John Finn worked at KPMG in the early to mid-90s. He got into the field because he loved accounting. John discovered what many Big 4 types discover which is the job “involved more travel and schmoozing than it did accounting.” Since he wasn’t feeling it, he jumped ship in ’95, moved to New York and decided to get into showbiz. He landed his first gig doing the books for a film called Sleeping Together and since he could drive a standard transmission, he got to buzz around in the equiptment truck.
It turns out, that John’s marginal experience (three years) in Big 4 turned out to be way – WAY – more than most “accountants” in the movie business:
While he began his solo career with only three years of accounting experience under his belt — none of it in film accounting — inexperience turned out not to be an issue in the industry. “What I found out was that most of my peers were not trained as accountants,” he says. “They were failed screenwriters who really wanted to be in the business. I had a leg up on them because accounting was second nature to me. If you polled the accountants in the business, I would say that nearly half don’t have accounting degrees.”
Word must have gotten around about a real-life accountant doing the books for movie projects and in 1998, he founded JFA, Inc. to handle the expanding empire. That empire also includes IndiePay, a payroll software company that he founded to deal with the ‘archaic’ bookkeeping that was rampant in the industry.
On top of all this, John is in a band, Pispoure’, and wrote a song about how much he loves accounting. The song plays on a loop over at JFA’s website and before you assume that this another accountant failing miserably to exhibit any musical ability, it should be noted that he’s actually a decent songwriter. Anyone that comes up the lyric, “In order to get laid, you must impress our filing clerk,” is a natural talent in our book.
We all know about getting a credit rating. Whether it’s for a personal credit card, a supply chain vendor authorization, or the much maligned oligarchy who rate public companies and entire nations. Based on al ion, a score is developed that (attempts) to capture the inherent risk of a credit failure.
How much could firms benefit from getting a Technology Productivity Rating?
What is the risk of a technology failure?
If an objective ratings agency existed that scored a company’s use of technology, how well would other people score your company? Who is the ‘Greece’ of technology?
To rate technology productivity, the rating has to encompass the entire organization and the way in which technology extends to external stakeholders (customers, suppliers, staff, etc). Optimal productivity from technology doesn’t simply mean newest technology. It’s not just about what technology a company uses that matters. It’s about how the technology is used. I met with a colleague in the technology industry recently who went so far as to say there’s still times when a FAX is the optimal technology for a task. It depends on the potential outcomes and workflows.
To date, I think the focus of technology productivity has been too inwardly focused in companies. Companies say, ‘How can this technology benefit us?’ instead of looking at the workflow effects for external stakeholders too. Granted, most organizations are completely overwhelmed simply by this one-sided approach. But if you look closely at some productivity software, part of the “technology” benefit is actually a workflow transfer to external parties. If I had to rate the technology, the score would decline in the event of workflow transfer being masqueraded as technology.
Supply Chain Management
As a means to increase productivity, big companies implement supply chain management systems that effectively transfer the burden for account administration to the vendor companies (sometimes they even charge a fee!). For the implementing company, it is great. All the vendor information is keypunched and filed away into the database for free.
The system integrates with the ERP for invoice approvals all the way to point of payment. The internal technology productivity score is high. For the vendor, every new customer could conceivably mean a similar routine resulting is a productivity loss and therefore would rate the technology lower. A vendor with a lot of customers practically needs a Mechanical Turk just for the data entry!
Seeing these scores could be really beneficial when vendors are choosing what customers to prioritize.
Recruitment
Recruitment technology can be burdensome to external stakeholders while being helpful to internal stakeholders in a similar way. The key to recruitment technology is capturing candidate data to enable filtering and search. Some technology in this field is simply transferring the data entry task to the candidate. Each candidate types out their life story field by field, row by row. From the company standpoint, they see the output of the technology. It is good. From the candidate standpoint, they see a time sink.
Taken in isolation, this candidate time commitment is not a big deal. One candidate typing their qualifications one time in response to one job posting is fine. But what happens when the candidate is applying at a dozen jobs? Two dozen? At what point does the opportunity cost of doing a whole bunch of data entry deter the brightest candidates from these particular employers?
The brightest candidates will apply to the companies that DON’T require a massive typing drill first, selecting away from this less productive technology until it’s unavoidable. The overall technology productivity score would take this into account.
For a company purchasing new technology, understanding the opportunity costs both from your perspective and that of external stakeholders and developing a Technology Productivity Rating may not become a formal process. There is no Technology Productivity Bureau, or least, there isn’t anymore. There was… for a short time… an idea before its time… may it rest in peace.
Perhaps it’s enough to look at it from a more macro-level. Ask yourself, is my business technology liberating for stakeholders or, or are they being repressed? Then, act accordingly.
Geoff Devereux as been active in Vancouver’s technology start-up community for the past 5 years. Prior to getting lured into tech start-ups, Geoff worked in various fields including a 5 year stint in a tax accounting firm. You can see more of his posts for GC here.
This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.
With all the news about President Obama’s proposals to increase bank lending to small business, there’s one obvious question that needs to be addressed: Why not have the Small Business Administration take a more aggressive role? Why not allow the agency to lend directly to small businesses?
The issue came up at a recent hearing held by the House Financial Services and Small Business Committees.
Turns out, the Small Business Act creating the SBA allows the agency to do direct financing of companies, as the You’re the Boss blog recently pointed out. And through at least the 1980’s, they did so, lending to companies rejected by banks.
Plus, in the past year, the Senate has introduced legislation to help the SBA make direct loans. And the House has passed two bills creating programs aimed at direct lending. That legislation would create a program which would exist only in a recession, through which the SBA would help small businesses fill out loan applications. Then, if no bank were willing to lend, the agency would step in.
But the Obama administration is against any and all such proposals. The reasons: 1) The agency doesn’t have the staff or the resources; 2) It would take as long as a year to get such a program up and running; 3) Administrative costs would be in the billions of dollars; and 4) Historically, SBA direct loans have had higher cumulative loss rates than other SBA-backed loans.
Those, in fact, are pretty convincing arguments.
It might just be that, while it sounds good on paper to give the SBA the power to lend directly, the reality is very different. Sure, drastic action is needed to increase bank lending. But this one might be thoroughly impractical.
The bottom line: Ultimately, it’s bankers who probably are more qualified than anyone at the SBA to make these decisions. In a time of scarce government resources and a need for fast action, the most efficient approach is for the SBA to do whatever it can to encourage banks to lend.
Of course, whether the steps proposed by the Obama administration are likely to do that is the $64,000 question.
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