It’s the right time to embrace the cloud accounting for SMEs

In the age of rapid technological growth, times are changing, and this doesn’t exclude how businesses work.

As mobile technology evolves, our requirements for accessibility changes too, meaning running a business from a central, stationary, hub, is no longer a necessity, or even convenient. These days, being able to travel and remain connected is an integral aspect of modern life, both personally and professionally.

An estimated 70% of all workers now work from home at least once a week, while it is estimated that, in just a few years, 40% of all workforces will do so remotely. The shift from working on site is in full progress, and at this moment, it’s the right time to embrace the cloud accounting for all SMEs.

What is the cloud accounting?

If you’re unfamiliar with the cloud, what you need to know is that, in essence, it is simply an online resource for the storage and access of data and programs. In the same way, you access information on your localized hard-drive, the cloud allows you to do so online. Therefore, you can access and use any cloud compatible software using any device that has internet connectivity, anywhere in the world.

The reason the cloud is different is that it facilitates for shared data to reach all intended people with access immediately, in real time, with a user-friendly interface. The cloud accounting integrates this superior accessibility with familiar accounting software, like QuickBooks 2019 Desktop, offering you quick, shareable, up to date information, and an improved overview of your current finances. 

Is the cloud safe?

Managing your business accounts online may sound like a risk, however, you’ve more than likely already had experience using something similar if you’ve ever used internet banking. Information stored in the cloud is only accessible with personal account information and is otherwise encrypted for your protection. Here’s some essential  cloud storage solutions you would want to look into to boost small business.

In many ways, data stored with the cloud is safer than on your hard-drive, as your information is not vulnerable or at risk from device theft or damage. Online sharing and accessibility remove the need for physical file sharing, like with USB drives, email, etc, so data is at less risk of being copied and falling into the wrong hands. With your data being stored and accessed online eliminates the need to make copies and gives you greater control over who has access. 

How can any SME benefit from the cloud accounting?

Aside from the greater security of your data, there are many ways in which the cloud accounting can benefit SMEs. If you’re considering utilizing the cloud and integrating QuickBooks 2019 Desktop, or any other accounting software, we have listed just some of the improvements it can make within your business below.

• It is cost effective.

As managing your accounts with cloud compatible software is provided via a subscription service, all the maintenance costs are upfront. There are no potential unexpected fees or additional charges for customer support, software updates, etc, as all aspects are managed by the service provider remotely.

• It is time effective.

As software changes, upgrades, and maintenance are all managed online, it saves you all the time you’d usually spend downloading and installing programs to keep your system up to date with traditional software. This allows you to reinvest your time better in other aspects of your business, or even your personal life.

• It offers flexible accessibility.

The flexible access afforded to you by online accessibility means the opportunities are endless. With the cloud accounting, you can manage your business at work, from home, or wherever you need to be in the world.

In addition, the ability to share data across any device with internet connectivity, allowing for multiple users to access the same data simultaneously, improves productivity and collaboration. The cloud will contain all up to date information pertaining to your business in one place, with an easy to use operating system, both fully customizable and manageable.

Equifax to $700m in data breach fine in US

Equifax has agreed to pay up to $700 million to settle American investigations into a huge data breach two years ago, an amount that dwarfs the £500,000 fine imposed by Britain’s data protection watchdog.

Federal and state agencies said that Equifax “engaged in unfair and deceptive practices” in connection with the breach, which affected about 147 million people. It is one of the largest known breaches in terms of people affected.

Equifax, one of the “big three” credit reporting agencies alongside Experian and Trans Union, collects credit data on about 800 million people. The company revealed in September 2017 that its computer network had been hacked and information including names, addresses, dates of birth and social security numbers had been stolen. About 15 million accounts linked to UK residents were affected by the hack. In September last year, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office fined Equifax £500,000, the largest penalty it was allowed to impose. The agency is now able to impose larger penalties after a change in the law.

The US settlement was agreed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, 48 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. They accused Equifax of “failing to provide reasonable security for the massive quantities of sensitive personal information stored within its computer network, causing substantial injury to consumers whose data was stolen” and “deceiving consumers about the strength of its data security programme”.

Letitia James, the New York attorney-general, said: “Equifax put profits over privacy and greed over people, and must be held accountable to the millions of people they put at risk. This company’s ineptitude, negligence and lax security standards endangered the identities of half the US population.”

Joe Simons, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, said: “Companies that profit from personal information have an extra responsibility to protect and secure that data. Equifax failed to take basic steps that may have prevented the breach.”

Mark Begor, chief executive of Equifax, said that the settlement was a “positive step”. In its last quarterly report, Equifax said that it had set aside $690 million to cover the penalties.

Equifax shares, down 2 per cent since the breach emerged, rose $0.74, or 0.6 per cent, at $138.04 by midday in New York, valuing the company at $16.7 billion.

Embracing AI: Where to start on your path to digital transformation

The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’(AI) evokes mixed reactions – from fear of the unknown to excitement about the possibilities this new technology has to offer.

Whatever your views on AI, the sooner you and your business start to embrace it, the sooner you will see where the positives lie and how to use it to improve business efficiency and drive innovation.It’s relevant for SMEs just as much as larger enterprises.

Amyn Jaffer, Head of Intelligent Automation, Ultima explains that many companies are, understandably, unsure of where to start when it comes to introducing AI. You may also be among those wondering what exactly AI means and how it could make a positive difference to your business.

AI can be defined as an area of computer science that emphasises the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. It’s a very broad term for a wide range of technologies and capabilities which can have a profound impact on organisations in any vertical. This broad scope often makes it hard to establish which aspects of AI are likely to suit any particular business or scenario, but starting with one of its simpler forms is the best approach.

The benefits of process automation

Intelligent Automation (IA) is the use of Robotic process automation (RPA) software with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to handle high-volume, repeatable tasks that previously required humans to perform them. These tasks can include queries, calculations and maintenance of records and transactions.

As well as being relatively simple to implement, using software robots is both affordable and effective, making it an ideal place for any SME to startits path to digital transformation. And the potential benefits are impressive.

Take, for example, an HR department.Here, Intelligent Automation can be used for processing applications and absence management, as well as ensuring that each company department has the same information about each employee without the typical challenges of multiple system records.With these tasks managed in an automated manner, the HR team is free to focus on the more strategic aspects of their roles.

As another example, Intelligent Automation can be used to simplify the process of reporting on credit for thousands of customers. In one case, a retailer reduced reporting time by 91%, creating savings of more than £100k, by using a ‘virtual worker’ to produce credit reports.

Any large-scale activities or groups of repetitive tasks that draw on or feed information into multiple systems are also candidates for intelligent automation. In practice, this could mean using cognitive services such as text and sentiment analysis to process and respond to natural language text within formats such as emails, documents and live webchats. The aim is to extract data from these sources without the need for human intervention.

Contact centres are simplifying the service agent process by using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract key information from emails and messaging chats, allowing their agents to focus on providing the best experience for their customers. Similarly, speech recognition software can be used to answer the phone and respond automatically to customers as software robots are capable of analysing calls and finding the right information to help the caller. The robots gather the required information in milliseconds, making the service more efficient so that real people can deal with more challenging customer services issues.

Cognitive services can also be used to improve business efficiency through visual recognition. One company is using this technology to tag information in photographs – a task that would take hundreds of man-hours to do, but just seconds with cognitive services.

The next level: intelligent data analytics

With these processes in place, companies can move towards introducing more sophisticated AIto mine their data and start to ask questions of that data that will deliver unique business insights. By automatically collecting and sifting through vast amounts of data and then training robots to make sense of the data by asking the data pertinent questions, you can start to solve the problems that have been keeping you up at night. For example, analysing your customer data to establish insights into how different things affect your customers’ purchasing decisions can give real business benefits and drive innovations in how you supply and market your goods.

Ultimately, we’re all likely to have a ‘virtual worker’ by our sides helping us to do our jobs, cutting out mundane, repetitive tasks and freeing us up to be more creative and focus on business goals and innovation. To reach this stage the right foundations need to be in place,and the adoption of Intelligent Automation is the best place to start.

Not only is it simple to implement in many processes throughout most SMEs, software robots also provide positive, short-term ROI which is good for demonstrating to boards the tremendous potential of AI. We’re just at the beginning of the intelligent transformation journey- join in and make your company’s future bright.

Learn where to start a career that focuses on data analysis

If you want to be professionally successful, a good idea is to invest in data science. With the amount of information generated every day, these professionals are increasingly needed by companies, because it helps to make more informed and informed decisions.

Data scientists are professionals who are responsible for making the company useful for a large number of structured and unstructured data that is always available through the internet.

This tempting career requires a candidate with a variety of skills and requirements, but the question is: how do you enter this profession? In this post, we will outline the key steps you must take to build a successful career in data analysis.

So, what if you know where to start? See tips from now!

Market Trends for Data Scientists

The job market lacks data scientists – even careers that are qualified by the World Economic Forum and released by infoMoney as one of the most relevant in 2020.

According to IBM, the demand for people with data scientists will increase by 28 percent by 2020. This function, which previously existed only in innovative companies that wanted to stand out in the marketplace, became a necessity for businesses to remain competitive. This fact explains the gradual increase in the demand for people with these skills and what contributes to the growth of professions and training courses.

Professional profile with training data scientists

In addition to looking for insights into large volumes of data and translating them into business languages, traders must be able to use the most sophisticated data mining and visualization tools available. In addition, manage and handle this large amount of information through:

Exploration analysis;
Data visualization
Machine Learning;
Deep learning;
Combining predictive modelling, among the other skills we will highlight below.

Skills that must be developed

Professionals who will act as data scientists need to have basic skills. Among others are:

Mathematics

Data scientists work with numbers: problem solving, statistics, probabilities, Sigma Notation, Bayesian Inference, among other subjects related to mathematics.

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During large database manipulations and analyzes – you need to run your own tools and solutions for this activity and programming languages, such as Python and R, are present in almost all databases and also include SQL, MatLab, MongoDB and Spark.

English

This is not a mandatory requirement to qualify during the training of a data scientist, but having knowledge in languages ​​can be a great competitive advantage.

Creativity

The purpose of being a data scientist is to uncover insight and produce intelligence. Creativity is also relevant because it allows professionals to anticipate business needs, especially those that have not been done by any segment.

Logical thinking

Logical thinking is another thing that is relevant because it helps to analyze and streamline the learning process in Data Science. Finally, it is necessary to have abilities with numbers, because they are used in different aspects, including in machine learning algorithms, in-depth learning and statistics, which are important parts of Data Science.

Storytelling

Finally, it is worth creating data storytelling skills – because it helps to transform collected items into elements for visual narratives and facilitates decision making – and data mining, a process that identifies relevant information to gain knowledge about the business, product or competition.