Tired of playing the lottery with your technology projects?  If so, then we can show you what it’s like to work with a Firm of The Future…forget about the lottery and work with certainty.

This past January at the international VeraSage conference, I was talking with Ron Baker about how we can more effectively get the message out that the only way for a business to know that a software consultant knows what they are doing is by having that consultant provide them with a fixed price for every project.

Ron provided a wonderful insight.  The most effective way to demonstrate the absurdity of a particular idea (in this case, the billable hour) is to ridicule it.

Greg Kyte, who is a VeraSage Fellow, CPA and professional stand-up comedian, and I started working on a video lampooning the practice of billing time.

The result is Bob’s Barbecue.  It is the first in a series of videos which will depict all of the many ways that the billable hour is harmful and risky for your company.

For her thought-leadership, she’s named one of the Ten Most Powerful Women In Accounting in Accounting Today & WebCPA (Oct, 2009) and is one of the Top 100 Most Influential People In Accounting by Accounting Today (Sep, 2010).

Our relationship with Michelle is through the VeraSage Institute, where she is a senior fellow.  As a friend and colleague, Michelle continues to help us improve our business by increasing our social media, pricing and marketing skills.  This past January, she did a fantastic job of facilitating the annual VeraSage conference in Napa, CA.  I learned more in the 2 1/2 days of that conference than I have in every other business conference I’ve attended, combined.

Michelle recently published her first book, Social Media Strategies for Professionals and Their Firms.  Even though her book is geared towards professional firms, her wealth of knowledge about social media and marketing can be applied to pretty much any type of business.  I highly recommend it.

Michelle’s book and her blog article below got me thinking about our strategy with Facebook.  We have been having conversations about whether to expand our Facebook presence or scale it back or completely change our approach.  Facebook definitely changes the entire dynamic of the relationships and boundaries between our personal and business lives.  Often very “unnatural” conversations (not necessarily a bad “unnatural” but one that could never have happened without Facebook) occur that are unexpected.  For example, you post a political article which elicits comments from business colleagues, customers, your cousin and a childhood friend you last saw in third grade.  All of a sudden those completely unrelated friends are having a conversation.

My intent is not to frighten anyone away from social media and Facebook but to make the point that everyone in business should really put some mental effort into developing a well thought out strategy for social media.  As Michelle points out below, staying away from Facebook, ignoring it or trying too hard to keep personal and business separate could very well leave you in the cold as you continue to grow and develop your business in the future.

I’m witnessing an increase in the number of people creating “extra” accounts on Facebook to help them manage (separate) business and private personas.

This might seem like a good way to manage privacy such as protecting kiddos or allowing you to let your hair down among close friends and family while maintaining your professional decorum among business associates or even strangers who want to know you, even if you don’t know them.

Others do it not so much for privacy concerns, but to avoid sending business-y messages and links to family and “old” friends who aren’t into your business. That’s thoughtful for sure, but there are other ways to manage this.

Having multiple Facebook accounts is a bad idea for several reasons, one of which is that it violates Facebook’s Terms of Use (see 4.2)

In the FAQs, they more thoroughly explain,

If I already have a user profile, can I create a business account?

Maintaining multiple accounts, regardless of the purpose, is a violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. If you already have a personal account, then we cannot allow you to create business accounts for any reason.

Facebook instead wants you to create a “Page” for your business presence rather than a separate personal profile. So, even if you have a company page (like mine) they would prefer that I set up a “Michelle Golden” business person page.

This is what Facebook “likes”!

They describe in the FAQ that you can manage all your Pages (and ads) that you create from your personal account. And if you don’t want people clicking into your personal life, they won’t. Facebook explains:

Please keep in mind that the fans of any of the Pages you administer will not have visibility or access to your personal account or profile. Any actions that you take as a Page administrator on your Page will show the Page’s name as the [poster] and not your personal name. To create a Page, simply click on the “Create a Page” link under the Sign Up section of www.facebook.com.

This is actually really cool because people can “like” and share your business page and posts so your content can go a lot further than just among your circle of approved “friends.” Also, with a “Page” you can see (aggregated) statistics that tell you if you are engaging well with others, or are having your post stream hidden by others! (gasp)

But let’s talk about the other reasons you might not want to divide your “friends” between two accounts in the first place.

1) MISSING OUT.

When you divide your feed, and “depersonalize” your interaction to the business peeps, you miss out on the whole purpose of using social media for business development! (more below)

2) MANAGING CONTENT RELEVANCE.

By creating “friend lists,” you can designate content you DO want to go to certain people or DON’T want to go to certain people. In other words, if you don’t want to burden “family” or “jr high friends” with your business posts, create a group for them and when you write the business post, simply set the post to exclude viewing by that group.

3) MANAGING PRIVACY.

Take advantage of Facebook’s incredibly rich privacy settings. Avoid sharing your vacation photos (or any other content or links) with your business peeps by placing photos in a special album just for lists of “family” and “close friends.”

REMEMBER, ENGAGING IS WHAT MAKES FACEBOOK VALUABLE AS A BUSINESS TOOL

Facebook is not for broadcasting! (No social media are for broadcasting.) It’s for interacting.

Bottom line is that the much of the point and purpose of using social media in business is for people to become closer. As in friends. As in learning what they have in common and stuff.

I have some Facebook friends who only “do Facebook” for business and it shows. There is no personal engagement. No relationship building. No point (at least for me). It’s dry. It’s boring. It’s a broadcast. No thanks.

REAL RESULTS

Yet there are other Facebook business people that I hardly knew or totally didn’t know before friending on Facebook. Yet we got closer through Facebook. And these people actually constitute the largest percent of people that have hired me or referred business to me as a result of getting to know one another via ANY FORM of social media. More than LinkedIn and more than Twitter.

From personal experience (I haven’t conducted a formal survey, but maybe I should) I attribute this to the fact that I am fairly personal (aka “myself”) on Facebook. And they seem to be, as well. I share and they share. And we get to know each other. We mutually participate and banter. I congratulate them on their marathons, “like” their family photos and song posts, commiserate when they have a rough go, wish them well when they are ill. And I mean it. And they do the same. And it results in building our relationships.

HOW TO GET YOURSELF HIDDEN

People who only feed their Tweets, blog posts, and Foursquare without otherwise engaging others are completely missing out on the benefits of the relationship development aspect of Facebook. Typical user behavior is to “hide” the posts of these people.

There are also some people who, when others comment or congratulate, ignore the messages. Typical user behavior is to stop commenting on these people’s posts. No one likes to be ignored. Sometimes hiding the posts of these people or even unfriending them is a next step.

Again, Facebook is not for broadcasting. It’s not one way. Even brands that merely broadcast, and fail to engage, get “hidden” from user feeds.

WHAT NEXT?

So, instead of creating a separate business presence, first try the friend lists feature to control privacy and/or content distribution.

If that doesn’t suit your needs, create a “Page” for yourself as a professional (even if your company has its own page…you can cross link the pages). But if you go the Page route, be sure that you still engage, and still show some of your personality there. If you want relationships to develop, that is

AccuForce and Aries team members worked collaboratively to scope the projects, breaking them into smaller projects to fit their budget and timeline.  Our first project was to redesign the General Ledger chart of accounts.  Due to many of the accounts being set up incorrectly from the start,  financial statements were not accurate.  We provided AccuForce with a fixed, budgetable price for the project and agreed on a timeline for completion of the project to coincide with their producing year-end financial statements.

Future projects include providing ongoing technical support, a MAS 200 upgrade which will allow them to take advantage of new features such as PositivePay for Bank Reconciliation, and eliminating manual entry of payroll transactions by using MAS 200′s Visual Integrator module to automatically import those transactions.  These projects will allow AccuForce to run their business more effectively and efficiently.

“AccuForce Staffing Services, LLC is a world-class, technology-forward staffing company committed to helping individuals find the careers they desire and assisting companies find the kind of employees to make their business a success by concentrating on talent and fit.”

Based on the book by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, creators of ROWE, the webinar will offer insights into how your job could be:

1. No Required Meetings!
2. No Rigid Work Schedules!
3. No Structured Vacation/Sick/Personal Policies!

Ed Kless, Senior Director of Partner Development & Strategy at Sage, will interview John Shaver, President of Aries Technology Group, on the definition of ROWE, how it is being used successfully, how it is benefiting Aries and how it can benefit your company.

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/180710952

• Tech Talk.  Amy will keep you up to date on all of the Sage, MAS 90, MAS 200, MAS 500, CRM, FAS and Abra news.  You will learn about new features, upcoming new versions, tax table updates and more.  Her section will also include how-to videos on a variety of subjects such as:
  • How to reverse a payroll check in MAS 90
  • How to create a MAS 90 Visual Integrator job
  • How to create an FRx report for MAS 90/200 or MAS 500
  • Using the MAS 90/200 ODBC data source to export data
  • How to import a journal entry into MAS 500
  • How to setup the Abra Link for MAS 90/200
• Ramblings.  John’s thoughts and observations about general business topics for small and medium-sized businesses.  Have you been thinking about social media for your business?  How do you choose a website designer?  How do you effectively manage projects for your business?  Would you like to know why work sucks and how to fix it?  Or maybe you would like to know where to get great barbecue (the noun variety, not the verb).  Or even where to eat on your vacation in Myrtle Beach.
• Webinars.  Adrian will be posting event details for our upcoming monthly webinar series.  A list of webinar subjects can be found here.

We will be adding a fourth section titled Customer Spotlight where we will feature one of our customers every month.  The section will contain an overview of our customer’s business and how Aries has helped them achieve their goals.

You may be wondering why would name our newsletter Ramifications.  Well, the first reason is that it is play on words based on our company name.  In Greek mythology, the constellation Aries represents the ram.  Secondly, the ramifications of a decision regarding a technology project can have dire consequences for your business if you do not have a thorough understand of the issues.  To use a medical analogy, would you want to have triple bypass heart surgery without a doctor giving you an extensive check up?  The same is true of technology projects.  Undertaking one without the proper diagnosis can result in the death of the patient:  your business.

The newsletter is being designed by Chad Barr and his awesome team at CB Software.  Chad’s company is an integral part of our internet marketing strategy including the design of our website.  Keep an eye out for my upcoming blog article about how to choose a great website designer.

Below is a mock up of what the newsletter will look like:

The Aries Webinar Series is a monthly educational webinar series which will focus on technology and general business subjects relevant to small and medium-sized businesses.  You can view the schedule for upcoming webinars along with a description of the topic by visiting the webinar section of our website.

These webinars will be presented by Aries team members and by featured guests.  Some of the future topics are:

• Sales tax audit challenges and solutions to protect your company
• 17 things you should be doing right now to reduce outstanding accounts receivable balances
• Do you want to increase cash, profitability, sales and company value?  Learn from Johnny Gates, a partner with www.b2bcfo.com, how he has helped small and medium-sized businesses achieve those goals.
• How can my company benefit from an internet marketing strategy?  Chad Barr, president of CB Software, will demystify internet strategies and explain how internet marketing, if used properly, can be a valuable and cost-effective tool for your business.
• Are the costs and stresses of managing your network, workstations and servers keeping you awake at night?  Hosting and managed networks may be the answer.  Brian Strong from Claris Networks will talk about how to reduce those costs under control and get rid of the stress of dealing with IT issues.

Here are the details for the first webinar:

For a business, implementing a new software system is just as invasive, complicated and risky as it is for a human to go through triple bypass open heart surgery.  In both cases, the patient could very well die!  Many businesses have been put out of business by software implementations gone sour.

I posed this question to several of our MAS 90, MAS 200, MAS 500 and Abra customers:  If a Microsoft (or any other software) representative called or came by your office today and offered you their software for free, would you be interested?  The answers are a unanimous NO.  Just like the kids in the Lio cartoon below, they are not interested in open heart surgery for their business even if the doctor gives it away for free.

Would you go to a doctor who discounts or offers a buy one/get one free surgical procedure?  I don’t think many of us would be interested.  So, why would any business purchase a software implementation based on price?  Especially when that software becomes such an integral and vital part of that business that it cannot live for long without the software functioning properly.

I seek out the doctors who have new patient waiting lists of several months.  They’re the best ones and they are almost always the most expensive and the most successful.  The same goes for technology consultants.  Do you really want to work with software from a consultant who isn’t busy and can only compete based on price?  Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

And notice how many customers Dr. Lio brought in with his free offer.

What also caught my attention are the markings on each and every one of the brownstone bricks.  Since there obviously were no electronic time keeping systems in the 19th century, the stone masons kept track of their time on an honor system.  For each day of work they completed, they would imprint one star into a brick.  The church elders were confident that none of the workers would cheat on their time because they were working on a church.  Who would dare to pull a scam on God, right?

Unfortuntely technology projects are not churches.  Time sheets and billing by the hour are fertile territory for cheating.  Rarely are time sheets accurate which means that you rarely receive an accurate bill from a consultant who bills by the hour.  In almost every situation, a consultant is compensated based on the number of billable hours she or he generates.  Where does that put you if you are their customer?  In a very unholy position!

How do you avoid being in this predicament?  Insist on an up-front, fixed price for every project before you move forward.  The consultant should be focused on your desired results and should not care how long it takes to accomplish those goals.

So, here is a video that pokes a little fun at consultants.  Please let us know if we coalesce too many vapors!

I will warn you that the video contains some colorful language from the Mel Brooks film History of the World, Part 1.  If you are offended by 4 letter words, you should probably skip it (although it’s really funny).