Futurists have long predicted the end of physical meetings and the coming disappearance of documents made from trees.
For decades, the soothsayers told tales of virtual sales calls and paperless businesses, but the prophecy has so far been more of a long-term goal for most Chattanooga-area businesses.
Until now.
A local accounting firm not only has gone paperless, it’s moved completely into the cloud, according to Dean Krech, CPA at the 36-employee accounting firm of Johnson, Hickey & Murchison.
Rather than keeping files in file cabinets or a server room, an Atlanta-based company hosts the firm’s files with security the company claims is “Fort Knox-esque.”
Xcentric, which boasts “security guards, retina scanners and man traps” at its facility, works specifically with accounting firms to host not just their records, but all their software as well.
“We don’t even have Word and Excel on our local drives,” said Krech, whose firm works with thousands of clients bringing in about $5 million in sales. “Every file we have any involvement with is in the cloud and secured.”
If the power goes out, Johnson, Hickey & Murchison can still access data with a wireless modem that plugs into a laptop, and workers can even look at documents from the road.
Since the company isn’t hosting its own data anymore but is paying another business to take care of it, the firm has been able to focus on actual accounting instead of software updates, which Krech says is more than worth the $10,000 monthly fee.
“We didn’t want to be IT professionals. We wanted to take it out of our hands and put it in someone’s hands who is much better at it,” he said. “For better or worse, we’re in the business of selling time, and we didn’t want to spend our time on IT.”
The cloud has another benefit for small businesses like Riverworks Marketing Group: It eliminates the need for actual events in favor of virtual ones.
Riverworks founder Jackie Errico celebrated a “virtual ribbon cutting” Tuesday, when participants snipped the theoretical ribbon online and got to participate in a Facebook contest without ever leaving their desks.
“It’s great for businesses without a lot of office space or parking that wouldn’t be ideal for a ribbon cutting,” Errico said. “Plus the fact that we’re in an online marketing biz, a virtual ribbon cutting makes more sense for us.”
Earlier this month, Chattanooga-based SVAD Film Rentals had a similar virtual ribbon cutting, offering a monthlong deal online for the company’s video equipment rental.
At Riverworks, Errico has no problem working in a world where she and a client may never shake hands. .
“The beauty of online marketing is that you don’t need to be at someone’s facility to get their message out,” Errico said. “We have several clients, we’ve never been to their offices before.”
Ellis Smith joined the Chattanooga Times Free Press in January 2010 as a business reporter. His beat includes the flooring industry, Chattem, Unum, Krystal, the automobile market, real estate and technology. Ellis is from Marietta, Ga., and has a bachelor’s degree in mass communication at the University of West Georgia. He previously worked at UTV-13 News, Carrollton, Ga., as a producer; at the The West Georgian, Carrollton, Ga., as editor; and at the Times-Georgian, Carrollton, ...
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