How much does your accountant know about sales tax? Maybe not as much as you think. A startling number of accounting professionals botched basic questions about sales tax, from online tax to nexus to audit risk (according to a recent Wakefield survey*).
I have been consulting now for over 27 years. When I first started, verbal communication was the accepted and expected way of exchanging ideas, concerns, and complaints. It was efficient and thus you completed your objectives in a timely manor.
Then came the 90’s and the Internet. Email entered our world and people started exchanging ideas via email. We still called each other to discuss issues and exchange information, but email slowly started making it’s way into how we communicate. People felt it was more efficient; they got more done because they could work on other tasks while waiting for a response.
Then the 21’st century came and everything really started to explode…
As a first step to any project, gathering and understanding requirements is vital to your success; and yet we spend little to no time on this very important process. Identifying and involving the appropriate stakeholders during the requirements phase is just as important as eliciting those perfect requirements.
I spent many years as a business analyst, and I have found that for me the most effective way to elicit requirements was to conduct requirement workshops. In this workshop, I identify specific topics on my agenda and pick stakeholders with clout, i.e. those that are well versed in their specific business units. Also, I push for using stakeholders from different business units to give the workshop the benefit of multiple perspectives.
The adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” refers to the notion that a complex idea can be conveyed with just a single still image. It also appropriately characterizes one of the main goals of data visualization, namely making it possible to absorb large amounts of data quickly.
The point of Power View is to make it very easy to create pretty, interactive data presentations or reports that will make your boss go “Wow, how did you do that? You’re a genius!” Well, OK, maybe not that far but you’ll definitely look smart. Plus, it also can be used to explore your data visually without worrying about messing anything up and even make reports on your own, without IT help.
Continuing from my previous post about Dynamics GP & CRM integration I will go over the tools and technical details on the integration. You don’t have to decide on the integration tool right from the beginning, again it will depend on your requirements and also keeping in mind your future needs. The marketplace is flooded with a lot of integration tools for GP and CRM so take your time in understanding your needs and then choose the integration application.
As a software developer I am not much of a web designer. Sure I can create a functional website from scratch. It will have all the basic things a normal website would have: a header, navigation bar, main content, and anything else the user wants. Unfortunately, although functional, it won’t be the most eye pleasing design.
Have you ever sat down on a park bench or table in your mall food court (really anywhere in a populated area) and just people watched?
To People Watch (v.): to observe, in silence, the surrounding population’s individualism to obtain their personality traits or overall view of the world.
Truthfully, this is a habit I have been doing since I was little. My mom and I would go to the park, lie out at the beach, or even drink our milkshakes on the sidewalk in front of our house, and just watch people. In some ways, it was humorous; in others, it slowed down the world in such a way that from watching what people did (without judgment) allowed us to understand the world better. You got to see a different side of people, and you also paid attention to people that, because many of our lives are so busy, we would just skip over. It gives a different outlook on things. And thus why I use it, or a version of it, as a marketing person today.
A company’s ERP system can be one of its most productive assets and provides an opportunity to collect and report on vital information, promoting both success and growth. With this in mind, the system should be monitored, maintained, and understood to support the company’s current demands and future goals. Your ERP system puts you into the driver’s seat to help steer the organization in the correct direction.
If you’ve been part of the Dynamics world for a while you may have noticed a pattern. GP, AX, NAV… they are all widely used and discussed tools. Conferences all over the country (and world) have sessions and talks about them endlessly. I was at the Microsoft World Partner Conference this year and there was a Dynamics table set up with signs and a person behind each to aid you. I went down the row and saw: GP…AX…NAV… and that was all. I thought to myself “something is missing” and then it dawned on me, Dynamics SL was not represented.
These days so much networking is done online; email, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to mention a few. Not allowing for face to face interaction and the opportunity let alone the availability to really sit and discuss / debate your industry. There is something to be said for just sitting around and talking face to face with colleagues.
I get my fair share of knowledge and excitement from events that I attend, but those are not the only places I find value. I feel a great deal of value comes from the networking at not only the formal networking events set up at these things, but the after everything has shut down and people are more laid back type of networking.
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