Not your grandfather's CPA

I've read with interest the rants, raves and otherwise from Susan, Vlad and other partners who attended Microsoft's World Wide Partner Conference. It probably would have been fun to be there. We got to attend a party for the Central Region and an information gathering lunch for ResponsePoint on Tuesday night and Wednesday at noon. We had to tack those on to a visit to a client in Houston, or otherwise we couldn't have afforded either the time or the money to make the trip (not to mention the actual cost of the conference.)

On the way home (a 4-hour drive), Bill and I were talking about some of the same things that Vlad and Susan have been chewing over the last couple of days. One of the things that comes through loud and clear is a frustration with Microsoft's relationship and expectations of its partners, particularly the SBSCs – of which we are one. I think I've hit on the source of at least one really big problem.

Microsoft talks and talks about the great Small Business market out there, but I don't think they have a clue about what they are really looking for when they say "Small Business".

Small Businesses are soooo diverse, soooo different, sooooo dissimilar, that there is NO WAY to talk about a Small Business.

Susan touches on it when she says that there are many of her clients who don't want their data out in the cloud. They are very protective of their data. She's right – for some Small Businesses.

I don't really have any empirical data to go on, but looking at my CPA practice, and at our IT practice, I would say that small businesses are at least 50% professional services – Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers, Accountants, Architects, Consultants, Janitorial Services, Printers, Real Estate Agencies, etc. These folks are 1-50 people/computer offices. They are VERY protective of their data – often because they have to be by law or other regulation. They have often just grown like Topsy with little or no IT plan. When we get a hold of them we make a REAL difference in their lives with Exchange and SharePoint. Another 25% are probably manufacturing clients. They – again – are 1-50 people, but few of them use a computer regularly, except the one that is attached to the lathe or mill. The last 25% may be retail/wholesale clients. Many of them don't have a storefront. Many work out of their house. I would include Financial Planners in this group, because they are reselling investments.

If Microsoft ever looked at who/what small business was, they probably threw up their hands because they couldn't figure out a common denominator to do marketing to.

Guess what, they have the same needs that the larger businesses do, but they don't have the same budget. They are desperate for some Business Intelligence – but PerformancePoint is a total non-starter. It costs more than their entire IT budget for 3 years.

They would dearly love a smaller version of CRM – more robust than Business Contact Manager, but at an affordable price point. ACT! has deserted them, they really aren't comfortable in the cloud with SalesForce.com, but they don't have an alternative – and on-line CRM doesn't get it for them any more than SalesForce.com does.

Microsoft effectively took away FrontPage, and many of them liked that, and supposedly replaced it with MOSS, but the price of the web connector made it a total bust for small businesses. What would it have hurt Microsoft to put out a small business edition of MOSS – still full featured, but with a maximum of 50/75 users (to match SBS)? I could have sold that all day long.

Microsoft needs to first figure out what they are talking about when they say "Small Business". And then they need to give them scaled down versions of the great software available for Enterprise – still feature rich, but just smaller. Then maybe they can quit chasing an invisible threat, and reclaim their market.

I've been wondering whether to blog about this or not, but I finally decided that they obviously don't notice anything I do, anyway – so it won't hurt anything to go ahead and talk about them.

They make me totally crazy! They call me – sometimes twice a month – and beg me to buy something else through them.

However – when I try to log on and – surprise – buy something, I find they have locked my account because I haven't logged on for too long. AAAAaaaarrrrgggghhhh!

Recently we sold a network – SBS and 7 desktops (Vista and Office 2007) with Software Assurance – a $7,500 deal for just the software. We went to Ingram Micro (after resetting our password – AGAIN), and went to "Click to License". We filled out the information, and indicated that we would like to be billed. I assumed that I would receive an Invoice by return e-mail, and I would put a check in the mail, and everything would be hunky-dorry. When a week had gone by and we hadn't received the media (or anything else) we called them, and after navigating through several phone trees – ending up in India with "I will transfer you to someone who knows (back in Dallas or Chicago or wherever)" – we found out that our order was just sitting in limbo waiting for a credit card. Now I didn't put it on my credit card in the first place because I didn't want to pay a bunch of interest. I have the cash available and would really like to just write a check – or buy a cashier's check – or carry cash to the warehouse. But, NO. Ingram Micro doesn't accept checks, or cash. I'm not real sure why it's more economical for them to take a credit card (which costs them 2-5%) than to take a check (which they could certainly cash, and then wait to clear before they sent the software).

This also begs the question of why they didn't bother to let us know that the order was sitting in limbo. They certainly have my phone number (at least Sales has my number). They have our e-mail address (that's our log-on). They have a snail-mail address (to send the media to). Why couldn't they have contacted me to let me know there was a problem?

I guess I just have to realize that – while $7,500 is a lot of money to me – it's nothing to them.

They obviously don't want to have folks like us as customers – they want the big guys. We'll just take our business elsewhere.

http://podcaster.l2tc.net/Podcasts/Podcast_011208.wmv

In this edition we talk about tools for collecting network inventories, the Reader's Choice Awards for accounting software, a new template for SharePoint, and some vocabulary to use when talking about Business Intelligence.

Click on the link above to listen and send us your feedback through the comments section or via e-mail.

We had a really good week last week, at least as far as building the business goes. We did a Microsoft Connections event in Dallas on Tuesday and in Houston on Thursday. We've got our song and dance down pretty good, and the presenter we had – Jacob Rivera – is an "Unplugged" host and very talented speaker and presenter. He's also self-confident enough that he allowed us to do a tag-team for our "Client Story" part. Some of the presenters insist on following the script of asking us questions, and then, usually, only Bill gets to do any actual presenting. When we do the tag-team, we have less canned "questions and answers" and more actual conversation between ourselves and the audience. I have a pretty good feel for the audience and am able to cut Bill off when he starts rambling – often the presenters are reluctant to interrupt, and I don't have any qualms about that. We made some good connections with potential clients in both cities, and felt like it was well worth the time we took. Because we are both so Mobily connected we were able to get a fair amount of work done in addition. Bill continued to troubleshoot some issues for a new client that we have hosted through OwnWebNow. We had a conference call with our TPAM as we drove down to Houston on Wednesday. On the way back on Thursday, we were able to make several calls that solved some problems we were having setting up marketing campaign. And I was able to talk to the son of one of my elderly tax clients.

Personally, the week was less than stellar, though. Bill and I had arranged for Grandfather to pick Ian and Kate up after school on Wednesday because we wouldn't be there and Mom had to work. Unfortunately, the school had spent the entire week in some sort of "pre-test testing", and had completely messed up the classes schedules. This isn't a problem for most of the kids, but Ian has a hard time coping with disruptions in his schedule. Anyway, by the time Grandfather got there to pick him up he was in a total state, and Bill and I couldn't do anything but sympathize long-distance. They finally got him calmed down enough to go meet Mom at work and all was quiet for the rest of the evening.

Then on Thursday, we came out of the event, and I had a parking ticket because I had forgotten to hang up my Handicapped hanger when we went in that morning. I will call the city of Houston and beg for mercy, claiming distractions, etc. The problem is you are technically not supposed to drive with the hanger hanging from the mirror (a distraction), but then you have to be sure to remember to hang it up when you park. I suppose I'll suck it up and pay it if they won't accept the number of the hanger that I had, and had in the car, and just plain old forgot. It would cost me more to drive back down to Houston to appear in person to fight the ticket than it would to just pay the d*mned thing.

The third (and hopefully last) problem happened to Bill and family on Friday afternoon. They were driving to Covington (just north of New Orleans) Louisiana for a baby shower for Erika's brother and sister-in-law. As they approached the Mississippi River Bridge, just west of Baton Rouge, they saw a towering column of smoke. Traffic came to a halt. Major accident ahead. After sitting – with no movement of traffic in either direction – for 30 minutes, Bill got out and walked about ½ a mile further on down the road. There were burned out and still smoldering semis, pickups, cars, SUVs, etc., scattered across both directions of I-10. There was no way to get on the service road – marshy ground protected by a chain-link fence – and no way around. So they sat there from 3:30 until 7:00 when they finally got underway again. The first bathroom they came to got a good workout!

I just got my QuickBooks 2008 in the mail on Monday afternoon. I'm pleased we (pro Advisors) are finally getting our copy before our clients get theirs.

A couple of new features caught my eye. The first is the improved integration with Outlook. Now (if you have Outlook installed on your computer) the "Send Forms" feature uses Outlook instead of calling home to mama. This also means you don't have to send a blind copy (bcc) to yourself if you want to be able to track what you sent to who, when. It will appear in your "Sent Items" folder (and if you are anal like I am, you can just move the message to your client's e-mail folder for permanent filing).

The second (that I haven't tried yet but intend to) is improved integration with Excel. So you can do Excel imports from a set template instead of having to re-map every time (although it's still only available for customers, vendors, and items – not for transactions).