Peerview Data Insights

What's your pain point?

It's a common question and one of the main reasons CPAs use our client analytics & benchmarking tool:  so they can easily identify, isolate and address the issues that are causing their clients trouble.

What's interesting is that whatever specific problem the company is dealing with — high costs, bad cash flow, even turnover — it can often be traced back to the same core set of questions or challenges:

1. How fast should we grow?
2. How much revenue should we expect from our people?
3. Do our costs compare to our competitors?
4. Is our marketing right?
5. Are we missing anything obvious?

Why are these questions at the heart of so many problems?

As December winds down, reflection always seems to be the natural step to closing out another year. As we reflect this winter, we want to say how thankful we are for each of you this year. We want to thank all the accounting firms, lenders and individual companies that have subscribed since our launch. Things have been going extremely well and we have loved getting your feedback! Secondly, I want to share some of what we’ve learned on the journey so far:

You wouldn’t play darts with a blindfold on and expect to hit your target every time, would you? We didn’t think so. So why are you operating your business without first making yourself aware of what your targets are or should be, and by how much you are missing them?

As a general rule of life, we like to think that the idea of “Keeping up with the Joneses” is overrated. Move at your own pace, stick to your brand, and define success by your own terms.

1. Every company is a data company, whether they like it or not.
2. The risks of being an "analytics early adopter" are nothing compared to the gains.
3. The biggest gains come from getting analytics out of the hands of statisticians and into the hands of decision-makers.
4. To be accessible, insights should be readable, shareable and actionable.
5. You don’t have to start big. You can start small and scale.
6. The key is to make sure you start now, because the performance impacts of being "data-driven" increase over time: according to McKinsey & Co., the profitability gains from big data investments are 6% in the short term, but increase to 9% in the long term.
7. There are three key roles to successful adoption, though none need be full-time in the beginning: owners, facilitators and evangelists. Owners are senior leadership. They decide what to do and when to do it. Facilitators are the ones who actually go and do it. Evangelists then spread the word about it. Owners and facilitators are usually evangelists, too, but evangelists can be just about anyone who gets it — a CEO, a junior partner, a frontline manager or even a client.
8. Customized solutions, proprietary calculations and exotic metrics can be useful, but most companies will get great insights analyzing the data they already collect.
9. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. 
10. Data can drive decisions, but it can't make them. That's why it's important to position big data, analytics and benchmarking as powerful tools to assist people, not scary ways to replace them.

Big Data, Cloud-computing and A.I. are reshaping the accounting industry, but is this a threat or an opportunity?

Our perspective, as a company that works with lots of CPAs, is that the future is bleak for firms that can't change and bright for firms that can.

Why?

Because CPAs already have the skills they need to leverage this disruption.

The following infographic, based on a meta-analysis of surveys, studies, research and observations, breaks out five additional services that can help CPAs future-proof their practice.

Companies are generating more performance data than ever before but a lot of them are still trying to figure out what to do with it.

Some don't know how to get started. Some don't know where to get started.

One simple resource to turn to is your CPA.

This short presentation lays out the reasons why and how your CPA can help you reap the gains of becoming a data-driven company: higher profits, faster growth, increased productivity.

Companies are generating more data than ever before but how many of them are doing anything with it?

 Jeff Bezos's annual letter to shareholders is getting a lot of buzz because it underscores Amazon's fanatical devotion to continuous, intentional improvement,  which he shorthands as being a "Day 1" company.

Why does he call it "Day 1?"

Most of us think of our CPA as somebody who just does taxes, bookkeeping and audits, but they're actually in a unique position to help just about any company optimize it’s performance.

How?

By combining data-driven analysis with experience-driven insights.