The costs and difficulty of backups, updates and disparate applications too often deter companies from implementing proper procedures. But can you really afford the risks?
by Rick Telberg
for Hewlett-Packard
If you’ve already guided your small and mid-size businesses to accounting software applications, then you may find new opportunities in helping them safeguard the data in those applications and other software they have since added.
Data security is, in fact, one of the biggest concerns among companies with between 50 and 499 employees, according to researchers at AMI-Partners. Forty-two percent of those companies identified enhanced data security as their biggest IT concern, followed by data backup and disaster recovery, cited by 38%, and improved data storage, 31%. The results closely parallel our own findings at Bay Street Group, which focuses on finance and accounting professionals.The biggest security issue may lie in software databases. While accounting software applications with their own databases have been neatly handling that key internal requirement for years, SMBs have since begun handling other work areas and client and partner relationships with additional software that runs on different databases. A database, as if you didn’t already know, is essentially the set of operations for searching, sorting and recombining an application’s the data.
The AMI study reported the following levels of applications software usage by SMB:
? payroll software used by 45%,
? inventory management by 41%,
? point of sale systems by 38%,
? human resources by 25% and
? customer relationship management by 22%
In most cases the applications all work from different databases, causing not a few headaches from IT, to finance, to sales and marketing.
In an SMB scenario familiar to accountants, the report notes “One or two employees may use accounting software packages like QuickBooks or Peachtree for basic accounting while another one or two employees may use a different package for payroll, and so on.”
Security falters when employees must improvise
This scenario of separate databases operated in different personal computers makes it difficult and time-consuming, for employees to share data, which hurts efficiencies, and eliminates the potential for company-wide data backup and disaster recovery programs, which hinder security. Companies add to their security woes when they lack centralized systems and processes for how employees use the Internet to communicate and share data with remote employees, customers and partners, the report adds.
Clearly, companies need help in implementing company-wide database management systems, which set security and other controls for the databases, and handle user requests for database actions.
The opportunity for accountants may lie in helping clients determine the extent to which they are using disparate applications and the risks involved, and determine if they could use a DBMS. Database management problems typically begin to surface once companies reach 50 employees in size.
“The use of databases, and the ability to set up, maintain and use those databases is becoming key to making the most of one’s IT investment.” Companies lacking that ability “have yet to realize the full benefits that network and Internet-based applications provide,” says the report.
While companies are rapidly ramping up technology capabilities to the point of needing DBMS, they likely need outside help in this area because they typically lack the money to have a database administrator on staff.
Beyond the security issue, the report notes that the “hidden costs of maintaining and securing data in multiple databases and PCs can be much higher than many SMBs realize.”
Do your constituency a favor: Alert them to the very real opportunities of tying their systems together.