Conference season is over.
So we had the opportunity to attend the last Sleeter Conference (SleeterCon). Earlier this year, Doug and Sherril Sleeter sold their company to Diversified Communication, who acquired Accountex a few months back and now SleeterCon will be known as Accountex, USA. I have been honored to have attended 10 of Doug’s conferences, having presented at 4. I always learn valuable information, renew business relationships, as well as introducing our company to attendees who can benefit from our range of services. Since over 40% of attendees were brand new this year, there was lots of opportunity for networking both with new and old. Additionally, SleeterCon provides me an understanding of the accounting technology landscape. While our practice is Intuit Product centric, it is always great to see what other companies are doing. Additionally, a number of the vendors work cross platform so it is good to know who works with what and who is upcoming in the market.
Additionally, SleeterCon gives you a wide range of topics to choose from with a very condensed time period so you can get exposure to a lot of topics quickly. I attended sessions as wide ranging as the Internet of Things, a fascinating look at the future when our appliances can talk to the Internet to using tables in Excel. On the Internet of Things (IOT), I am already seeing this trend with our local utility company offering special discounts for installing a smart thermostat. If you allow them to suggest how hot or cool to keep your home, you can earn discounts on your bill. While it can seem a little big brother, I have no problem with saving money. Additionally, imagine a world where your lights come on at exactly 10 minutes after sunset, your sprinklers do not water your lawn on the days when rain is forecast and the IOT will help make our lives better in the same way that Google Maps makes getting lost almost impossible.
While we were at QBConnect, we met a company called SalesPad, a multi-channel cloud based Inventory management platform. We continued the conversation at SleeterCon and have been invited to work with their team to ensure that the retail offering is a robust solution as well as working with them on the core offering. More about that in the future.
So as 2015 draws to a close, we are grateful for all of the clients and their accountants that we have been able to help throughout this last year. We are also excited to have joined the Intuit Writer/Trainer network with our partnering with Steve Green and Leslie Capachietti to refresh the QuickBooks Point of Sale Desktop certification. Additionally, we started the year learning the new QuickBooks Point of Sale Powered by Revel product and end the year getting ready to be trained on the backend administration part that will allow us to better assist our QBPOS Revel clients. For 2016, I am looking forward to developing or refreshing our training content around the retail space including posting videos to our web site.
Author: English, William S., President of English Management Solutions, Inc. December 2015
