Editorial:
CFOs feel a groove coming on according to the CFO magazine (Dec 1, 03 issue). They finally see enough signs of economic recovery to be confident that the New Year will be brighter. Positive employment numbers released in November and CFOs' own intentions to increase hiring contributed to expectations for improvement in 2004. In fact, finance chiefs are more hopeful about the prospects for the U.S. economy over the next year than they have been since the quarterly CFO Global Confidence Survey was first conducted in June 2000.
According to the current survey, 71 percent of U.S. finance executives say they are either "confident" or "very optimistic" about the domestic economy over the next year. That's up from 58 percent holding positive views last quarter (CFO Magazine 12/1/03)
Well I see this as great news; which has been long over due. Unfortunately over the past 3 years, I have seen the pendulum for cost control swing far in the direction of restraint. I am, however, beginning to see signs that this conservative behavior is causing problems for many of my clients.
The lack of investment, the slackening of internal controls, and the short staffing in accounting departments has left many companies vulnerable. This issue of the ezine addresses two area which, I believe, are victims of the past three years of cost restraints.
First I want to raise the yellow flag for every user about strong backup policies and procedures. How do you really know if your back up system is working? Don’t be caught like one of customers who lost a hard drive and found to their bewilderment that they had no good backups. Another customer this last month was almost forced to restore a backup 30 days old, because there was a change in the process for doing backups and no one verified that a clean restore could be done. My challenge to everyone is to calculate what the cost impact would be if you lost your server hard drive and there were no good back ups for Solomon. What would it cost you to recover? With this data in hand, spend some time to determine how “good” is your backup? What would be the impact of a fire in the computer room? Be like the good Boy Scout, and get prepared!
The second area that I see accounting departments falling behind because of three years of cost restraints is upgrading of hardware and software. This issue addresses the question of how many hours of savings need to be produced if you are going to replace an old workstation. I see many 300 MHz to 500 MHz workstations running Solomon. Today you can get a 2.5 to 2.8 GHz machine which runs 6 to 9 times faster. Similarly, I see old NT servers which need to be upgraded, since the NT software is no longer supported. The lack of a formal plan for replacing hardware on a scheduled basis is foolish, in my opinion. Replacing hardware in the accounting system is like replacing the oil in an automobile; it extends the life of the engine. I encourage readers of this ezine to examine their hardware, their virus software, their Solomon updates, the service patches etc and develop an action plan to get in a replacement / upgrade mode quickly.
If there is a major recovery for business expected to occur in 2004, and continued tight staffing for the accounting area (ie jobless recovery), wouldn’t it make good business sense to have your software, your hardware, your backup systems tuned to be the latest edition? Tooling up in this way can allow your accounting areas to better handle the rough waters which are coming.
Included are two other articles dealing with Solomon. One timely article deals with 1099 processes as they relate to year end. This article is written by our very knowledgeable associate Duke Swenson. The second timely article is the sharing of tips and tricks for FRX reports. This article focuses on tips you can do when setting up row commands in FRX. This article assumes you have knowledge of FRX designer reports.
One last thought, the staff at Systematic Solutions all want to wish everyone a great Holiday Season and a fantastic 2004 New Year.
Jeff Cozens
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