Face to Face : Renowned Charter Accountant firm reflects with Vishal Shah

Vadodara, India, Sanskari Nagari (city) of India, undisputed-ly home for Manufacturing facilities of Multinationals and PSUs, is known for its knowledge-centric entrepreneurship. With popular demand, this is my another interaction with a Renowned Charter Accountant hailing from Vadodara, He is credited to have put Vadodara a KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) destination on the world map.

I was hosted at his office in the center of the city. Way to his office from the reception area let me observe the strict access control systems they implemented in their 100 seat KPO. I had a memorable 45 minutes reflection on why his enterprise depends on BLACKbox as a mission critical device and what value it has contributed to his enterprise.

I thank him for allowing me to share this conversation without disclosing his name. I will address him as Sir in my flow of conversation. In the interest of time, I am summarizing the conversation.

Here is my candid discussion with him…

Vishal:
Sir, What is your perspective on usefulness of BLACKbox?

Sir:
We are in two businesses. One is KPO which provides Accounts Process Outsourcing to customers in United Kingdom and Middle Eastern Countries. Another is traditional Audit Service firm to our customers in Vadodara, Anand and Ankleshwar. For our KPO service business, BLACKbox is a mandatory investment. For our Audit Service Firm, investment in BLACKbox was probably due to my obsession to adhere to Code of Ethics and Conduct stipulated by ICAI (Institute of Charter Accountants of India) which mandates non-negotiable maintenance of confidentiality of Client’s business and personal data.

Vishal:
That’s interesting. especially, the 2nd point. Can you please elaborate?

Sir:
In India, status of and expectations from CA by the businesses are very different, especially when you serving small businesses in range of 10 CR to 100 CR turn over range. Here, everything is on CA firm, they keep their books, feed data to accounts software, file IT returns on customer’s behalf from their office, exchange entire accounts data on the Pen Drives, file GST returns, issue inventory/valuation certificates, prepare project reports for banks and whatever you can imagine related to Accounts and Finance. You can safely assume that all business data, sales, procurement, costs, salaries, inventory, assets, liabilities data of a customer goes to and fro to CA firm’s office. In such situation, I feel so responsible and to an extent nervous about ensuring confidentiality of this data. It makes me the moral custodian of this data, whether I like it or not, I accept it or not. That’s the reason, I opted for BLACKbox in our Audit Firm. After implementing BLACKbox I feel like an empowered custodian of our clients’ data. It is safe from loss, leakage and theft. Even, I have recommended it to most of our clients also. Just like a “Body Guard” to a celebrity, BLACKbox is a “Data Guard” to a business. Ha, Ha. I hope it’s not a poor joke.

Vishal: Not at all, Sir. it’s like a Santa giving a strong Punch…… sorry, Punch Line…. Ha ha
Jokes apart, I am so happy to see this perspective. Can you let me know, what best worked for you from gamut of BLACKbox features?

Sir:
All of our Charter Accountant community faces this challenge. Your innovation has resolved it so well. Let us understand it. Our clients send us data mostly by Pen Drive. We also have to use digital signatures on USB port. This mandates keeping USB ports open. This leads to a serious threat of Data Leakage and Theft. The feature you have developed in BLACKbox which allows inward only data from USB solves this problem so effortlessly. Also, the feature to use Digital Signature without allowing USB port to copy data on Pen Drive is just cool. It takes our data security to an another level.

Vishal:
What else, do you find very useful.

Sir:
We have many junior students working in our office as Articles. They are quite immature and sometimes lack responsibility. They sometimes accidentally or intentionally delete data. Your Active Recycle Bin feature which restores deleted data as well as tags who deleted data is just so useful. We use it at least 10 times in a month to maintain our business continuity. Your Vault and Workspace feature is so assuring. As our articles many a times use their own laptops, we are attacked by ransomware few times. However, we never lost data. Of course, your duo technology for BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) laptops used by our article juniors, safeguards our data on their laptops. How did you do so many innovations?

Vishal:
That’s so encouraging to learn. I am going to share this with my readers. What message would you like to give to them?

Sir:
We charter accountants are entrusted all their data by our customers. I have seen both sides of coin. While running a KPO, we are subjected to most stringent Data Loss, Leakage and Theft Prevention Policies by our overseas customers and we do it. Our Indian customers, especially SMEs do not subject us to such policies. However, we are morally responsible to make investment in our IT infrastructure to be an honest custodian of their data. I am so professionally satisfied to have done it for my customers. I hope the new privacy law will sensitize everyone on importance of Data Privacy and Confidentiality.

Signing of now, next time, I am meeting an eminent charter accountant and will have such interesting interaction.

Best Regards,

Vishal Shah
Founder and CEO,
Synersoft Technologies Pvt Ltd