CPA Practice Advisor - 8

ADVERTORIAL

RIGHT NETWORKS provides a cloud
hosting environment that gives accounting
firms and accounting professionals in small
and medium size businesses the freedom to
bring together and connect best-of-breed
solutions - desktop software and native SaaS
solutions - to suit the needs of their business.
The company offers the first, and only, hosted
solution supporting 24x7 data transfer
and synchronization between QuickBooks
Desktop and the variety of third-party SaaS
applications used by its diverse customer base.
Its curated application ecosystem consists of
250+ best-of-breed applications, including
QuickBooks, Lacerte and ProSeries from
Intuit, Expensify, Bill.com, Avalara, SmartVault
and Webgility. By providing critical, timeconsuming application updates and backups and zero scheduled downtime, as well
as 24/7 tech support and enterprise-class
security, Right Networks customers achieve
the flexibility that is critical to serving their
clients and/or running their business.

Q:
A:

JOEL HUGHES

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Joel is responsible for setting the company
direction and leading the successful
execution of that strategy with the Right
Networks leadership team. As part of that
strategy, he led the successful acquisition
of Xcentric, a leading cloud solutions
company focused on managing IT for
accounting firms. He has an extensive
track record of building and growing
businesses and has deep knowledge in
corporate strategy and team building.
Prior to Right Networks, Joel was SVP of
Emerging Business at Constant Contact
(acquired by Endurance International
Group) where he grew the SinglePlatform
unit from $2M to $20M over four years.
As CEO at NMS Communications, Joel led
the transformation of a business unit into
the stand-alone public company, LiveWire
Mobile.

OCTOBER 2019 ■

What technology advances are having
a meaningful impact on our industry?

In business, and really all aspects of our
lives, there is an urgent need for more time
in the day. Just like Alexa is automating our grocery
shopping and Nest our home energy usage, there are
technology tools automating the many manual tasks
accountants have traditionally had to handle. By freeing
up considerable amounts of time and resources, the
adoption of automation tools is helping firms make the
shift toward advisory services.

Q:
A:

Can you share an example of how
automation can impact a firm?

Countless tasks require access to, and sharing
of, data. Sounds simple but data transfer can
take an inordinate amount of time. That's what makes
the recent introduction of Right Networks' "always on"
platform, powered by Autofy, a game-changer. It allows
applications to connect and share data without any human
intervention.
Here's an example of how it works. Many people who use
Expensify for expense management also use QuickBooks.
If you're on the road and inputting your expenses, you
probably don't want to also go through the process of
putting it into a file and importing it into QuickBooks.
With our "always on" platform, we allow Expensify to
immediately deliver that data into the QuickBooks file.
We do this by providing APIs that allow application
developers to automatically synchronize their data directly
to QuickBooks.

www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com

Q:
A:

So you remove the need for human
intervention in the transfer of data?

Yes, the applications talk to each other
seamlessly. And you can set custom intervals
for when you want data synchronized. It can be every
30 minutes, once a day, whatever works best for your
business.
You can imagine the impact this 24/7 data transfer and
synchronization between Quickbooks Desktop and
third-party apps can have on productivity. Think about
overnight inventory synchronization for manufacturing
apps, or scheduled, automatic monthly financial reports
used by banks and lenders.

Q:
A:

What led Right Networks in this
direction?

We are living into our mission to create a
QuickBooks Desktop ecosystem that is as
capable as the QuickBooks Online ecosystem. Historically,
if you were not logged into your QuickBooks file on
your Windows machine, you couldn't trade data with
any third-party applications. The inability to automate
transactions between all of a company's applications
has, up until now, been a reason some companies have
left the QuickBooks Desktop ecosystem. Now, whether
you're logged into QuickBooks or away for the weekend,
third party applications that need data in and out of your
QuickBooks files can work in the background, 24/7.

Q:
A:

From the "big picture" perspective, how
can this technology fuel transformation
for the industry?
There's so much talk about being replaced
by robots and that's clearly not true. As a
technologist, I can say we love to get ahead of ourselves,
so let's look at what's happening now. Technologies
like Right Networks' Autofy can automate processes to
dramatically improve people's productivity. At the core
of this is data: to feed the AI bots of the future, we need
a lot of data. We can expect to see Autofy and other
technologies liberating the data. Within Right Networks
we have roughly more than half a million company files
within our infrastructure. Imagine the richness of that
data and how it can inform an advisor who's helping a
specific client understand how they stack up against
other companies in their industry in terms of growth or
inventory turnover. This is the direction that we're headed
in and this is how technology will enable advisory services.

Q:
A:

Where can people find out more about
Right Networks "always on" platform?

Visit www.RightNetworks.com or call us at
1-866-607-3048.

http://www.Bill.com http://www.RightNetworks.com http://www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com

CPA Practice Advisor

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