Chuck Vigeant M.Ed at 2012 SNH Conference | CLEARIFY

Scaling New Heights 2012

QQube™ was well represented at the Scaling New Heights 2012 Conference, conducted in cooperation with Intuit®, and sponsored by CLEARIFY® and several dozen other vendors.

Of particular note were three multi-session tracks which revolved around QQube training and implementation.

1. Back to back sessions presented by CLEARIFY founder Chuck Vigeant, M.Ed. showing the many uses of QQube, including building reports and analyses for sales, job costing, inventory, manufacturing, advanced general ledger and more.  Class discussion included what can or cannot be tracked or accessed within QuickBooks - and became an educational foray into what is actually available for businesses that use QuickBooks.
2. 1 day boot camp for using Excel with QQube, taught by Mario Nowogrodzki, CPA, CITP, owner of Mendelson Consulting and assisted by Fran Reed, owner of Freed Up Solutions.  Both are Certified QQube Professionals and QQube Solution Providers.  The class had a strict limit of 20 students, with a waiting list of several dozen people; each attendee also received a free QQube Single User Edition.
3. 2 day boot camp for using Crystal Reports with QQube, taught by Gale Kirsopp, owner of Kirsopp consulting and CLEARIFY founder Chuck Vigeant, M.Ed.  Curriculum focused on creating a job costing report using the various components of Crystal Reports, including: Selection of data, grouping, filtering, sorting, drill-downs, parameters, formatting, and working with formulas.  The goal was to use progressive learning that would rely upon adding each component until the final report was built.

The CLEARIFY booth was manned by founder Chuck Vigeant, M.Ed., and by Debra Kilsheimer who is an Advanced Certified QuickBooks Pro Advisor and QQube Certified Professional.  Dozens of patrons who visited the booth were treated to presentations and answers shown on a big screen monitor, with personal attention to specific client need questions.

One of the great things about shows like this and those sponsored by The Sleeter Group, is seeing the familiar faces which have made the Intuit Community a thriving entity for over a decade.  Founder Chuck Vigeant, M.Ed. says "I still get energized seeing the smiling faces of colleagues i have known for years.  It is so humbling to have people come by the booth to wish us well - whether they use our products or not."

For those who were not familiar with QQube, the most prominent question was "What is the difference between QQube, Xpanded Reports, and WebKPI?".  In reality, there is very little overlap - if any - from the three types of products offered. 

1. QQube is a local data warehouse - or platform - upon which you use a report writer like Excel, Crystal Reports, Access, or any tool of choice.  Some companies use QQube as a plug in for SQLServer, Microsoft SharePoint - or Excel Power Pivot Tables. QQube data can be made available to any desktop or cloud application, and provides details for even the most complicated/difficult reports. Addtionally, QuickBooks is not the only application for which QQube data will be available.
2. XPanded Reports is also a desktop solution and starts with existing QuickBooks Reports and provides their own reporting mechanism to add columns or calculations to those existing rpeorts.  They are a report writer, with their own report writing tools - and limited to existing QuickBooks data.
3. WebKPI is a cloud application that delivers KPI and benchmarking tools using a visual snapshot of a company's financials. Using drag and drop visual tools in the cloud, you can monitor cash flow, revenue, profitability, as a well as accounting ratios and business analytics.

What is surprising to many, is that all three companies refer business to each other, depending upon the client need - which is the bottom line.

Nashville

The Renaissance Hotel was located close to downtown Broadway, where restaurants and bars abound.  At night, if you ate local bbq offerings from at Rippy's or Jack's, you would see faces from the convention; and stories about late night imbibers would sprinkle early morning conversation.  Walking into bars where Willie or Waylon once sang, is a treat - you never knew if the music you heard that night would somebody be appearing on Grammy stage in the future.

Some of the CLEARIFY instructors managed to make it to the Grand Ole Opry to hear 91 year old Jimmy Dickens sing, pick, and tell jokes that had the audience howling.  The show was a great mix of both young and experienced talent - and had something for everybody.

Takeaways

• People who know about QQube love the product, and want to learn more
• Booth visitors wanted to be able to get up to speed quicker on achieving their end goal for their clients
• Future training should include both beginning and intermediate options
• For those who are already creating solutions with QQube, they are thirsting for more training and information
• QQube is not for everybody e.g. it is better suited for more detailed reporting and analysis, or larger businesses. 

Next year, the conference is in Orlando at Disney World.  We look forward to seeing our colleagues again!