allow businesses to create customized summary and itemized reports within Timeslips. The ability to create AR or funds reports in Timeslips eliminates the need to export data into Microsoft Excel and encourages a more efficient collection process, the company said. "There were a lot of improvements and enhancements to our existing features. What we did is really give them the ability to build their type of reports by summary or itemized information," product marketing manager Shannon Lindner told WebCPA. Lindner explained that the enhancements were based on customer feedback. Lindner said this new version allows users to view multiple customers on the program's main screen, instead of just one customer as offered in the previous version. Users will also be able to skip a step when printing out their labels and envelopes. With the new version, once users print out their bills, the corresponding labels and envelopes will be printed out as well. "We gave them the capability of automating the process," Lindner said. For more information call (800)-285-0999 or visit www.timeslips.com.

ProAdvisors span the nation, consulting with many of the 3.7 million QuickBooks customers on how to get better use of their software. Now Intuit hopes to convince a portion of those 40,000 ProAdvisors, as well as resellers of competitors’ products like Sage Software’s MAS line and Microsoft Dynamics GP, to add QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions to their toolkits. Could this plan be realized, or is it just a pipedream? Intuit began beta-testing this channel strategy a year ago, and by its QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions user conference in San Diego earlier this month, announced that 94 people had signed on, including a handful of the competition’s resellers. The goal is to hit 250 around the time of its 2008 user conference and 750 by July 2010. Unlike its competitors, Intuit essentially is starting from scratch in its attempts to formalize its channel. “We didn’t have a bona fide VAR program with a clear role for the channel,” channel director Jim Gregg acknowledged during the conference. “We don’t have much flesh on the bone right now.” That leads to a challenging path ahead. The QuickBooks ProAdvisor Program began in 1999 and provides members with product discounts, free training and an online resource center to help accountants market and run their practices. These members have formed a community over the years and some even compete with each other to be first to acquire the latest certification. Now Intuit must push them to either upsell their current clients who have outgrown the lower-level application or convince users of more complex and expensive products to switch. What’s challenging is that many accountants who hold the ProAdvisor title are uncomfortable with the selling stage of engagements and are dependent on Intuit for help, according to Gregg. While the vendor aims to provide its channel with 50 percent of their leads, it expects them to generate the other 50 percent, he says. Program participants receive a 25 percent margin, which could jump to 50 percent if they sell two deals per month, and Intuit plans to offer coop marketing assistance in the future and expand the Intuit Developer Network to encourage VARs to sell other products. Sounds fair enough. But when you look at Sage’s highly structured channel program, which offers sales training, marketing coaching and clearly defined plans to help its partners succeed, Intuit’s program looks like the little engine that could—or at least that might. Add that to the fact that Sage execs at their May partner conference in Orlando discussed plans to bring Peachtree Quantum into the channel, and the hill grows a bit steeper for Gregg’s team. He says he hasn’t seen much competition from Quantum yet, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t coming. Dynamics resellers, however, are demonstrating interest, quickly returning inquisition calls from Intuit, according to Gregg. That is not hard to believe being that Microsoft’s channel is so large it doesn’t need to nurture it. What can Intuit do to entice Sage resellers to take on its mid-market product when Sage has its own and rewards partners who sell only its products under the Sage Select program? It might benefit by providing more individualized attention to VARs, demonstrating a clear commitment to helping them grow. It’s on the right track, with plans to add a marketing manager, channel manager and training manager in the next three months. But it’s going to take a lot of steam for this little engine to catch up with the locomotives.

Online business management applications provider NetSuite Inc. has launched NetSuite 2007.0, an offering that focuses on three key areas: an enterprise resource management system focused on ease- of use; a global customer relationship management and partner relationship management; and built-in suite analytics designed for the small to midsized market. The company, headquartered here, also has developed new NetSuite Assistants, a component of NetSuite 2007.0 that eases the setup, data import and ongoing administration of complex tasks. In addition, NetSuite has added assistants for complex ERP areas such as multi-dimensional product configuration and transactional form layout. Orders, forecasts, quotas and commissions can now be managed on a per-country basis in local currency to help streamline the management of global sales operations. In addition, all countries can then be rolled-up into a single dashboard for a consolidated global view across the entire organization. In a related launch, the company has also released SuiteAnalytics, a business intelligence tool that integrates pre-built dashboards and pre-configured key performance indicators with new analytics capabilities, - including the ability to embed Excel-like formulas in any NetSuite Performance Scorecard or saved-search report. For more information about NetSuite 2007.0, visit www.netsuite.com/2007.0.

Write-up and payroll software provider Universal Business Computing Company said it has added a data importing/exporting feature to its applications. UBCC said that its data importing/exporting feature enables users to send reports to paper, PDF, CSV/Excel files with partial-run capability by date range, by state, labor distribution codes, and employee. For more information, call (800)-827-8610 or visit www.ubcc.com.

M5 Networks Inc. wants to get rid of your phone system.

OSI UNVEILS TRAVERSE 10.5

How a firm deals with an underperforming partner defines the strength of its management. Well-managed firms deal with it in a professional manner, rather than ignoring the problem.

ANOTHER REASON IT'S HARD TO FIND STAFF ...

Nonprofit software provider AccuFund Inc. has unveiled AccuFund Hosted, an online version of its AccuFund Accounting Suite. AccuFund said set-up, training and support for its new hosted product would be provided by local resellers. Pricing is available on a quarterly or monthly basis with a one-year commitment. Pricing on a monthly basis is only $289.80 for one user, which includes all modules and phone support. The company said that customers have the option of putting 15 percent of their payments for AccuFund Hosted towards a later purchase of the AccuFund Accounting Suite software system.

Intuit has cast its lot with open source. Intuit? The guys with millions of small businesses that use its tax and accounting products? Intuit’s mid-market product, QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions, is going to be supported on Linux servers.

Wizard Productivity Systems has unveiled the first end-to-end system for streamlining the implementation and set-up of Microsoft Dynamics. Wizard Accounting Solutions for Microsoft Dynamics aims to make it easy to purchase, install and learn Microsoft's accounting and business software by offering a turnkey end-user package that companies can purchase online or over the phone. The package includes Dynamics; a step-by-step program for configuring a company's system; a customized server with a three-year service plan; and a choice of three different levels of technical guidance and coaching. Pricing starts at $12,250, including hardware. WPS has offered the set-up component of the package, the Wizard X4 Productivity Suite, through Microsoft resellers for a year; this marks the first time the product has been available directly to users. For more information, visit www.wizardx4.com or call (800) 939-4119 ext. 701.

Advertisements at California airports entice busy executives to “play hooky” using handheld devices. After all, the ads argue, if you fix a PowerPoint and answer an email, it’s not really playing hooky now, is it? This marketing strategy touches on an increasingly common scenario in which the worlds of business and pleasure collide. While this particular vendor is trying to promote the fact that we can spend a day at the beach or on the golf course instead of in an office, it fails to include an asterisk warning us of the downsides of anytime, anywhere access from a machine that can fit in our pockets. *Warning: This device can be addicting and impede on your personal life. Contact your IT professional if you catch yourself checking emails in your sleep. Traveling to various accounting shows put a bug in my head that I need a “Crackberry.” It’s not enough that I run back to my hotel room to check my email every time my schedule shows a 15-minute “open” slot or that I have my cell phone attached to my pants so I can feel people trying to reach me in case I don’t hear it ring. I should be able to communicate in the elevator, on the Starbuck’s line and maybe even while showering. (A little electric shock couldn’t be that painful.) “Please, don’t get a Crackberry,” a friend of mine implored during a hike one recent weekend during which I promised to keep my phone in my backpack—but not turned off—and not to conduct any business until I returned home (are we there yet?) “You’re the picture of a junkie.” I envisioned myself standing still with a BlackBerry sticking precariously out of my veins and knew his statement was true. The sick thing is, his comment is making me entertain the idea even more… Having a Palm Pilot, Treo or BlackBerry does not serve as a magic wand in which all business problems can be solved from the road in a matter of minutes, either. This kind of connectivity has obvious advantages. Most companies with mobile workforces can win the argument in favor of providing their staff with handheld machines. Sales people, in particular, can stand to gain from viewing client and prospect data when out of the office, potentially even winning them deals by arming them with pertinent or personal details about an individual or company they may otherwise not have known or remembered. But as accounting software vendors start boasting about their mobile apps, one has to wonder just how much number crunching customers expect to do on the road. When pressed, a few of them admitted that companies are only using a select set of features and functionality, most of which involves looking up client data—not necessarily updating their general ledgers. There’s something to be said for preparedness when entering a meeting, even when closing a deal is not the main objective. There comes a point, however, at which attempting to conduct the type of business you would on a PC on something the fraction of the size just becomes counterproductive. After all, how much drilling down can you do on a screen that small without straining your eyes so much that the numbers start resembling Chinese characters. Not to mention Swollen Thumb Syndrome. One software reseller I spoke with is convinced the next generation will be born with extra thumbs in a twisted world of Darwin vs. the BlackBerry, in which the cool kids will wear glasses and the most popular pickup line will be, “Nice Digits.”

Sage Software has launched Act! by Sage for Financial Professionals 9.0, a contact and customer management system targeted at financial advisors, brokerage firms and financial services teams. This is the second Act! industry-specific system released by Sage in as many months. In May, the financial software conglomerate introduced its Act! by Sage Premium for Real Estate 9.0. Though Act! is touted as contact management product, Sage described the application as being part of its customer relationship management suite of products. The new offering features data management, activity tracking, reporting and sales tools. It centralizes prospect and client data in a single database and enables users to capture and access key contacts, accounts, investment and financial information and assists with regulatory compliance tracking. Available in two versions, Act! by Sage for Financial Professionals is designed to work with up to 10 users, while Act! by Sage Premium for Financial Professionals is targeted at those who intend to share a database with more than 10 users. The Premium version also includes advanced security features at the user and contact levels, automatic database synchronization and backup, and centralized administration. For more information, go to www.sage.com.

Years ago, write-up software was fairly rare, and the market was dominated by trial balance applications. Over the years, as software applications have become more sophisticated, the distribution has switched, with write-up becoming predominant. While not as popular as it was in the past, software specifically designed for trial balance use is still available, and still selling very nicely.While the two applications are somewhat similar, they are far from identical. Nor is trial balance a subset of write-up. Sure, you enter financial data into either of them, and both can produce financial statements, but that's pretty much where the similarities end.

Intuit Inc. and Electronic Clearing House Inc. have agreed to scrap a deal that would have seen Intuit pay $142 million for the debit and credit card processor.Intuit had announced the acquisition plan in mid-December, after the boards of both companies approved the proposed deal. The companies announced late in April that it would be in their mutual best interest to terminate the proposed agreement.

The oversight body for the International Accounting Standards Board said that Olivier Servais will serve as team leader for the organization's Extensible Business Reporting Language initiative.The IAS Committee Foundation said that Servais will coordinate all XBRL-related activities by the foundation, working closely with private and public organizations involved in the advancement of online financial reporting, as well as advising users and preparers of internal standards in considering the appropriateness and timing of XBRL adoption.

Development or growth - what is the difference? Has your firm been growing at a rapid pace? Many firms just completed their best years by financial measurements, but they're still challenged with finding quality staff and increasing their capacity to handle market opportunities. Because of financial results, it's often difficult to convince partners that they need to change for the firm's long-term development.Authors David Norton and Robert Kaplan suggest four perspectives in their writings about the Balanced Scorecard and strategy maps. Most companies focus on the financial perspective. Professional service firms are no different.