What is the difference between a business process assessement and a needs assessment?  

These two terms are interchangeable and can go hand in hand.  We at Accounting Systems Consulting Group, LLC define a needs assessment as the initial intelligence gathered when a prospective customer is interested in replacing their accounting system.  This is a non-billable engagement offered by our team to assess the requirements of your back office accounting and front office customer facing teams.  During the needs assessment we determine the potential cost/benefit to our prospective customer in consideration of replacing the existing business management system or systems.  The needs assessment is a basic assessment to determine whether or not the prospective customer will benefit from a more detailed business process assessment.

The business process assessment is a tool used to reveal process improvement opportunities. Prior to selecting a new accounting system it is important to understand the degree the new system meets the business process automation objectives of each department within a company.  This can be achieved by asking a series of questions applicable to the individual departments and assigning a weight to each question answered.  The business process assessment can reveal "bottlenecks" within a particular department that are hindering the growth and efficiency of the business.

Step One: The technology project managment committee decides which questions apply to each department within the company.  
 
Step Two: The goal here is to get the people within each department engaged.  Each question is answered and given a weight of importance.
 
Step Three:  Analyze the data
 
Step Four:  Match the business process automation objectives of each department and match it to the functionality of each accounting system under consideration by creating a matrix.

Contact us to learn more about our complimentary needs assessment evaluation.