Today, we are joined by Jake Grimm, Director of Technology and Jody Grunden to talk about choosing vendors and suppliers. Choosing partners to help you run your business is fundamental to the success of your company. How do you know which vendor would be the best fit for your company? Well, in this episode we will talk about the search, filtering and the elimination process that guided us in choosing them to help us at Summit CPA Group and also we will be sharing those we currently work with, who rightfully received our stamp of approval.
"In our industry, we're always looking at what can save time and what's not going to break down all the time” - Jody Grunden
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Jamie Nau: Welcome to today's podcast. Today I am joined by Jody and Jake, from Summit CPA. We’re going to talk about choosing vendors and choosing suppliers. Choosing people to help you run your business. So obviously, we can help you choose a CPA firm or a CFO company. But we want to talk about what we do in the process when doing this. I can tell you, and I think Jake started in the same boat as me, recently in the last couple of years I was promoted to a director role here at Summit CPA. Once that happened, once that was on my LinkedIn, I probably was getting 30 emails a day. People asking, hey, where are you guys doing for this? Who's your recruiter? Who's this? So I kind of wanted to get with Jody and Jake here and talk about how we weed out those emails and find all the awesome vendors we work with. I'm going to start with you, Jody. Do you want to talk about your experience with that and how you look over those email requests in choosing the great vendors we have?
Jody Grunden: Yeah. With technology nowadays, email, LinkedIn, Twitter, you know, you name, it seems like there's an easy way for vendors to try to schedule something with you. It’s really, really important to make sure that you keep an open mind, and at the same time, do your due diligence because you don't have time to meet with everybody that wants to sell you something or, you know, sell you what they think is going to be the newest and best thing. So with us it's more of, do we have a need for a specific product? Is there something that we are currently falling short on that a tool can help out with? Jetpack Workflow was a perfect example. We were falling short on process. We looked at what vendors were out there that we thought can really help out. We did some research and so forth, and Jetpack Workflow was a perfect solution for us. CashFlowTool was another one. We had spent a lot of time in our processes putting together cash flow forecasts for two of our clients, that included six to eight Excel forecasts. When we first started it was very simple, but we ran into lot of errors and it took a lot of time. Then as we made the forecast more complex, we ran into less errors but it took even longer to complete. Then if the Excel sheet broke altogether, then it was, how do we get it fixed? So we started thinking what can we find out there that has the perfect solution for what we want to do. CashFlowTool ended up being that solution for us. So it's more of, hey. Do we have a need? If we have a need, then if it just happens that an email crosses my desk, I might take a look at it. Or a message from LinkedIn, Instagram, any kind of social media platform too. If there's really not a need, then I don't typically waste my time and look into the different products out there. I know there's a ton of great products and every product has benefits in some way, but we just don't have the time to evaluate every single one of them. But the key is always keep an eye open, right? If something does come across, we should be ready to make a switch pretty quickly after we vetted it out and determine it would definitely be of help for us.
Jamie Nau: Jake, this is where you've impressed me a lot, because I know Jody talked about CashFlow Tool, but I remember prior to CashFlow Tool we just finished an Excel tool that you guys built and spent a lot of time building. And we weren't held back by the fact that we just put all that time and energy into building that. So can you talk a little bit about that and how you are able to move so quickly from one tool to another?
Jake Grimm: Yeah for me, I quickly forget about it. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. The time and investment that we've done, whatever process or tool that we're using, it's more about the justification there going forward. It's going to have the return on investment. I always kind of value the stuff that we have done leading up to switching to something else because it helped flush out a process, or flush out a set-up, that makes moving to the next level a little bit easier. We've already figured out some things. So if we didn't have that already done, it might have been a little bit tougher to make a transition to like CashFlow Tool for example, that we're using for those meetings. So I usually kind of think about it at that point, you know, those costs that are done. In the past, I'm not really putting that much into the analysis on if we want to move forward, are we going to save time? Are we going to have the cost savings going forward that justifies going through that process again?
Jamie Nau: So you're saying you're like a good shooting guard, you have a short memory and you always forget that last shot as you move onto the next one, right?
Jody Grunden: I look at the golf analogy being the best. You know, you screw that hole up you go to the next one. You don't build on it. Yeah, for sure.
Jake Grimm: Even if it's not a screw up, even if it's part of the last hole, I'm still looking to try to do the same or improve upon that for the next time also.
Jamie Nau: I’m not going to talk about my golf game. That’s a whole other podcast.
All: Laughing [in audible]
Jake Grimm: But what Jody mentioned, very similar mindset for me with looking at the different applications at the end of the day. So sometimes it's, who you know, or who you have connections to. So if someone comes to us from a referral source, or some one we kind of already know and trust that's always a good starting point. We're definitely going to spend a little bit of time taking a look at it. The cold emails that come in most of them end up passing through the wayside unless they have something that definitely has already been on our radar, or something that we're trying to solve for or something that we know we want to experiment with or test from an automation standpoint. Always kind of curious about what the next thing out there is to help automate accounting stuff. Either bots or, machine learning. Curious about block chain stuff. I think that's going to have an impact in the future on accounting. So when it's one of those, I'm kind of curious about what it's going to do or if we have a problem that we're trying to solve right now, that's when we're kind of deciding who we want to look at. That’s probably one of the biggest things for me.
Jamie Nau: One of the things that I've been doing, because if you encourage a salesperson at all they're going to bite on it. So it's a fine line to walk. One of the things I've been doing is using my administrative assistant to keep an eye on those things because we might not be looking for that service right now, but we might someday. So what I do is I just flag those emails for them to respond to. I have a canned response that says, hey, thanks for the email. Right now we're not looking for this but we might be in the future. That way I don't have to look back at emails or messages. So if now we're looking for someone to help us with our payroll I can look back at those whole emailed me. I have that setup as one of my auto replies. Once I flag it, my assistant automatically responds to them with that kind of a generic email that goes back to them. That's been helpful for me. I know you mentioned this as well, Jody, that you want to keep an eye open for vendors you might be looking for in the future. What process do you have for that so you don't forget about those vendor requests?
Jody Grunden: Google. It’s easy to do Google searches to find vendors. With as many clients that we have, across different industries it's pretty simple to reach out to people at an event and ask something as simple like, what kind of software are using for your subscription based model? I think we've got a lot of knowledge and resources that we can tap into to find out what works and what doesn't work. Conferences that we go to, just listening and seeing what everyone else is using. That's pretty much a key sign that if you go to a conference and nine out of ten people in the room are using a specific time and billing software, and they're using it for the right reason, it might be something to take a look at. We use Bill.com for US based companies. It doesn't really work well in Canada. So what are our Canadian friends using to solve that same issue? They've got to be using something. They're not paying by hand. So tapping into a network of people you work with to find out what works in other places. Even around the world, because you’re always battling a couple of things within our industry. You always need to be looking at what can save time, and what's not going to break down all the time. Those are big things that we look for. If something is breaking down all the time it causes a lot of internal havoc among the team. If it's taking too much time, that's profitable. So you're trying to reduce those types of pains. You can use software that is working perfect for the longest time, and then all of a sudden something happens. The engineering team does a revamp and now something falls short. That’s when it's time to either stay with the ship or do you want to look for something different that may solve the problem.
Jamie Nau: I think that's a great tip. A question we get a lot when working with an agency is, what are your clients using for their pipeline? We see a lot of different things. I think your point about using other people, I think that's why it's important to be in touch with your industry. Especially in the creative agency space where people are so in touch with each other, it'd be a shame if you weren't doing that and bouncing off each other. So Jake, I'm going to throw a question to you now. So once you've selected a vendor or found a vendor that we want to talk to, tell me a little bit about that process we are doing in the discovery. What kind of questions do you ask? What kind of things are you looking for? Do you always bounce off another vendor that you might be looking at, or are you a one and done guy?
Jake Grimm: Definitely depends on the solution we're solving for. I'd say most of the time we are looking at a couple of different options at the same time from a preliminary conversation and then we're deciding on which one we feel like is going to best solve our needs. Then we typically are wanting to do some sort of discovery phase with that vendor. Really get in there. Test it out, you know, utilize it for two or three clients, kind of incorporate it into our process and see if it's going to solve a need, or if it's going to improve our process and efficiencies in the way that we are looking for. So those are kind of the biggest things that I'm typically doing when I'm vetting a vendor. The process is really trying to get in there and utilize the software pretty early on. Even if that means we're doing a little bit of investment into that platform start up. Most of the time vendors are working to work with us. I think we have a lot to offer and have a pretty good sized client base that we're typically wanting to bring on to a platform, so they are motivated from that standpoint too. That’s probably the biggest thing. Really getting into that discovery phase and having some help from their support to help get things up and running and testing. Getting that joint investment to kind of help validate if we want to move forward with them.
Jody Grunden: It's kind of funny because with that discovery phase often it will go into that maybe it does solve the two issues that we're looking for. But then we find out it brings up three other issues that we weren't even thinking about. Then we have to look and say hey, you know, it does offer these two issues, but created three additional issues. What are we going to do? What's more important to us at that point? Staying with what we already know, or popping into something new and solving another issue? That type of thing. So I think that discovery period is really almost a requirement. It doesn't have to be a long discovery period. It can be a month or a month in a half. The more important that software is to you, I think the longer that discovery period probably needs to be just to make sure you get all the kinks out. But I think the discovery period is essential. I was asked in another podcast, how long does it take before you solve a problem until we have the finished thing? I told them within four months we typically have an issue. We figured out the issue. We vetted software and then we've solved or actually moved on from that. Would you say that's an exaggeration, Jake? Do you think that's pretty much in line or do you think shorter or longer than that?
Jake Grimm: I'd say that’s a pretty good average. It really depends on what we're looking at. Some things that can be a lot longer than that, some things that could be quicker. It definitely varies based on the solution we're looking at. I think that's a pretty conservative and safe average for sure.
Jamie Nau: That sounds right from my view too. I think the other thing to remember is these types of things you can negotiate. You can ask how long of a trial period a vendor is going to you. A lot of times they will give you a week. That more than likely won’t be enough time to try something out. So ask, can we get a month? Can we get two months? Then the other thing I'd say to look for during that discovery period is what kind of support they are going to provide. A lot of times they'll say you will get a representative that is available 24 hours a day to call and ask questions. I know one of the new tools that we're using, something called Auto Review, their support has been amazing from day one. We are actually asking them questions and having them actually train some of our employees on what the process looks like and taking some of that legwork out that we normally do. They're actually doing that for us, and we're watching it to make sure it's how we would do it. But I think there's a lot of things during that discovery period and during those support hours that you can catch up on and really help you out, that will make the product to bring on even easier. So Jody, I'm going to turn the tables here a little bit. You are part of our sales team and you handle all the sales calls. So let's look at this from a different direction. How can you tell when someone's prepared to talk to you?
Jody Grunden: Oh, that's a great question. I'm a part of the sales team, just to make that clear. A lot of times when a prospect reaches out and calls or contacts us, they've done their due diligence for the most part. They have looked at our website. Our website has everything about us plastered on it, even our pricing structure. So they know how much we cost, what we offer. Oftentimes they've talked to somebody that they know, maybe through a referral, or they heard me or Adam speaking at a conference, or through one our course or webinars. So they've got some knowledge on who we are. So you know, at that point, we very rarely get somebody who just simply calls us out of the blue. That hasn’t done any due diligence. The big thing for me, I don't want to tell them about all about us. They can do that research. I want to find out how are they going to be a really good fit in that first 30 minutes? I'm just simply asking them questions, finding out what their issues are, what are they trying to solve, you know, and then kind of looking backward and saying hey, we can we handle that? If they're coming to us just to do a tax return, for instance, probably not a good fit and I won't even quote them at that point. But if they're coming to us to do virtual CFO services or maybe on the auditing side, if they've done their due diligence they know what we can do and want to talk to us because of that.
Jamie Nau: The best thing you said there, I think, is that people come in doing research ahead of time. I think if you're looking at it from okay. I'm getting ready to interview a vendor, research is super important because like you said, if someone hadn't done any research and called a vendor, they are going to spend the first 15 minutes of that call just finding out the nuts and bolts. That’s something you can do ahead of time. I try to do the same thing when I jump into these calls. I try to know a little bit about the company so I can get to those parts that are really my pain points and what's going to help me. Jake, do you want to talk a little bit about the prep you do prior to talking to a vendor?
Jake Grimm: Yeah from a high level you basically just covered it. It’s taking a look at their website. Most of my stuff is definitely from a software perspective and tool perspective. So seeing how they integrate, and what they are currently working with. Looking over what customers they might be working with, if that's available. I might also reach out to our accountant community that we have built and see if anyone else is already using a potential vendor. Those are the biggest things up front that I'm trying to figure out before I go into a call to see if it's a fit.
Jody Grunden: One thing we didn't mention is when look at evaluating a software we like to find out of the vendor is going to help through the implementation process. That's a huge thing, especially for us with one hundred and thirty plus clients that we have. That's a long process if we've got to do it ourselves. Especially if with a new software that not everybody knows. We often have 20 or 30 different people accessing of product, and trying to teach them how to implement something new that we are using, that's a big undertaking. I think that's a huge, huge evaluation for us too. You don't want to get into something where implementation drags on for three or six month and have half your team on one platform, half your team on another platform, that isn’t going to work well and be costly. So I think that implementation knowledge, evaluating that upfront is critical. Know how involved a vendor is going to be in the initial setup process.
Jamie Nau: The other thing I like to do prior to jumping on those calls, especially if it's a technology product, I like to see the interface. So what I'll try to do is go on YouTube and see what it looks like and see how user friendly it is. Because you can tell pretty quickly in the YouTube video if the interface is going to work for you. That’s something that has been helpful for me. To actually watch the YouTube of someone walking through a demo really helps me come prepared to that meeting. So, we talked a little bit about what the vendor’s implementation process is like, let's talk about once you've chosen a vendor and you get that trial period, what's important to do during that trial period? How do you go about approaching that trial period? I'm going to throw this question to Jake, because I know you've done a lot of implementations over the last year or so.
Jake Grimm: Yeah, typically I'm trying to run through at least at minimum, three client options inside of that application, and how is it going either add to or embed into our process as a solution for the problem we're trying to solve for. That is the biggest try for that trial period. I'm bring in some other users as well to not get just my opinion, but trying to get CFOs involved, get some accountants involved, some stakeholders who are going to be it on an ongoing basis. Making sure that it's not going to cause more problems for them than it's actually solving. So those are probably the biggest things that we're doing during that trial period.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, I'm a big fan of the implementation team. I know that in a couple of implementations I've done, I've pulled in different people each time and said, do you guys mind being part of implementing this for these two or three clients? I think that's a big part of it. The other thing to have, which our clients are good at having, is having a project manager. All of our clients have project managers on their team, or in their company. I think it's important to have one there just to make sure the project is moving forward. Making sure we're hitting our goals and making sure someone is there to communicate the progress. That’s something we started in the last year that I think have made our projects implemented much smoother. So I'm going to take a quick second here to throw our email address out there. We are always looking for new topics and guests. So if you want to reach out to us you can email us at: vcfo@summitcpa.net. Now we're getting pretty close on time here. I'm going to give each of you a chance to throw out your final thought. Jody, let’s start with you.
Jody Grunden: One thing I would recommend is a tip that I learned from one of our clients. We're always looking at new vendors and new tools, you've got to be able to react quickly. I remember being on a call with Jamie, and a client was using a software that we'd never used before that solved a problem we were having. The very next day we were using that software. We have done that a few times. We did it with our virtual office, Sococo. I think there's certain times where you have to be able to make a quick decision. You can't just rest and relax on an issue forever. Software products typically don't have a huge deposit that you're going to lose right away. It's typically a month to month subscription base of some sort. The other thing is, we try many different things. It's not a bad idea having a credit card set aside just for software that you're testing out all the time. Put it on that credit card that way it's not an out of sight, out of mind thing where you're like, oh. I forgot to cancel that subscription for a product we ended up not using. A separate payment care is not a bad idea.
Jake Grimm: To take one step further. I know a couple of our clients had mentioned that to us. They will get a prepaid card that they'll give out to their staff to set up trials to solve for a problem. Or they use those virtual cards for software providers and only put a one month or two month balance on there. So definitely recommend that were applicable. Definitely helps solve those headaches of finding out six months later that somethings still charge that you are not using. I definitely think that having the support and help with onboarding and implementation is a very important thing. I think that's my biggest final thought. Especially when we're talking about, you know, forty different people and one hundred plus clients moving on to something new. Having that responsibility on your team members is going to drag out that process a lot longer than what you want it to be. So having people that are invested in that implementation, both internally and also with externally with the vendor’s implementation team is important to get things up and running quickly. Otherwise you lose buy in from your team time pretty quickly. If could be four months later and people are not using it fully.
Jamie Nau: That new car smell wears off pretty quickly. You want to make sure you take advantage of that time when the new tool is exciting versus wondering when is this tool is ever going to work for you. So I guess my final thought, to go back to what Jody had said, I think if you're going to have the mentality of the willingness to be reactive, make sure it's part of your culture and your team's aware of it. I think that's helped us a lot. When we interview the first thing I tell people is if you are going to work at Summit you have to love change. You have to be willing to work with change because that's part of our team culture. If it wasn’t, especially in the accounting world where a lot of people don't have that mindset, we would be failing over and over again. So I think we really try to think about that when we're hiring. That we are going to change and we are going to move forward and we're never going to just sit there and be happy with where we're at. We're always looking for the next best thing. So make to build that into your culture.
Jody Grunden: For sure.
Jamie Nau: Well I think this has been a great topic. I appreciate both being on and we will have to do this again.