10 Steps to a Digital Practice in the Cloud, 2nd Edition

13

Developing and Implementing Your Technology Plan

What Do I Do Now?

At this point, we have discussed all the things you can, and should, do to put your firm on a solid footing for the new digital age. It would be easy to say that there is just too much to do, throw in the towel, and just address your IT needs on an ad hoc basis as situations present themselves. Believe it or not, that is actually the most time-consuming and expensive approach and yields the poorest results. It may not seem that way because there is no real measurement of success or accountability. Alternatively, taking a strategic approach and investing the time to develop your plan will provide significant results in terms of optimizing your allocation of time and financial resources and getting the highest return on investment in terms of workflow efficiency, quality of client service, and profitability.

The CPA/client paradigm is entering a period of significant transformation as a result of the shifting IT paradigm to cloud-based and mobile computing. The reason we covered so much material in this book is because it is all interrelated. The closer you get to putting all the pieces of the puzzle together, the more you will begin to see the value of the whole picture. The key is to approach your IT strategy and deployment in a methodical manner, which we will describe in this chapter.

How Do I Approach the ...