AUBURN — Polaris Business Solutions, a six-year-old accounting-systems consulting firm, has kicked off the fall with a new office that will allow the business to continue growing and a new product to help clients also grow their businesses. Last month, Polaris’ Founder and President Todd Delaney moved his business from a home office to Suite […]
AUBURN — Polaris Business Solutions, a six-year-old accounting-systems consulting firm, has kicked off the fall with a new office that will allow the business to continue growing and a new product to help clients also grow their businesses.
Last month, Polaris’ Founder and President Todd Delaney moved his business from a home office to Suite 4022 at 2 South St. in Auburn to accommodate the company’s continued growth. The firm’s revenue has increased about 40 percent per year for the past two years. Delaney predicts revenue growth between 30 percent and 40 percent this year as Polaris Business Solutions continues to land new clients and larger projects.
Delaney says his typical client is a growing business that previously used accounting software like QuickBooks that it bought, installed, and managed on its own. “QuickBooks is a fine program, but there comes a point where you just outgrow it,” he notes. That’s when businesses come to him for help.
Delaney currently employs one person full time and uses four subcontractors on an as-needed basis, but he hopes to do some hiring later this year or in early 2014. First, he plans to hire a marketing and sales person to free him up from the sales side of business and follow that with a second consultant to work with his growing client base. Polaris Business Solutions currently serves clients across New York state as well as across the U.S. with its array of accounting-system products.
Polaris specializes in enterprise-resource planning (ERP) systems and works with businesses to realize cost savings, improved efficiency, and increased productivity when implementing or upgrading an ERP system. Essentially, ERP is business-management software that integrates all facets of a business from product planning to sales and marketing and even human-resources functions such as payroll. The end-result is a one-stop shop that puts all the business’s necessary information in one place.
Now, with the addition of Acumatica software — a cloud-based ERP software application used by small and medium-sized businesses to manage financial data — to its product lineup, Polaris Business Solutions provides its clients an application that’s accessible from anywhere as long as the client has a computer and an Internet connection. Polaris offers Acumatica in addition to Microsoft Dynamics SL, Microsoft CRM, and Sage 100 ERP programs, which are solid programs, Delaney says, but have limitations in how a business can deploy them. Typically, those products need to be installed on a client’s computer and have limited functionality when accessed from off-site, he says.
The growing trend with the mid-market businesses he serves is increased access, Delaney says, and that is where Acumatica is a perfect fit. Clients can install it on their own servers and host it themselves. Or, they can choose a host company for it if they don’t have their own server. Alternatively, clients can deploy it completely in the cloud. And no matter how Acumatica is deployed, clients can access it over the web whenever they need to, Delaney notes.
“You can basically work anytime, anywhere,” he says. A project manager can access information right from the job site, for example, and approve invoices for the project, or a business owner can access information while traveling.
Overall, Delaney says, people have become more accepting of cloud computing, particularly with products such as Google Docs and Office 365. “They find the cloud less scary,” he says. That bodes well for Polaris and Acumatica, he says, and he expects that his ability to offer clients an array of options, both cloud and non-cloud, will only help his business continue to grow.
Delaney founded Polaris Business Solutions (www.polaris-business.com) in 2007. Prior to that, he worked for DM Systems, Inc., a unit of the accounting firm Dannible & McKee, LLP, which provides ERP systems. At Polaris, his focus is on assisting his clients in selecting, implementing, and optimizing the performance of an accounting system and his services include on-site training as well as remote-access training.
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