The Role of the QuickBooks ProAvisor is critical because their sort of an outsourced “rent a CIOâ€, “rent a CFO†that can perform those functions for the small business on an as needed basis, and they are critical for companies like Agiliron who needs local system integrators, as the onboarding and data migration and configuration steps in the process occur.

They have tremendous certification classes, and online tutorials and materials that are used to train the ProAdvisors.  With Saas software there are continual updates, at least monthly.  A newsletter of monthly updates is provided where there is an opportunity for the QuickBooks ProAdvisor to provide ways to help their clients systemize, automate, and be more productive by utilizing the new features.

As an example, the recent new integration with Ship Station totally changes the way the clients can now interact with the shipping services, such as USPS, UPS, Fedex, or DHL or shipping services.  The process used to be when orders came down, they would be exported into a comma delimited file, then imported into shipping service, then after they had shipped it, you would export back out the tracking number for each order, then import it back in, then confirmation of shipment was sent with the tracking number to the customer.  All of that is now done automatically thanks to the integration with ShipStation.com which is a very valuable feature and saves tons of time, reduces errors, and makes the whole shipping process much more efficient.  So now the cut off time for orders is at a later time in the day, and less number of people that have to hand hold things and fewer errors.  The QuickBooks ProAdvisor now can go to the client and let them know Agiliron now supports ShipStation.com, let’s go implement that and I’ll show you how to use it.  Every month there’s 10-20 new features that come along and that totally changes the relationship with the ProAdvisor and brings new value add to the features that the client already has.  (Try Ship Station here)

It’s a shift, one of those subtle shifts, but it’s going to change how the client relates to the ProAdvisor, how ProAdvisor’s become more business software consultants, and the way technology gets disseminated to the client is much faster.  Agiliron adds a feature, it’s in there the next day.

There’s a synergy that occurs with the fact that they can do their sales in multiple locations and the systemize, automate, and get more productive, and it just snowballs, everyone seems to be more productive to get more involved in the selling process, more so that just doing the repetitious tasks, they’re more involved in the sale process rather than doing the tedious work because the solution of Agiliron handles all of that behind the scenes.

In order for small business to stay competitive with global suppliers, with larger companies, labor is an expensive cost, so you’ve got to make sure that you’re automating as much as you possibly can.  You don’t have the luxury of having staff do a bunch of repetitive work anymore, you need to drive the touch cost, the human labor touch cost as low as you can so that you can compete, and that’s what automation is all about.  It’s about trying to lower costs and increase the top line.  Agiliron increased the top line by allowing sales in more places and at the same time increases efficiency and reduces costs of current labor.  The QuickBooks ProAdvisor takes on a more strategic role of helping the client scale their business, drive the profitability, not just do their accounting, yes the accounting needs to be done, and you need a good accounting system to do it, but you want your ProAdvisor to move beyond just being your accountant to being your CIO, that’s helping your move your information technology to grow your business.  New features that come up can really help the bottom line.  When the ProAdvisor who absorbs all this and shares with the client, then it really comes to life.

Hodge Podge patchwork inhibits growth and it’s quite liberating when someone makes the transition.  People come to Agiliron at a juncture when they’ve kind of hit a ceiling in how far they can go with the patchwork, and they can stay at that ceiling and plateau and limp along or they can embrace what it means to make the next move and have an infrastructure software system that allows them to sell in more places but manage in one.

Helping them through that transition involves data migration and configuration.  And they have a 3 hour consulting that they do with the client and with the ProAdvisor to guide them and be a safety net and kind of be a QA, QC role to keep them from the speed bumps and the trip wires that they know about that people will hit that they know about because they have done this hundreds and hundreds of times.  They would rather teach the client to fish rather than fish for them, as do most farsighted ProAdvisor’s who kind of work themselves out of a job because they teach the client to be more self-sufficient.  And a self-sufficient client then discovers more things they can do in the platform.  It’s all about empowering people down to the client so that they can be more self sufficient.  Ultimately it’s about creating self-sufficiency for the client and doing it economically because we serve small and medium size businesses that have limited budgets.  Hopefully this will increase their profitability, if they don’t evolve into this new generation that’s here, they’re not going to be able to grow any further than where they’re at.  Learn More about Agiliron here

Stan’s expression is “Sell More in More Places, but Manage it in Oneâ€.  At the end it’s all about just helping the client grow their business, we’re just the means to the end of helping them sell more, that’s the bottom line.