Tag: Technology

The Time Wasted Fiddling with Your Smartphone Is Adding Up

The following post is republished from AccountingWEB, a source of accounting news, information, tips, tools, resources and insight — everything you need to help you prosper and enjoy the accounting profession.

BlackBerrys and iPhones have become the latest bane for employers concerned about lost productivity, according to Employment Law Advisory Services.

The company reported that its help lines are taking more and more calls from employers worried about the amount of time staff waste playing with their smartphones when they should be working.

Over the past couple of years, employers have equipped their people with phones that let them send and receive emails. Now that worries about productivity are taking hold, one of the common questions is whether taking smartphones away from employees might constitute a change in their remuneration package.


“What started as a trickle is certainly building up to a stream as more and more employers start looking at what they really need from their employers,” said Peter Mooney of ELAS.

“Being able to email staff at seven or eight o’clock was certainly seen as a benefit, but now the phones can do more and more, they are realizing that giving staff such powerful technology has its drawbacks too.”

ELAS estimated that accessing emails on a smartphone typically saves the employer between five and 20 minutes a day, depending on how much time the employee spends out of the office. Time lost to Facebook, Twitter, checking football scores, and so on can amount to 30 to 90 minutes a day.

As well as being a potential distraction for them, staff with expensive phones are also more likely to have their phones stolen, the firm advised.

In the past year or so, social networking sites were employers’ biggest online bugbear and this concern was addressed by a range of web monitoring and blocking programs. But companies that restrict staff Internet access through computers are finding it harder to control staff surfing habits on their mobile phones.

According to Mooney, downgrading an employee’s phone from a smartphone to a standard handset does not constitute a reduction in their overall package.

“Because most companies’ IT policies state that any technology staff have is for business not personal use, then it is no loss of benefit to take that away,” he advised.

Share your thoughts on this topic in the General Business forum on our sister site, USBusinessForums.

This article originally appeared on our sister Web site, AccountingWEB.co.uk.

Social Media Makes for Effective Marketing on the Cheap

The following post is republished from AccountingWEB, a source of accounting news, information, tips, tools, resources and insight — everything you need to help you prosper and enjoy the accounting profession.

In a tough economy, marketing is often the first to go. But that can mean missed opportunities. So, more accounting firms are using social media to boost their marketing efforts without busting their budgets.

Social media – social networking sites, blogs, and video/photo-sharing sites – is increasingly used for marketing purposes for three reasons:


1. Social media sites are where people go to search for information on the Web – In March, Facebook became the most-visited site by U.S. users, beating out Google, according to analytics firm Hitwise. And Facebook hits increased 185 percent over the previous year; Google hits increased only 9 percent.

2. Think viral marketing – This can result in new LinkedIn connections, Facebook fans, or Twitter followers, building visibility and facilitating referrals and requests for service.

3. The cost is low – Developing a social media presence takes time away from other activities, but hard costs are minimal. For example, you generally can join a social network or post a video for free.

The key to social media marketing success is to develop strategies that fit your firm’s needs and strengths. But you can start small:

1. Get active on LinkedIn – Although Facebook use for business is increasing, LinkedIn – with more than 60 million registered users – is still the go-to social media site for professionals. It’s where accountants should start building their social media presence. Be sure partners fill out complete profiles, including summaries that detail their experience and expertise. Also provide training on how they can build up and utilize their networks.

2. Host a blog – This is a great way for practice leaders to demonstrate their expertise. For your first blog, choose a partner who has the passion and commitment needed to write a compelling blog, regularly update it, and respond to comments. Once other partners see the blog’s success, their interest in blogging themselves likely will increase.

A tasteless post by a partner or a complaint by a disgruntled employee can travel all over the Web (even if your firm doesn’t actively maintain a social media presence). So all firms must establish SM policies that address:

• Who is permitted to represent your firm in various social media.

• How to represent the firm in a way that is consistent with your brand.

• Why social media can’t be used to share confidential information.

• How to use privacy settings on various social media sites.

Whether your policy should be looser or more rigid depends on your firm’s culture.

Social media will play an increasingly important role in accounting firm marketing in the years to come. Start looking into how your firm can make the most of this client-building tool.

About the author:
Francesca Zelasko is director of accountant partner programs and partner marketing. Zelasko has more than 10 years of progressive marketing experience within the technology industry including SaaS, software, hardware and middleware products and services. She currently oversees the overall Accountant Channel for SurePayroll which includes Referral and Reseller partners and customized products.

A Little Housekeeping

Afternoon capital market servants. Your regularly scheduled inflammatory nonsense is being interrupted for the rest of the day due to some technical maintenance that I won’t even begin to try and get into. The site should be available during this time and we should be back to a full slate tomorrow but you know how these things go.

We’ll still be here sweating everything out so let us know if anything goes down and we’ll get to it just as soon as we get the all-clear.

In the meantime, Klynveldians can leave some feedback and Deloittians can dust off their résumés. And for the love of everything good and holy, would kill someone at E&Y to make something interesting happen?

How Much Time Is Too Much Time to Spend on Social Media?

The following post is republished from AccountingWEB, a source of accounting news, information, tips, tools, resources and insight–everything you need to help you prosper and enjoy the accounting profession.

It’s likely that your employees spend a sizeable percentage of their time using social media. As work/life balance continues to blend into one homogenous string of activities, social media activity is happening in your workplace whether you realize it or not.

But isn’t social media just a big waste of time?

It can be, but lumping all socito the same unproductive bucket is unfair, and also unwise. Social media can be an effective tool for many key business activities – including business development, client retention, and employee retention and recruitment.

Because platforms like Facebook often blend personal and business colleagues, it’s very challenging to set black and white rules when governing the use of social media.


Free reign on social media = Trust

At Chrometa, we take a mostly laissez faire approach to our employees’ use of social media, with no official policies or restriction on what employees are allowed to do. I know this thinking is counterintuitive to what many accounting and consulting firms believe, but I think this boils down to a control issue more than anything else. It’s sort of similar to being told as a child not to get into the cookie jar. If firms set up policies dictating certain actions, employees are more likely to violate these policies if they feel they can get away with it without being noticed.

Each of our employees is encouraged to set up and maintain a presence on “The Big 3” social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Their participation levels, on the other hand, are completely up to them. A couple of our employees really enjoy and benefit, both personally and professionally, from their time on Facebook and Twitter. Ironically, our chief technical officer generally dislikes social media and personally avoids it.

At the core of our free reign is trust. We trust that our employees are 100 percent devoted to the success of our company, mission, and brand. As a result, I have complete trust they will not represent us poorly; to do so would be like representing themselves poorly. This level of trust is only possible if an employee does completely self-identify with his or her job and firm.

How much time is too much time?

I personally have spent too much time on many occasions on the Big 3 and blogs, as well, without achieving what I’d consider a reasonable ROI on my time. Going forward, I know I need to more accurately gauge the amount of time I should spend on each medium.

It’s not completely fair and accurate when people proclaim, “Twitter is a complete waste of time” because they probably just don’t understand what it can do. Twitter can be a drain, but it also can be useful if used properly and marketed to your stakeholders. Like anything, if you spend too much time on Twitter, you can end up wasting a lot of time if you don’t use it wisely.

How-much-time-too-much-time is something everyone must figure out for themselves. I give our employees the leeway to decide how much time is too much. I know they honestly want to be productive and perform their roles to the best of their ability. Because I know this, I find it’s better if they figure out these types of limits and best practices themselves, instead of having them come as edicts from above.

It’s About Time is a series of articles devoted to practice management techniques that focus on efficiency and productivity.

About the Author:
Brett Owens is CEO and cofounder of Chrometa, a Sacramento, CA-based provider of time-tracking software that records activity in real time. Previously marketed to the legal community, Chrometa is branching out to accounting prospects. Gains include the ability to discover previously undocumented billable time, saving time on billing reconciliation, and improving personal productivity. Owens also is blogger and founder at CommodityBullMarket.com and ContraryInvesting.com, as well as a regular contributor to two leading financial media sites, SeekingAlpha.com and BeforeItsNews.com.

Five Ways Windows 7 Will Make Your Life Easier

The following post is republished from AccountingWEB, a source of accounting news, information, tips, tools, resources and insight–everything you need to help you prosper and enjoy the accounting profession.

Beyond the world of Windows XP, there lies a new age in computers. When the time comes for you to switch to Microsoft’s newest operating system, 7 will be waiting for you with enhancements that will make your transition extremely pleasing.

No need for overly pricey third-party software; these enhancements come ready out of the box and pack a punch that will make you wish you had switched to 7 sooner.


Jump Lists – Windows 7 makes it easy to access your most used documents, spreadsheets, Web pages, and media. Simply right click on an item in your task bar and a list of your most recently used items will appear in a popup window. You also can pin documents, much like a bookmark, and your document will always be listed in the jump list, ready to open with a simple click.

Snap – Making two applications align on your screen is no longer a hassle. With Windows Snap you can drag the windows to the left or the right of the monitor, and the applications will simply and easily be aligned on your screen. You also can drag a window to the top of your screen for easy maximizing. This feature is incredibly useful while dragging applications from one monitor to another.

Shake – If you ever get distracted by countless number of open applications on your desktop, with Shake, you can click and hold on any of the applications’ task bar, shake your mouse around, and all of your other applications will magically minimize. If you want to restore the applications, click on your open application, and just give it another shake. The windows will reopen.

Location Aware Printing – Have you ever taken your office laptop home, tried to print that one file you needed only to realize that you accidentally tried to print it to your office printer? With Windows 7, when your computer changes networks from home to office or office back to home, your computer will remember what printer you last used at each location and will automatically default to that specific printer. You won’t have to waste time changing your default printers.

Windows Touch – With the rise of touch screen electronics, Windows 7 comes equipped to work with touch screen computers and monitors. Not only does this feature work with single touch monitors, Windows 7 comes equipped with multi-touch, for very simple and very easy navigation around your computer. You can fly through your applications, photos, and media all with just a touch.

About the author:
David Rowe is a managed services consultant at Xcentric, which specializes in Cloud Computing and IT consulting for CPA firms. Rowe graduated from the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. He can be reached at (678) 297.0066 or at info@xcentric.com. Follow Xcentric at xcentric.com/blog and www.twitter.com/xcentric.

Future Accounting Firm Tools? BlackBerry’s PlayBook Will Challenge iPad

The following post is republished from AccountingWEB, a source of accounting news, information, tips, tools, resources and insight–everything you need to help you prosper and enjoy the accounting profession.

As iPhones continue to impinge on traditional BlackBerry territory, Research in Motion (RIM) is countering with a competitor to Apple’s famed iPad – a tablet known as the PlayBook will be released in early 2011.

Geared toward business users, the PlayBook will serve as either a standalone device, or a larger screen for a BlackBerry smartphone. Users will be able to access any information on their BlackBerry smartphone, such as e-mail, calendar appointments, and documents, interchangeably on either device.


Internet access is available via WiFi or by sharing the wireless data service plan of a BlackBerry. Unlike the iPad, the PlayBook will offer full support for Flash, which means users won’t have to jump through hoops to view YouTube.

At nine-tenths of a pound, the PlayBook is smaller and lighter than an iPad. Current iPads don’t offer built-in cameras, but the PlayBook will have dual high-definition cameras facing front and rear to allow video recording or video conferencing.

The PlayBook is compatible with BlackBerry Enterprise Server, and offers secure corporate data access. Video playback will be available at 1080p, along with support for MPEG, DivX, and WMV formats. The PlayBook will use the new BlackBerry Tablet operating system, which includes full multi-touch and gesture support.

The PlayBook will ship with a 1 GHz dual-core processor, and will have four times the onboard memory of an iPad (1 GB RAM in a PlayBook versus 256 MB in an iPad). The operating system allows for full multitasking, meaning users won’t have to pause or shut down one application to launch another. The PlayBook will have a standard microUSB and micro HDMI ports, and the 7-inch screen will offer a screen resolution of 1024 x 600.

RIM has not yet announced pricing, but some analysts expect the PlayBook will be offered through the cell phone carriers that sell BlackBerry smart phones. Others expect that the PlayBook will retail for approximately $499, which is the same as an entry level iPad.

About the author:
David Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm. Contact David at david@acctadv.com.

What Do We Make of The Sage and SAP Rumors?

The following post is republished from AccountingWEB UK, a source that delivers topical, practical content to accountants and accounting professionals.

Merger rumors. What would we do without them? The past decade or so of my professional life has been shaped by the regular appearance of bid rumors around Sage, usually of the “who are they going to buy this week?” sort.

So you can imagine my surprise to hear on the grapevine that Sage’s share price had surged almost 5% on Tuesday night on rumors that it was an acquisition target for SAP, with Microsoft and Gapgemini reported to be sniffing around the undergrowth in Newcastle too.

I’m not a stock market analyst, so I don’t really need to chase geese like this, but I couldn’t help myself from doing a little background checking. The Daily Mail appears to have broken the story, without naming sources, around 10:30 pm on Monday night. By the next morning, Reuters and numerous other outlets had picked up the trail and various analysts were puffing up the story with blogs and tweets.

There was a tweet from China Martens at 451 group of “late night activity in Walldorf” to verify that something was up, but with none of the companies involved breaking cover this really was one of those stories where one bit of unfounded gossip was feeding off another.


Years of industry-watching have taught me never to be surprised at what a software company with a wedge of cash in its back pocket can get up to, but neither SAP or Microsoft strike me as being suitable suitors for Sage. Microsoft’s entire business solutions strategy has been in turmoil for years and if it ever enters Steve Ballmer’s consciousness, my guess is that he wishes the company had never got into bed with Great Plains and Navision.

SAP meanwhile, is everything that Sage isn’t: a technology-focused global monolith that still has trouble thinking of an SME as having anything less than a $500m annual turnover. On this point Dennis Howlett blogged, “So much of Sage’s business is at an end of the market about which SAP has little understanding. Sage is on a declining organic growth curve, has a rat’s nest of code from acquired companies, is propped up by maintenance fees and has a nightmare in the US to manage with the ongoing Emdeon fiasco.”

It doesn’t happen often, but for once I find myself in complete agreement with him.

Strangely, by Wednesday afternoon the rumors had simmered down and so had the share price (although somebody seems to have done very nicely out of the rumors with 1.7m of shares shifted at the peak of the frenzy on Tuesday night).

Now I’ve voiced my doubts, they’ll probably turn around an announce the deal in the morning.

This XBRL Thing Appears to Be Really Happening

This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.

There’s no time to take a breather when it comes to XBRL implementations. New projects, regulations and initiatives are launched or introduced somewhere around the globe just about weekly, it appears. CFOs with firms that have yet to join the group won’t be out of the loop much longer.

XBRL, the acronym for eXtensible Business Reporting Language, means that the data contained within financial reports is constructed as individual elements, rather than blocks of text. Each piece of data comes wit and is linked to accounting definitions or rules. So, a number that makes up annual revenue has a different identity than a number that goes into payroll expense. The result? The data becomes “computer readable,” or interactive, so analysts, investors and regulators can easily compare one set of financial data to another.

Consider the following announcements and events:


Public company filings in the US: The last group of public companies that have yet to file XBRL financial statements with the SEC will start doing so for fiscal periods ending on or after June 15 of next year. These generally will be companies with market caps of less than $75 million or annual revenue of less than $50 million.

Domestic Banks: Earlier this month, Citibank announced that it was participating in a pilot involving the use of XBRL within dividend announcements issued by American Depositary Receipts, or ADRs. ADR dividend announcements were a logical starting point, because they’re concentrated among a relatively small number of issuers, and currently require lots of paper and re-keying of information, as this article in Earth Times points out.

US Legislation: True, a provision contained in early versions of the Dodd-Frank bill, and which would have required federal regulators to use a standard electronic format, like XBRL, when collecting info from the financial sector never made it to the final version. However, this summer Rep. Darrell Issa of California introduced a bill (H.R. 6038) that would amend Dodd-Frank to again include this provision. On July 30, it was referred to both the Committee on Financial Services and the Committee on Agriculture.

Along those lines, the House and Senate currently are hammering out legislation, the 2009 Federal Financial Assistance Management Improvement Act (S.303), which would require federal agencies to post spending data online in a uniform fashion – most likely, XBRL, NextGov reports. Just as XBRL will allow for easier analysis of corporate finances, this move would enable taxpayers and regulators to more easily examine federal spending and contracts.

Credit Agencies: Just before Labor Day, the SEC announced that a list of XBRL tags had been published on its website, and that nationally recognized statistical rating organizations (NRSROs) would need to begin using them by November 1 of this year.
Mutual Funds: By January of next year, mutual funds will be required to provide the SEC with summary information on risk and return from their prospectuses in XBRL format.

While XBRL’s benefits for investors have been the focus of much attention, the XBRL-related initiatives underway should benefit corporate America, as well, judging from a study by two researchers at Fordham University. In “XBRL and its financial reporting benefits: Capital market evidence,” Christine Tan and John Shon of Fordham write, “the findings of this study suggest that firms that file using XBRL experience a reduction in information asymmetry.” Moreover, XBRL may help smaller firms attract an analyst following, they add.

AT&T CEO Isn’t Impressed with Deloitte Study That Says Half of iPhone Users Would Switch to Verizon at the Drop of a Hat

Confidential to AT&T BSDs: Steve Jobs may be an asshole, but he’s not stupid.

Close to half of Apple Inc iPhone users in the United States would be “very interested” in dumping AT&T Inc for Verizon Wireless as a service provider, according to a study from professionals service firm Deloitte.

“If another carrier were to pick up the iPhone, you would probably see a number of defections,” said Ed Moran, director of insights and product innovation at Deloitte.

AT&T’S Chief Executive Randall Stephenson played down the potential impact of the loss of iPhone exclusivity at a Goldman Sachs conference on Tuesday.

Stephenson said about 80 percent of AT&T’s iPhone users were either in family plans making it difficult to cancel service or had received their phone through their business. [Ed. note: rumor has it that after making this statement, Stephenson was heard laughing maniacally]

Study finds iPhone owners want to switch to Verizon [Reuters]

Are Boomers Embracing the Always-Connected Attitude of Gen Y?

The following post is republished from AccountingWEB, a source of accounting news, information, tips, tools, resources and insight–everything you need to help you prosper and enjoy the accounting profession.

The technology use gap among the generations is closing rapidly. There may be no better example that hits home than Michael Winerup’s “Generation B” column in The New York Times, “On Vacation and Looking for Wi-Fi.” We all are touched, most of us are trapped by the psychological effect of being accessible 24/7 and the desire to keep on top of the deluge of messages and data coming in unstoppable torrents.

Winerup points out that just a few years ago the middle-aged members of his three-generation, geographically extended family vacationing together left their work and tech gadgets at home. Three years ago, a few made a visit to an Internet café on their vacation, just for the novelty of it. This year some of them stood in a long line in a resort lobby to pay for 25 hours of Internet service, brought laptops, and checked e-mail daily. This way they reduce the e-mail build-up awaiting them the first day back at work. I surely relate to that post-vacation return anxiety even as I resist checking e-mail every day when out of the U.S.


“We expect ourselves to be available,” said Winerup. That’s the Boomers’ mindset. Technology is making us work harder. Gen X and Y have been continuously connected for years, but many of them don’t want to be always available for work.

Winerup says we all are expected to use all the Internet tools for research and client relations. No more depending on secretaries and assistants.

The hit film “Up in the Air” made the point that critical human interactions, like layoffs, still require in-person contact. All the electronic connectedness not only can be a poor substitute for in-person higher touch contact, but it also leaves little time for the high touch. Now the connectedness has even invaded vacation time away with family and friends.

Is it positive or negative that the generations have something else in common?…I guess it depends.

Please share your thoughts.

Phyllis Weiss Haserot is the president of Practice Development Counsel, a business development and organizational effectiveness consulting and coaching firm she founded over 20 years ago, A special focus is on the profitability of improving inter-generational relations and transitioning planning for baby boomer senior partners (www.nextgeneration-nextdestination.com). Phyllis is the author of “The Rainmaking Machine” and “The Marketer’s Handbook of Tips & Checklists” (both West 2009). pwhaserot@pdcounsel.com. URL: www.pdcounsel.com.

CFOs Want Tech Investments to Pay Off…Stat!

This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.

CFOs and CIOs have very different priorities when it comes to IT spending, and that dichotomy is not likely to change any time soon, even as IT budgets are starting to once again increase.

After being slashed to almost nil during the height of the crisis for many corporations across sector and size, IT budgets are beginning to rise.

But CFOs are keeping a keen eye on where that money is going and still expect a relatively swift return on investment (ROI) in order to consider anything beyond maintenance and upgrades.


They want to clearly see that ROI—whether it be through qualitative measures, like better compliance or improved risk management, or through quantitative measures like reductions in days sales outstanding (DSO) or decreased cost-per-check.

As Craig Himmelberger at SAP said in a recent interview I did for Global Finance magazine: “People don’t want to rip and replace systems that are still functioning well, so a lot of the investments we see now are incremental.”

This IT budget allocation is likely to continue for the near future, at any rate, regardless of what CIOs may want. However, there does have to be a balance. At some point when liquidity risk fears begin to subside, CFOs will once again be more open to their CIOs’ suggestions for IT spending.

And what CIOs want to see is more spend on innovation, as Ellen Pearlman noted in her blog on CIOZone.com last month.

She quoted CXO Art Sedighi as saying: “In the current time and environment, the biggest challenge is [to] convince upper management to open up their wallets again after almost 3 years. The IT staff has been pulling things together with nothing short of band-aids since 2008, and things are about [to] fall apart. All management sees is the fact that spending was down, and they survived.”

Pearlman points out that while most execs believe that IT innovation is important, companies have consistently slashed spend on innovation over the past decade. In an AT Kearney study, executives cited IT innovation spend of 30 percent in 1999, compared with just 14 percent by 2009.

In the study, 45 percent of IT budget went to improving operations and 41 percent went to business enablement/process improvement. Most respondents felt that 24 percent of the IT budget should be directed towards innovation.

The current budget split certainly meshes with the continued corporate focus on driving down costs across the working capital chain. Indeed, it may be quite some time before CIOs get their dream IT allocation.

Marin County Scrapping SAP System That Deloitte ‘Neophytes’ Slapped Together

Earlier in the summer, we told you about Marin County California, who was pretty displeased with Deloitte throwing a bunch of ‘neophytes’ at their ERP implementation project or in the County’s words ‘a trial-and-error training ground.’

As a result of Deloitte’s amateur hour, the SAP system – that Deloitte claims was just fine and dandy where they left it – is now being thrown to the scrap heap by the county because fixing it will cost more than replacing the whole system. And God knows Arnie won’t be helping them out with the bill, so they have to save on costs where they can.

The system is the subject of a lawsuit Marin County filed against system integrator Deloitte Consulting earlier this year. Deloitte used the project as “a trial-and-error training ground” for inexperienced employees, and the result was a “costly computer system far worse than the legacy systems it was intended to replace,” according to the county’s complaint.

Deloitte has filed motions against Marin County’s “completely unfounded allegations,” as well as a complaint seeking unpaid fees, a spokesman said via e-mail. The system “was working properly and could perform all the tasks consistently with the standards set forth in the written contract,” according to a Deloitte court filing.

Marin County tells a different story. The SAP implementation dates to 2006, but today only 50 percent of the functionality is in place and working properly, according to a county report.

The county hasn’t decided on who they’re going with for the new system but if you’ve got a one-person shop with no experience and present your RFP using overhead transparencies, you’ll still have an edge on Deloitte.

County will rip and replace ailing SAP system [Reuters]