Here at AMS we work with small and medium businesses that are tired of being restricted by their basic accounting packages.   They need a way to grow the business while not having to worry if their systems will handle the additional transactions, new regulations, or even the new offices and distribution centers being opened. Whether they decide to go with a SaaS solution like SAP Business ByDesign, or an on-premise business system like Sage ERP, we know that the company will benefit.

What we have seen, though, is that while the business processes are ready to be handled by a more robust software solution like an ERP system, there is still an area where some companies have been reluctant to change: financial planning.

What's in a Spreadsheet?

It's only natural. The wheel that squeaks loudest gets the oil, and so it happens with accounting, sales, marketing.... but neglecting to revamp your processes and systems used for budgeting, forecasting, and financial reporting and analysis is a big mistake.

The multitude of spreadsheets used today to plan your business are likely to give you headaches as soon as you start expanding, so what can you do now to avoid problems in the future? AMS now provides a solution we believe is a key component for any small or medium business trying to grow:  Adaptive Planning.

Corporate Performance Management

Adaptive Planning is our tool of choice for CPM, or corporate performance management. We have selected this on-demand, completely integrated performance management solution because it has demonstrated it can take care of the job while not complicating the process.

Adaptive Planning automates the Corporate Performance Management cycle, which includes budgeting, reporting, analysis, and re-forecasting. A truly integrated and automated solution, it allows for tight collaboration among managers throughout the organization, as well as tight integration between systems – the GL and other enterprise systems, and the software used for planning, reporting, and analysis.

Check out our new Adaptive Planning web section and call us today to schedule a demo. 

The upcoming event, SAP Cloud Community Inside Track 2012, is a daylong gathering of the best and brightest stars of the cloud computing community. In a single day you will learn from SAP, LinkedIn, Netflix, McAfee, VMWare, HP, Accenture, and many others how to best take advantage of cloud computing.

This cloud summit is being hosted by SAP to address typical questions from a technical audience, like what’s the latest in cloud computing? What are the new solutions, technologies, and trends? What aspects of the cloud are the coolest start-ups and high-profile IT vendors working on? What problems will they address?

The answers to these questions are grouped into three different tracks:

1. 1. Building the Cloud (All development related sessions, tools, frameworks, quality, testing, etc.)
   2. Running the Cloud (PaaS, platforms, IT operations, etc.)
   3. Everything else Cloud (Business, Management, Related technologies, etc.)

If you are interested in learning more about cloud computing in general, software development for the cloud environment, Amazon’s AWS cloud computing environment, and how SAP is using the cloud to develop business applications like Business ByDesign, then this is an event you cannot miss. I am especially interested in the session being hosted by Kevin Nix, EVP, Line of Business on Demand Solutions, SAP who will be talking about SAP Cloud Solutions.

Event Details

What: SAP Cloud Community Inside Track 2012

When: Feb 16, 2012 (starts at 8am, full day event)

Where: SAP Labs in Palo Alto, or online streaming

Far too often, a company's financial reporting is limited to a set of financial statements and if more than the basic financial statements are provided in a financial reporting package, the supplementary data is often prepared manually in Word or Excel.

A good financial reporting package should ideally consist of a variety of financial statements as welll as meaningful supplementary data.  Some additional data elements that are meaningful to a business decision maker are:

• Top X customers
• Top X items
• Sales Trends
• Job Profitability
• Etc.

One of the more interesting aspects of the new social web is blogging.  Now that we have decided to join the party, one of the first things I was tasked with was coming up with a URL for our blog.  Our consultants recommended using something like blog.accountingmicro.com or info.accountingmicro.com.  Howerver I just couldn't do that as it made it sound like this was going to be one more cookie cutter blog.  That we were going to go through the motions of adding a blog to our site just like everyone else hopping on the social marketing bandwagon.

To the contrary.  In thinking about it, I actually saw this as a great opportunity for I and my staff to finally have a forum to share all of the great information and ideas that we share among ourselves.  I feel that what we have to share is exciting, current and useful and as such needs to be conveyed from a forum much more exciting than something called a blog. 

Hence The Wire.  Anyone who has watched old movies can envision those scenes of the printing presses and the hot stories coming off of the teletype.  These were the hot stories coming to each newspaper, radio station etc, from the AP Wire, also known as the Associated Press.

We are pleased to begin publishing our ideas re ERP, CRM and a host of other IT trends and issues on The Wire.  I and my staff know and appreciate how difficult it is for a business technology buyer to navigate the large and often confusing body of information available from the web and other media.  We hope to help by providing in this blog our knowledge as experienced technology consultants.

As representatives of multiple, competing publishers including Sage Software, SAP, Microsoft, Epicor and others, we are qualified to provide objective assessments meets a businesses needs best. 

We are looking forward to adding interesting content to this blog from our experienced consultants.  Look forward to hearing from our experts in Manufacturing, Distribution, Project Accounting, Nonprofits, and more.

   Historically companies have prepared and presented formal financial statement monthly.  While this standard practice still has its place for formal reporting,  there is also a need for companies to give serious consideration to reporting much more frequently for informal internal reporting.  Up until now, the relatively infrequent monthly reporting was primarily due to the amount of time and effort it would take to prepare and distribute financial reports, often taking days or even weeks.

When considering CRM applications, one important consideration is the level of integration available between the CRM application and your other line of business applications, particularly your ERP.

The level of integration is extremely important when considering user efficiencies, validity of data, and application maintenance.

When considering CRM applications, terms that you are likely to encounter are Integrated and , less frequently, Embedded.  What is the difference?