Like human development, software and professional service companies go through different phases of life. In the beginning, there is the startup phase. This phase is characterized by frantic attempts to find customers, hire the right team, and stabilize funding. Next is the growth phase. During this phase, companies scale rapidly as new customers find a need for their services. The final phase is the mature phase, where a company has balanced the need of their three primary stakeholders – customers, employees, and investors.
Most startups do not want to stay small, but move to the growth phase. Courtesy of quotesbuddy.com
In the startup phase, decisions are usually made on the fly, especially when it comes to support software. This is why most companies end up with QuickBooks as their accounting software. However, when companies begin to move into the growth phase of their existence, QuickBooks is no longer the right solution, and companies need to consider a professional services management software like NetSuite.
Below are 3 reasons why companies should consider NetSuite over QuickBooks when the startup tipping point is reached and the growth phase begins:
- Global Expansion – Automattic is a software company that designs the blogging platform WordPress. One of the key components of their hiring strategy is not to consider location when hiring employees. In total, they have 190 employees spread across 141 cities and in 29 countries. With professional services management software like NetSuite, this kind of global hiring is possible, since the system supports local accounting rules, country level financials, and real time currency conversions.
- Anytime Access – Michael Lewis is the successful author of Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game and other books. He prefers an unusual writing schedule. According to Lewis, “Left to my own devices, with no family, I’d start writing at 7 p.m. and stop at 4 a.m.” Now imagine Lewis was an accountant who wanted to work on the month end close at night from his home. With QuickBooks, he could not unless the IT department has created a secure network connection. But NetSuite was built securely in the cloud. The only thing necessary for Lewis to work on the system during those hours is an internet connection.
- Eliminate Manual Process – Our world is advancing at such a speed that farming is now becoming automated. Instead of a farmer tilling the ground with a rack and a hoe, the entire life-cycle of planting, watering, and harvesting is all becoming automated. If farmers don’t have to till the land anymore, why should you have to manually maintain two different customer master lists (one of your CRM and one on QuickBooks for invoicing)? With professional services management software like NetSuite, information is stored within a single database and accessible by all programs including CRM, operations, and accounting. That means that when you update it once it is automatically updated everywhere else.
Startups need to progress past the startup phase!
Courtesy of pulse-proactive.co.uk
The growth phase of a startup cannot be supported by QuickBooks, but rather requires professional services management software that will support the company as it grows. NetSuite does this by offering global, anytime access while eliminating manual processes. This allows managers to access data in real time and make better decisions based on real information. If you are interested in learning more, please contact us.