Yesterday I was fortunate enough to have lunch with two executives from of one of the most innovative companies I know. Although they are not one of our client here at DeepSky, I was able to learn a great deal about our clients (future clients alike) from our conversation. Because like them, DeepSky clients are both innovative and courageous.
It’s all about choice
Before our clients became, well, our clients. They had to possess a great deal of courage to be willing to look into their existing accounting processes, feel the pain and admit whatever shortcomings it has. At which point, they have 2 choices:
- Try to do it on their own convince themselves that there is nothing they can do about it and move on
- Decide to do something about it and seek out new solutions that may or may not solve their “pain.” Fortunately for them (and us,) some of those who chose path #2 ended up finding DeepSky and eventually become our client.
Example – It takes courage to change
Back to the company execs who I was having lunch with. I didn’t consider them an innovative company because of what they sell or how they sell it. I consider them an innovative company because of their operations – they outsourced or co-sourced almost everything that is not their core competency. On top of which, they utilized newer and more relevant (not more) technologies than most companies that I’ve worked with – cloud collaboration, online SaaS, the whole nine yard.
To make the story more specific to DeepSky and what we do here (outsourced accounting in case you were wondering) – they are an 8-digits revenue company with an extremely dynamic accounting operation and (read carefully) NO real in-house accounting department. No CFO. No Controller. Just 2 staffs and a partially outsourced solution. Did I mention they are able to obtain nearly instantaneous dynamic business information through their accounting process?
Examine the issue
Rewind a few years back to the time where the company was still on their old-fashioned accounting system and had been treading just over the 7-digits revenue figure – the time when the company felt the pain. The CEO recalled that the first time he really felt the pain was when he tried to gather enough financial information from his books to update his business plan, see where his company stands and ponder upon how he is going to take it to the next level. Sure, the company had an accounting department and was doing an industry standard job at it, but the numbers didn’t tell a story.
Seek for help
He, unlike other “normal” businessperson, looked deeper into the problem and wanted to know why. He recalls, “it wasn’t until I looked further into it did I realize just how weak mediocre my accounting operation was.” They were doing all the debits and credits like every accounting textbook said to – yet, it didn’t serve any purpose beyond giving the CEO “an idea of”how he was doing – which, he already “has an idea of” from being involved with the day-to-day operations of the company.
Again, unlike any other “normal” businessperson, he bore the uncomfortableness of first seeking help then, more importantly, he changed the habits of the company.
That was years ago, so we enjoy the fact and comfort knowing that the change worked – after all, it’s a success story. However, at the time of change, the end result of this big shift in paradigm was a big unknown to the company.
Execute the decision
They didn’t know if the new accounting software they were implementing worked the way the sales had made it sound, they didn’t know if the unconventional accounting department setup made sense at all (there were no other companies like it.) All they did know was that the old ways didn’t work, so they did their due diligence, mustered up enough courage to bear the initial uncomfortableness of the change then executed their decision – beautifully.
In many ways, DeepSky clients today are very similar to this company a few years ago. They feel the pain of the old ways, see the benefits of our new methodology/system, did their due diligence and gathered enough courage to see through the change.
And for that, we are humbled by and thankful for them to place such a great deal of trust in our company and our solutions. So, about that dynamic real-time financial information we were talking about… 🙂
Happy Friday people.
