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E-Myth – “Why most small businesses don’t work & what to do about it”

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Collaborative Team Work Workstations | Edmonton Accountant

 

So what was the staff’s reaction when you first brought these in? I think they thought I was crazy.

Yeah, I can see why. Cause it’s,

hi. Thanks for joining us for another episode of ask [inaudible] CPA. Today we’re talking about our first collaborative team workstation, and they have Trevor here with me again here today. Edmonton Accountant, so Trevor, so we’re here as this is owners. Yeah. On holiday Monday. Yeah. That’s what you do. How you got to kind of get the job done. Yeah. I want to be successful. And it’s just part of our being a successful entrepreneur is doing this stuff that most people don’t want to do. That’s right. Yeah. So the quote that we have here today, a Jim Collins Co author of six books, including one of my favorite, good to great, and it says technology is important. You can’t remain a laggard and hope to be great. So the statistic, you know that we’re always finding answers 50% of all Canadian businesses, they fail in five years. And the story that we have here is, you know, we set out in this farm, it’s Berlin sources of bringing worldclass workstations.

You see him behind us all the time and the videos. Uh, so we could train top level accounts. We wanted to spend less time on the tasks that could be automated. And you know, we want to be able to have more time available to help our client develop strategies that actually give them a competitive advantage rather than just a data crunching. So, you know, a question, do you ever, what are the questions, do you think people should be asking you about these, uh, you know, uh, crazy. So looking workstation, these here, are these TVs like we watched forks on here most days and have like multiple screens going out or are they coming pewter monitors. We could watch TV, we could watch sports on them, but they are not TVs. They are actual computer monitors. Edmonton Accountant, and you know, the, the reason behind that, why this computer model TV’s are actually cheaper.

Computer monitors are more expensive, but TV’s are designed to be a passive experience and computer monitors are active. So you never notice the delay in a TV because you’re not actually controlling the motion on the screen. But the minute you start using a TV for a computer model, you’ll notice that your mouse won’t move when you’re trying to move. And what do you type? It takes a while to float back. Uh, so you know what you’re looking at bill here behind us, these are actually Edmonton Accountant, you know, 42 inch computer monitors also, right? The viewing angles are a bit different. You can actually see them, you know, if you’re sitting at, at a, an a more of an extreme angle, you can actually read the writing on it. Where’s the TV usually? That’s a bit of a challenge. Okay, so what resolution? I have these bad boys.

These are all actual fourK computer monitor. Edmonton Accountant, and so they’re not 10 ADP. And the reason is because a lot of the modern accounting software is now being designed to work on your iPad or your surface pro or your Mac book. And all of those have more than 10, eight feet. They’re more than HD. And then, you know, so we want to be the most efficient. So you, you think of what you’re using this modern accounting software that’s web based and if you don’t have as many pixels on the screen, if you’re looking at an income statement or profit, profit and loss statement or balance sheet, you have to scroll and Scroll and Scroll because it doesn’t matter how big they are. If you don’t have enough pixels on the screen, you’re not going to get all of the characters on the screen. So these are legitimate, you know, fourK computer monitors.

That’s amazing. So how many people said at each work station, so the workstations are designed, Edmonton Accountant, for three people to be at there. So, um, you know, normally we have, you know, a, a team and you know, one person sits on the far right, one person sits on the far left and someone can, you know, sit in the middle. Um, but they’re designed that, that, uh, usually two to three people are at them at any given time. So is each client assigned to one of these workstations? Yeah. So that’s kind of the, you know, what we found is, you know, a lot of other firms, you know, they assign an m one client to one person a, but then that person goes on holidays, they get stick cause they had staff turnover in someone. No one knows what’s going on in the file. So we always sign all of our clients to a team of two and they sit at a teamwork station.

So right hand will always know what they, the left hand is doing. And so essentially every one of our clients is assigned to one of these rigs, a somewhere at our, at our office. Um, and that’s usually how it works here. Okay. So who generally sits in the middle at each station? Usually in the middle. It’s myself or a, you know, shot on other CPA or Denise or their manager and their, their um, you know, and that’s actually, you know, helps them to be able to train so they can review files, they can train the staff. Um, and that’s you, you was doing at the middle is the person who’s kind of running, pointing, coordinating and training. And and reviewing, okay, so is training a big part of running an accounting practice is absolutely huge. Um, if it wasn’t for training, you know, that that’s essentially what we’re doing is, you know, we don’t have a widget, we’re not cranking out a widget everyday where who are cranky own knowledge everyday and your ability to teach, uh, those up and coming and accountants is, is the way you do it.

Um, if you relied on high level accountants all of the time, the cost of the customers would be astronomical. They’d be paying, you know, uh, you know, $300 an hour to do little data crunching tasks. Uh, you know, when, you know, being able to train a students who come through the system, Edmonton Accountant, that’s that combination of having the high level skill and students at various stages in, you know, usually post degree after they have their four year degree and start working here. Um, so they have some pretty significant training already. But there, there are ways to be becoming a CPA and that’s what usually allows us to deliver a high level of service at a price that people can actually afford. Okay. So why is each computer hooked up to three monitors? So there’s, that’s a good question because there’s a lot of stats that will actually suggest that the productivity, uh, decreases after two monitors.

So most people, the difference between productivity and one monitor and to monitor is huge, is astronomical. People are, you know, significantly more productive. They have two monitors then one and a lot of people have, they’ve done some testing on, you know, what if you have three, but if you have four with your Phi that, how far does this rule goal? And what they found is most of the time in most businesses, you know, if you have more than two monitors, it’s not really making a big difference in productivity. And this of course is the cost to having, you know, a more than more than two moderators, especially when you have three, four k monitors. You don’t have a whole different graphic cards set up to do it. But we went down that road because when you look at it and counting, you know, oftentimes we’re looking at, we’re looking at a report on one screen and another screen.

We have a mechanism where we meet, we can make a journal entry. So we’re actually triggering something on the screen. And on the third screen, here’s the part with the accounting is you need a document of why you’re making that change in the first place. You have a bank statement, an invoice or receipt, you know that your source document as we call it a one screen. And we have the change that we’re making in another screen and then we can do the report with is actually going to show us the effect of that change in a third screen. And it’s very difficult to get away from that and accounting. And we’ve found that, you know, having those three monitors allows you to see those three very critical. Colin said it really doesn’t matter what software you’re using, you have a source document, you’re making a journal entry and you’re seeing the ultimate change on another report on the third screen.

That’s very cool. So what’s so special about these hard drives? Hard drives are one of the most, Edmonton Accountant, you know, we don’t see it there. They’re below a UFC are our homepage. But if you looked at the rigs themselves, they have two terabyte m. Dot. Two SSD hard drives, which means absolutely nothing to the average human being. Um, so what that really means is, you know, we have normally people, if you say a solid state drive, they might understand that. So the old school hard drive has like a record player that spins and spins, it spins, and then you have a solid state drive that doesn’t have a spinning component, just like your phone runs on a and your, that’s why your phone can pull up information quicker is because it has a solid state drive. It doesn’t have a, uh, a hard drive with a spinning components.

So we can find information quicker. M. Dot. To simply means it’s plugged directly into the motherboard. Edmonton Accountant, so rather than having a core that links to them, the more it’s just actually plugged directly into the motherboard. So, which means the information is even quicker getting to the processor. So a, it doesn’t have a spinning component. B, it’s plugged directly into the motherboard. And why does that matter to an accounting firm? Because at the end of the day, you know, we need to be able to pull up documents as quickly as possible. So we have two terabytes, so there’s super big hard drives so we can put all of our information, all of our source documents on there. We’re not pulling them down from a, from a cloud every time we need them. And they’re super fast that we can get all that information up. We can get the client’s information up quickly as possible, which helps us, you know, do the work as quickly as possible and get clients the answers and they want as soon as possible.

So why do you think most accounting firms don’t spend many on technology like this? Because they charge by the hour. Edmonton Accountant, so if it takes them longer, they just charge you more. Um, so what, what’s the, the reward. But we charge flat fees here. So we’re motivated to have, you know, the the most efficient, most cost effective way to do the work. And that involves, you know, sometimes spending some money on, on technology. Whereas if we were billing by the hour, you know, the, the, the logic really wouldn’t be there. But at flat fees, if we can get it quicker, everybody wins because we get it more efficiently and the clients get the answer quicker too. So what was the staff’s reaction when you first brought these in? I think they thought I was crazy. I think that was the, the first reaction was, you know, what is Josh doing all of these monitors?

That sounds like a crazy, we’re going to look like the CIA when people walk in here and with all these modern, and then we brought one of these rigs in is kind of how it worked. We brought one, I wasn’t crazy enough to, to outfit the whole office with them at first, but we, we brought one of them in and then the, the one team started to train on it and everyone else, of course, it’s poking their head through the door. And seeing, you know, how is this working? And then they realized it was so much quicker and everybody else was using these other systems that we’re a lot slower. And then the, the, the question with it, everyone started to get his, uh, when do we get ours? Why is the only that one team had this really cool workstation? When do we get ours?

And so that’s kind of when we realized that we had something here. This is, this isn’t just something that made sense in my head, Edmonton Accountant, when we tested it, it worked really well. So I know I can answer this next question, but what’s it like working on other computers after working on these is the most frustrating? It’s like taking the bus after knowing that you can drive a car somewhere. Um, so it’s like waiting for that bus in mind, minus 40 weather after, after getting your license and driving around for a year or two. Um, it is extremely slow. These things are, you know, they’re not just big in collaborative, they’re quick, they’re ultra quick too. Uh, and just having all that real estate where you can lay out all your information, um, it just makes you so much more productive. So it’s, it’s, it’s one of those things, it’s difficult to go back once you’ve worked on one of these things.

Yeah, that is true. I mean, I, if I have to do any work at home, it takes me four times as long because these machines are just so, so beefy, have so much power, so much processing power. So I love working on it. Right on. So thanks so much for joining us. Again, guys. As always, you’ll please hit the like and subscribe button so we can continue to deliver you tips on how to beat the odds at business. And we look forward to reading your comments below. Uh, so we can, you know, get back to you and know what you’d like to dress in future videos. Thanks very much.