December 3, 2019

Cetrom in AccountingWeb: Why CPA Firms Should Self-Assess Their IT Legacy Infrastructure

Christopher Stark, Cetrom's president & CEO authored piece featured in AccountingWeb on December 3, 2019.

CPA firms that have experienced IT challenges driven by rapid change and growth should not run out and buy the newest, shiny hardware; hire an expensive IT director; or contract with a managed services partner.

Before your firm can improve, you have to take steps to know what you don’t know, so to speak. You and your leadership sense that clients might be unhappy, security might be behind the eight ball, and employee productivity is down — and your IT performance may be driving these challenges.

In essence, you must first ask:
What are the root causes of your IT challenges?
What are its strengths?
Is it a human capital issue?
Is it a hardware problem?
Are your various systems not talking to one another?
Do your employees need to be trained?

Why Self-Assess?
Often the first time a legacy IT system is assessed is just before it’s eliminated, which is pretty normal. But an interim step needs to be taken by CPA firm leadership: plan ahead! The first part of planning ahead is conducting a comprehensive self-assessment of the current state of your IT program.

We see this all the time at CPA firms. Its legacy system has become a contorted mess of software, hardware, and data sources that have been added to and altered for years without a deeper, unifying overall strategy.

The first step to building a unified and agile IT ecosystem is doing a deep dive into your legacy system. And yes, this will take time; it might be a bit painful and will require some reprioritization, but this pain is dwarfed by the potential damage caused by a network collapse during tax season or a data security breach that destroys your reputation.

When you put it in that context, examining your program deeply and asking the following questions doesn’t seem so painful, right? So, look at your IT program with the following categories and questions in mind.

Read full article here.

The Next Generation of Wi-Fi Is Here - Introducing Wi-Fi 7

We all know it: when it comes to an online access point, the pursuit of a faster, more reliable internet connection is relentless. Recent strides in..
March 29,2024

Cetrom Support fixed all of my problems, their engineers are very professional, courteous, friendly and very efficient. If all customer service out there was like this, it would be a better world...

- Mid-sized
View All

One of the things we appreciate wholeheartedly about working with Cetrom is how great the people in the service area are and the high-level of responsiveness we have received. I’ve been very pleased..

- Mid-sized
View All

Cetrom’s services and support really stood out against the other cloud vendors. We thought their Citrix delivery platform would have a higher level of adoption because our employees would have the..

- Mid-sized
View All

Our accounting services users working in the field have greatly benefited from our migration to the cloud. They’re now able to be much more efficient while working in a client’s office because they..

- Mid-sized
View All

The decision to migrate to the cloud was one of the best business decisions Rub & Brillhart has made. It required an investment, but we have determined that our year two IT costs will be reduced by..

- Midwest
View All

Our migration process with Cetrom was very smooth and we had an excellent experience with their support during the demo process. We have 24/7 monitoring on our onsite equipment and they have the..

- Small
View All

We are extremely happy with the service and support we receive from Cetrom. Our staff is more efficient overall in our day-to-day activities and we don’t have any downtime. It’s a good feeling..

- Mid-sized
View All

Cetrom is an extremely cost-effective option for IT services. Not only do we receive significantly improved customer service, but we were also able to add a new VoIP system, better internet service,..

- Mid-sized
View All

Because we use specialized software for CPAs, we were concerned about the migration process. Cetrom’s CEO reassured us that there’s no concern because they understand how the software operates in the..

- Mid-sized
View All

We use two programs that often posed a challenge for our previous IT providers. Cetrom handled the situation professionally, coordinated with the software vendors, did all the backend testing, and..

- Mid-sized
View All

After interviewing and reviewing the proposals from various IT providers, it was really a night and day comparison about price, service, and performance—Cetrom was just outshining the others on every..

- Mid-sized
View All

I just want to drop you a line and let you know how pleased we are with our move to Cetrom. Your people knocked it out of the park for us and are doing a great job getting us up and working. On our..

- Small-sized
View All

Because we use specialized software for CPAs, we were concerned about the migration process. Cetrom’s CEO reassured us that there’s no concern because they understand how the software operates in the..

- 97%
View All

Cetrom’s Cloud Computing offers a high-quality, reliable and secure alternative to traditional IT management and provides immediate access to all my IT resources whether I’m in the office, at home or..

- High-quality,
View All

News Archives

See all

The Next Generation of Wi-Fi Is Here - Introducing Wi-Fi 7

We all know it: when it comes to an online access point, the pursuit of a faster, more reliable internet connection is relentless. Recent strides in..
March 29,2024

Cetrom Support fixed all of my problems, their engineers are very professional, courteous, friendly and very efficient. If all customer service out there was like...

- Mid-sized
View All

News Archives

See all
Is Cetrom Your Cloud Services Solution?