We recently just outsourced all of our bookkeeping and accounting to a firm whom I have never stepped foot in their doors and most likely never will.  The owner of the firm is a very outgoing guy and knowledgable in his arena.  We have never met in person and I am fairly confident he has never even been to Southwest Missouri at all.  How then, could I have confidence in turning over our entire accounting and bookkeeping to someone I have never shaken their hand?  Simple – I don’t care about the accounting work.  

Now before you get too excited and same I am completely off my rocker, I am by no means saying that I think accounting work is not critical for a sustainable business.  I just don’t care about the accounting work.  What I care about is the result of the accounting work. Thats all any of us really and truly care about – the result. (The exception of course to this is whatever area of specialty that we each have as our own Zone of Genius)

Focus On The Results

Technology is no different.  You don’t care about technology per se, but you live or die by the results that it delivers.  It can deliver exception results that provide time and money saving efficiencies and advancements in operations.   Or it can deliver disastrous results that creates constant problems and roadblocks.  The choice comes down to how much you focus on what results you want out of technology.  You have to decide and that decision dictates what you will get.

When I was interviewing CPA companies looking for the right partner, I never asked – how many people do you have on staff that will help us enter our payables or –  how quickly do you reconcile the bank statements or even – how close are you to our offices?  Those are definitely valid questions.  However they do not speak to the results I am looking for.  My greatest need is not someone that is quick to download a bank statement and verify the entries.  What I care about most is having confidence in the financial numbers that i use to make daily decisions on with our business and making the most out of the income that we generate.  So my clarifying questions when interviewing CPA firms were;

• Are you familiar with our industry, process, and tools?
• Explain how your process can save me time/money when it comes to financial operations
• Can you help make the most of our business income with tax strategies and operational structures?
•  How quickly can you show us a return on this investment?

These are results driven questions…. not work driven questions.

So when it comes to technology, you don’t care about technology.  You care about the results that it can provide for your operations.  As such, you need to be asking questions that help you decide which managed services provider or technology partner can help you achieve those results in the shortest and most reliable manner.