Excerpt from Accounting Technology
Business Builders Supplement
November 2005

Serving a Niche: Fighting the Curse of the Spreadsheet

By Carly Lombardo

Meeting customers’ technology and accounting needs isn’t always easy, especially if the customer comes from a specific industry with unique needs.

However, many resellers and accountants are tapping into niche markets and meeting those needs. And the ability to meet those needs goes beyond selling and implementing software.

“Knowledge is key to realizing what your customers want, says David Thikoll, owner of Phoenix-based Cardamel Consulting. Cardamel, which averages approximately three construction implementations per month, has hired three people in the last six months to handle the increased interest in software geared for the construction industry.

According to Thikoll, the firm’s construction clients want to be able to track their profitability and control costs. “It’s the concept of taking accounting past bookkeeping to a more timely analysis. Customers want to understand the cost of their projects on multiple levels. Our job is to clean up all the clutter,” says Thikoll.

Cleaning up the clutter means getting all of the client’s information in one place. Thikoll explains, “Most companies have an accounting system, a construction system, and then pull everything together on an Excel spreadsheet, often re-entering data and producing financial statements from there.”

Cardamel makes it possible for all data to be in one place. From there, customers have increased visibility and lose the clutter. “Now, customers are looking for partners, when before they were just looking for people to implement systems. They want us to ‘show them how to do it.’ We see lots of general ledgers that are nasty, giant monsters that take an enormous amount of time, are labor-intensive and error-prone. We’ve taken many charts of accounts down from 80 pages to 3.”