It's been three and a half months since my last blog post. Why the hiatus? Recently, I accept the position of Chief Information Officer in addition to my role as Chief Financial Officer. It was a natural fit because I was already performing all of the IT functions in the Firm. However, we decided we need to formalize the role and put an emphasis on developing custom applications.
My career in IT began probably as far back as high school when I signed up for a basic computing class. Coding came easy to me and I enjoyed it. Even though my college degree is in accounting, I still used those basic programming skills to streamline accounting processes by writing VBA macros in Excel. This lead to a role of selling, installing, and supporting MAS90 (an enterprise accounting software) while in public accounting. With the help of an esteemed colleague and mentor, I developed skills of working with Windows Server and developing custom applications and reports for clients.
When I started with the Firm, we had no full-time IT staff, and I assumed all of the responsibility. To this day, I am the first and only full-time IT staff (with the help of outside vendors). I have built a network infrastructure utilizing the public and private cloud, which has kept IT costs down, while providing the tools we need to provide the best customer service in the industry.
In order to free my time to step up this new role, I have been busy training my staff to take over much of the accounting responsibilities. I have also been reading a lot of technical books and white papers looking for the best solutions to solve business problems.
So that's where I've been. Last year, I was reading a lot of leadership books, which gave me a lot of ideas for blogging. Whereas this year, I have been reading a lot of technical materials, which makes for boring blog posts. I also don't want to give away any trade secrets or competitive advantages.
