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Three firms share their experiences with implementing BI tools
Business intelligence has emerged as a valuable and easy-touse tool to improve efficiencies for accounting firms, as well as their clients.
What's more, with the availability of lowercost offerings, and a user base that is more educated about what business intelligence is and can do for them, there's been a rise in the use of BI tools and software at the firm level.
Below are three examples of how firms have been using BI to better their practices and gain new business.
Standardizing processes
Finns: Clark Nuber / Bellevue, Wash.
Sizes: 142 people
Product: SharePointplus SQL Reporting Services (Microsoft)
Commencement date: 2007
On record: Chief information officer Peter Henley
Challenge/objective: The firm wanted to streamline operations, acquire new clients and better serve existing ones. Within those parameters, Henley knew that finding out more about what the firm does for every client at a moderate-sized firm was a challenge, and they needed to discover which industries were being served well and which were not.
Amount spent: SQL Reporting Services is free with SharePoint. The firm paid $5,000 for the SQL server and client access license. For small firms, there is a free SharePoint tool (SharePoint Foundation).
Process: The firm's practice management software has all of the firm's time-and-billing information in it. SharePoint and the Reporting Service were used as a search engine for all client documents in thé system. SharePoint was also used as a document management tool, as well as the firm's intranet Henley noted that there was minimal training needed for the system - just the time to roll it out to everyone who needed to use it and get them used to die system.
"The tough part wasn't figuring out how to use die system, it was standardizing the process," he said. "Once you digitize it and create the workflow, it makes a change because a good portion of the staff never did it that way or you see me problems in the old way."
In a short time, Henley and his team began to look closely at each process of streamlining the firm's operations, including simple tasks that they wanted to automate, such as the process of sending an audit engagement letter....