Finding the right accountant can be the most important part of your business success, apart from the marketing and business management. The accountants can make the different of your business success. The benefits of choosing the right accountants are:Convenience:
You need to choose an accountant near you, in order to save time and money through travelling cut. Or the accountant can communicate with you through e-mail, mail, fax or phone. You can still save time if your accountants accept your paper work through email, fax or mail. This way you do not need to book an appointment or travel to your accountant office.Cost cutting:
If your accountant is offering you a discount on market rate then you are making a serious saving. This way you’re already saving money where you can invest into your business.Accuracy:
Good accountants are always accurate in their work, so let the accountants handle your work. Usually a good firm will check your accounting work before submitting your tax return including your balance sheet, P & L statement.Services variety:
Small business accountants must offer all services including bookkeeping services, payroll and PAYG small business tax return, small business tax advice, small business planing and small business financial advise.Business development:
An accountants can advise you on how you develop your business by analysing your financial situation and recommending how much you can spend on advertising, inventory, rent, employee salaries, and how to balance between company profits and business expenses.Tax return:
The most important part of accountants work is tax return. The good accountant will work with clients in order to maximise tax benefits and explore saving opportunities. The accountants can help the client understand how the tax law is applied to the business. The accountants can explore options and recommend the best option.
Finally I say small business accountants, are very important, as entire business finance is depending on the accountant.
Small Business Accountants – What Are the Benefits of Accountants to Your Business?
More On Gambling Systems – System Black Box
In my last article, “Gambling Systems” I talked about gambling systems that involved the actual physical aspects of the games such as the white ball in roulette and the dice in craps. Now I will deal with betting systems that can actually be used in any of the games, except poker.
With the advent of on-line casinos, a whole new world opened up that allowed anyone, anywhere, to gamble. With this phenomena also came a flood of on-line gambling systems. One of these is the very popular, “System Black Box” that capitalizes on the fact that some on-line casinos will offer free gambling “chips” to anyone that signs up with their casino for play. “System Black Box” is designed strictly for on-line casino play. While there are live casinos that have similar offers for free play, it is most often a “match-play” situation in which you must use some of your own money along with the free-play coupon. In other words the coupon is worth $1 if you also play a real dollar with it. Should you win that first bet, you then immediately bet the $2 that you just won, putting the newly acquired house money in play and taking back your $1 original bet. (The $1 coupon is taken, win or lose. It is only good for one play.) If you are considering gambling on-line with any of the games offered, I would encourage you to look into “System Black Box” as a possible tool.
Another very popular betting system is “Betting For Profit” and is also available on-line. The difference is that “Betting For Profit” can work with both on-line play and live play. This system is a bit more in depth and involves an increasing bet according to the last play you made. It is a very good system and also includes what the author calls his “Seven Cardinal Rules Of Gambling.” In “Betting For Profit” you learn how to treat gambling as a business, not as a recreational activity. It is a very realistic approach and can work if you follow the guidelines that are set forth in the method, which is what “Betting For Profit” is actually called. Both “System Black Box” and “Betting For Profit” are what I would call methods as opposed to systems as they both do not deal with the physical aspects of the games and concentrate on betting strategies. I have found, through my extensive experience that betting methods and strategies are really the only valid ways of creating a winning trend in casino gambling. I compare this type of method with playing the stock market, which is of course, just another type of gambling. With the stock market, when someone can double their money, it is a significant gain. With casino gambling, if you want to be successful, you must enter in to that kind of mentality. In “Betting For Profit” the author tells of ways to begin to treat gambling as a business and not as entertainment. This is how a professional gambler approaches gambling. To me, it is akin to guerrilla warfare and in fact must be followed if you are serious about winning. A professional gambler sees gambling as “going to work” instead of entertainment. To gamble professionally you must lose the kind of attitude that puts you at a casino game for fun. That is not to say that you cannot enjoy what you are doing. But you must remember that you are there to make money, not lose it while you are playing and entertaining yourself.
I short, I find that both “System Black Box” and even more so, “Betting For Profit” can actually work for the gambler. With “System Black Box” the player need not know a great deal about the game he or she is playing but must at least know the general rules of whatever game that might be. “Betting For Profit” assumes that the reader is aware of at least some good basic strategy for the chosen game. So the conclusion is that a betting method or procedure can be a valid tool to enable a player to win at casino gambling while the “system” type of play simply does not work and is not really valid. Let me repeat here that when I was working in the casino business, we used to laugh at system players and considered them no threat, while the smart, tough player that knew how to manage his or her money and was able to walk away a winner would more times than not, take a small bite every time that he or she played, and sometimes even a big bite! For more information you can refer back to my previous article, “Gambling Systems”.
How to Gain More Value From Project Management Software by Understanding 5 Purposes of Technology
Introduction
Technology (especially “project management software”) has been and will continue to be an important part of project management discussion and practice. This is justified. The right project management software that is implemented correctly can have significant, positive effects on an organization. However, the wrong software, or software implemented poorly can pull an organization down.In our experience, we have seen organizations struggle with the proper implementation of the right software. Many times we find this stems from a limited or misunderstood view of the purpose of technology in the first place. For example, organizations may look for a tool that can just “schedule projects”, or they simply do not think through the broader, strategic purpose that the technology should serve. This leads to selecting the wrong technology or not implementing it in a way that provides the most value for the organization.The purpose of this white paper is to provide a fresh perspective on 5 major purposes of technology (and project management software in particular) in project management.These purposes come from lessons learned in the aviation field. The aviation field is similar to project management in the sense that it seeks to create predictable, successful outcomes in an activity with inherent risk. It utilizes technology heavily to fulfill that objective. By studying the role of technology in aviation, we can derive the major and similar purposes that technology should serve in project management. In so doing, we can also boost the strategic use of technology to support our organization’s strategic objectives, needs, and processes.Purpose 1: Situational Awareness
Some of the most important aviation technologies, such as the ILS (instrument landing system), glass panel displays, and GPS (global positioning system) are focused on situational awareness: letting the pilot know at every moment where the aircraft is headed, how it is oriented, how high it is, where it needs to go, how it is performing, or a number of other pieces of information.Project management technology is no different. It needs to provide situational awareness of each project’s situation, where they are headed, how they are performing, and how they need to proceed. It also needs to provide awareness of the situation of an organization’s entire project “portfolio.” If you cannot utilize your technology to know the current situation of your projects, you are not utilizing technology effectively.The “current project situation” may be different depending on your organization and its particular processes and objectives. It may mean the status of the project schedules, the quality of the deliverables, the current degree of risk, the satisfaction of the clients, or the state of the budget or profit numbers.It may mean how current resource utilization will affect the project, what issues have arisen that would derail the project, or what has slipped through the cracks.The important thing is to always be aware of the project situation so that you can make intelligent, timely, well-informed decisions.You can factor this into your project management technology implementation by doing the following:
Identify the key information that you need to maintain situational awareness.
Ensure that your project management software tool(s) can track and provide this information.
Train your staff on providing this information within the tool.
Purpose 2: Decision Making
In aviation, pilots must be able to make quick decisions using accurate data. For example, a pilot needs to know exactly what is wrong with the aircraft to make a good decision on next steps. They need to know how much fuel is remaining to make a decision on weather avoidance.Similarly, managers need to have accurate data to make decisions in project management. They need to know what is wrong with a project so they can make a good decision on next steps. They need to know resource availability to prioritize efforts and choose directions. In many organizations, this type of information is not readily available, either because the right toolset is not in place or the toolset has not been implemented in a way that supports this strategic purpose.Over 10 years ago there was a project manager position that was held by the author of this whitepaper. Each week, the project management group would spend hours (literally) compiling long status reports for management. They would need to track down the status of everything and document them, along with a host of other information. Is it good to have this information compiled? Yes. But it sure is a resource-intensive way of doing it that could be substituted with good technology and good process. Was the information effectively and utilized? That was unclear.Ask yourself, what is the information you need to make good decisions? What problems does your organization routinely face? Do you have real-time insight into those problems? Do you have all of this information readily available at all times? If not, make a pro-active effort to use process and technology to enable your decision making to be much more accurate, informed, and effective.In order to make decisions, two things have to occur:
The information needed to make decisions must be compiled.
The information needed to make decisions must be readily available.
Project management software technology fits into this broader purpose, but again you need to ensure that:
You know what information you need.
Your project management software technology is capable of compiling the information you need to make decisions.
The information in your project management software technology is always readily available.
Your team is trained on how to correctly compile the right information into the tool so that you can retrieve it to make decisions.
Purpose 3: Automation of Routine Tasks
A recent article in an aviation periodical referred to a certain modern airliner as a 650,000 pound computer. There is a lot of technology in cockpits today and much of it automates routine tasks for pilots. For example, pilots can use automated engine management systems that eliminate the need for the pilots to manage the specific thrust levels, temperatures, and other engine parameters; checklists are automated; alerts (notifications) are automated; and so forth.This automation does three things:
It reduces the risk of human error (i.e. someone makes a mistake while following a boring, routine process).
It frees up the resources (aka pilots) for more important things.
It allows more tasks to be accomplished in the same amount of time with fewer people (a third pilot is no longer needed).
There are many, many routine tasks performed in project management which take an enormous amount of time. Every organization has routine tasks that it has to do to be operational. Sometimes it is inconceivable how many countless hours are spent on mundane activities. This may only be because it is more comfortable and easy to do things the same way that we are used to doing them. Some that come to mind include the notification of events, the reporting of status, finding out if something is done or not, finding a document, routing incoming requests for work, filling out and disseminating forms, and collecting time.The right project management software technology can automate the routine things that your organization does. This has similar benefits for project management:
It reduces the risk of human error in your processes.
It frees up resources to do more important things (such as billable work or taking work off someone else’s plate).
It makes it easier to perform the process (less skill is needed to perform it).
It allows more tasks to be accomplished in the same amount of time with fewer people.
If you implement or use technology without having this broader purpose in mind, you will not be using your technology effectively. In fact, you may be simply swapping one tool out for another without a net benefit.What are ways that technology in project management can automate routine tasks?
Taking status inputs (such as a team member entering percent complete) and automatically rolling that up into project-level status.
Automatically notifying key personnel when an issue has arisen.
Centralizing all information so that there is one place to find it.
Automatically routing incoming requests so that the right person can see and respond to it.
Collecting time reported information and automatically generating reports on actual time usage.
Automatically aggregating all project plans and schedules into useful resource utilization views and reports.
Automatically creating new projects from templates that follow a pre-defined path and eliminate the need to re-create that path.
Automating the generation of proposals and other templated documents.
What this looks like for your organization will be different because you have different strategic objectives, different processes, and different activities that eat up a lot of your staff’s time.The point is to understand the purpose of technology so that you can use it strategically to accomplish a specific purpose.As with other purposes, you need to take pro-active action to fulfill this purpose by ensuring:
You know which tasks are routine and time-intensive in your organization.
Your project management software tool(s) can automate those routine tasks.
Your project management software tools(s) are setup correctly to automate those routine tasks.
Purpose 4: Support for Standardized Processes
Standardized processes are a huge part of the aviation world and a big reason why it has had success at creating predictable, successful outcomes in a risky environment. In aviation, technology supports the standardized process environment. Technology is not implemented because it would be cool or neat. It is strategically implemented to support the standardized processes. For example, part of the takeoff checks process is to confirm that the correct runway is programmed into the flight management computer. Well, in many systems, the correct runway is displayed right where the pilot needs to see it to complete this standard process. It is also standard procedure that when an aircraft is descending in clouds towards a runway that they cannot proceed below a certain altitude unless the runway environment is in sight. Technology supports this process by displaying the minimum altitude and alerting the pilots if they go below it.Technology in project management tends to be separated from the purpose of supporting standardized processes. We may have a process, but we may also be looking for a “scheduling tool.” In other words, we look at them differently, but the two go hand in hand. One of the primary purposes of technology must be to support the standardized processes of an organization. Why is a standardized process important? Because you cannot have a predictable (ordered) outcome if you have a random process. The process must be standardized and ordered.Technology should help us implement, maintain, and improve standardized processes across the organization. Examples include online checklists and templates, exception reporting of items outside the process (aka alerts), and workflow automation that follows a particular process. These types of things support the strategic process and the overall goal of implementing strategic objectives.Your project management software tool(s) should fulfill this fundamental purpose as well. You also need to take the following pro-active steps:
Ensure that your processes are documented correctly.
Ensure that your project management software tool(s) support your processes.
Ensure that your team understands how to manage the process in the tool.
Ensure that your team is trained on executing the process within the tool.
Purpose 5: Insight into Trends, Problems, and Performance
In aviation, there are systems and even organizations in place to mine data and identify trends and potential future risks. Is there a trend of certain mistakes that pilots are making that need to be addressed via training? Is there an unusual spike in maintenance anomalies for a certain aircraft?This is often the furthest thing from the mind of a project manager. We are so busy with the day to day that we cannot (or will not) take the time to look at things like trends and potential problems. However, that is part of our job. Problems and risks are always lurking and will strike when we least expect it.This is where technology comes in to play. As in aviation, technology can make it easier to do this. The right technology will help us run reports, look at data exceptions, and provide similar views into our project management environments.There are two points here worth mentioning:
When you choose technology, you should keep this purpose in mind. How easy is it to mine for various types of data?
We should be experts at quickly drilling into data and extracting useful information.
Conclusion
Organizations continue to struggle with either poor project management software tools or project management software tools that are not implemented correctly. The purpose of this paper was to help organizations understand the broader purposes of technology in project management by looking at lessons from the aviation field. By doing so, organizations can expand their perspective and pro-actively implement these purposes in their own project management environments, thus creating a toolset that increasingly supports the strategic objectives, needs, and processes of the organization.