How outsourced accounting is Different
To understand how Driven Insights finance function differs from yours (a traditional small business finance department), let’s explore each facet of a finance function. If you take a more traditional approach to managing your firm’s finances — such as an in-house bookkeeper or controller — you’ll recognize where it falls short of outsourcing at each step.
Mindset
Traditional (in-house): Your new bookkeeper arrives on his/her first day, is directed to the vendor invoices, introduced to the customer invoicing process and entrusted with their login credentials for your accounting software. Sleeves are rolled up and transaction entry is underway. Should there be more? Not only should there before more, traditional bookkeeping tackles the task in exactly the wrong order.
Driven Insights (outsourced): Driven Insights starts by understanding your short and long-term goals. Your goals help us determine the information you’ll need to hit the milestones en route to achieving them. Your information requirements, in turn, inform the technology, team and process we’ll need to generate it. Only then do we start thinking about data entry and how that ultimately becomes the fuel for smarter, faster decisions.
Team
Traditional: You’re not alone if you’ve hired a bookkeeper and/or a controller and hope they’ll know what to do. But do they? What questions did you ask during the interview to ensure they’re qualified? What questions did you ask your bookkeeper or controller last month to make certain you can trust the information they produce? Does your bookkeeper have the time to produce what you need or is he or she distracted by other responsibilities such as human resources or office administration tasks? Do they know how to integrate the financials of a business you just acquired?
Driven Insights: As Jim Collins wrote in Good to Great, the right people in the right seats on the bus is the critical starting point for making a business great. Driven Insights outfits each client with an accounting team and the oversight to ensure you value the work they provide. The Driven Insights partner who is dedicated to your account hand picks the bookkeeper and controller assigned to your account to ensure your team has the skills, experience and guidance required to equip you with the right information at the right time. That information and the coaching (when required) that accompanies it becomes the cornerstone of the informed decision making that drives your firm’s profitable growth.
Turnover
Traditional: Bookkeepers and controllers quit, get sick, take vacation and retire. Some even under perform.
Driven Insights: We’re human (we’ll tackle robots in a separate article) so our team isn’t immune from personnel challenges. The difference is we develop and document a standard process for each client and cross-train our staff so a qualified replacement steps in seamlessly as life happens. All the while you can say goodbye to paying for benefits, dealing with inconveniently timed vacations or leaves of absence… and all the related headache
Reporting
Traditional: Most owners revert to their income statement as their sole source of financial information. Do you know what metrics will keep your finger on the pulse of your business? How does your performance compare with your industry peers?
Driven Insights: There are so many more sources for critical insights. But you’re not alone if your balance sheet doesn't "speak" to you. Driven Insights produces financial reports that read like a book to a layman - and if desired, coach you where you need to round out your understanding. We also work with you to provide the few key metrics that you need to be watching now, and we evolve these as your business challenges and opportunities change.
Accuracy
Traditional: Inaccurate financials are downright dangerous. Yet, few small businesses have a trained second set of eyes pour over the financials for errors and omissions. Fewer still have a qualified resource on hand to field a bookkeeper's questions when tricky scenarios surface. What if you made your next hire or big growth investment based a cash flow projection that overstated your cash position because it counted that big receivable twice? Inaccuracies are not only scary to a business owner, they are also embarrassing to put in front of your bank, board or investors. How many mistakes can your stakeholders stomach before their confidence is irreparably shaken? Despite best efforts to prevent errors, mistakes will be made inside even the most carefully designed systems. So a business must have the procedures required to catch errors before they lead to bigger problems.
Driven Insights: Driven Insights produces monthly reports and only distributes reports which have been independently reviewed by a trained finance professional who knows where issues may lurk. This is one of many checks and balances Driven Insights institutes and oversees to ensure you can confidently lean on your financials for your decisions.
Consistency
Traditional: Many companies only produce financial reports annually for tax compliance purposes. Few generate quarterly financials and even fewer create reports and key metrics monthly. Too many changes occur in a quarter, let alone a year, to wait. Business moves too quickly these days and infrequent access to information can be costly.
Driven Insights: Your dedicated Driven Insights team produces reports and key performance metrics designed for your business every single month. This means you always have current, useful information at your fingertips to help with your decisions. Consider for a moment the trends, both positive and negative, that surface in any given year. Your mix of services sold might evolve rapidly. Growth of one service offering might mask declines in another. Would you have pursued (or repriced) that new opportunity in March if you knew the January project of similar scope actually lost money? Timely visibility into changes like these allows for mid-course corrections that double down on favorable trends and stem negative trends as they emerge.
Technology
Traditional: Is your bookkeeper or controller aware of the best accounting software for your business? How about applications that work well with your accounting solution to help gain efficiency? Could you entrust them to research and select the most cost effective time tracking software solution that integrates with your accounting solution? Or do they simply stick with what they know?
Driven Insights: Driven Insights stays current with the best-in-class technology, always looking to strike the right balance of price, performance, security and stability. Hit the ground running with best-of-breed technology without the heartburn that comes with finding it and learning it on your own.
Advisory
Traditional: Do you call your bookkeeper or controller into your office to discuss that issue that’s been keeping you up at night? Are they a trusted peer? If so, hold on tight to that individual, you’re in the minority.
Driven Insights: Our customers call us routinely with these challenges. When can I afford that next hire or growth investment? How would I pursue an acquisition of a competitor whose owner is approaching retirement? Is that new offering contributing sufficient profit or do we need to revisit the pricing? We become intimately involved with your business and love serving as a sounding board. We’ve worn your shoes. We've sweated key personnel decisions and navigated cash shortfalls. We've bought and sold businesses. We can drive a detailed analysis or just weigh in as needed. Can you say that about your finance team?
Affordability
Price is the sole category where Driven Insights doesn’t materially deviate from traditional options. Our remote delivery model often replaces a single person with a diverse team. Our technology platform and proprietary procedures allow high value resources to plug in precisely where they add their value. This leaves more cost-effective team members to follow our standardized procedures to shoulder much of the day-to-day workload. The end result is a comparably priced solution that is fundamentally superior to traditional options in every measurable category. Yet don’t be surprised if Driven Insights actually saves you money relative to your traditional approach. Add up benefits, payroll taxes, time-off coverage, management time and other real costs beyond the salary and you’ll wonder why you haven’t considered a move sooner.