Running a Firm (824)
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Wow, WiFi In The Sky!
- Sunday, 07 June 2009
- Running a Firm
- Written by Barry MacQuarrie CPA.CITP
I just boarded a plane and discovered that the airline now offers wireless Internet on certain flights. What a concept! Just think, I can check email, browse the Web and access all of my web applications.
The flight attendants announce that wireless internet access will be available once we hit 10,000 feet. So, of course, the geek side of the brain says, “Fire up the laptop and find out what this service is all about.” I was the first in my row to click the Configure WiFi button and connect to the wireless network.
Read more...Social Media Tools And The Accounting Profession
- Tuesday, 09 June 2009
- Running a Firm
- Written by Thomas G. Stephens, Jr. CPA.CITP
Like dandelions in the spring, social media tools seem to be showing up everywhere. Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo, and LinkedIn are just a few of the players in a market that is growing at warp speed. In this article, we will examine some of the social media tools available to accountants and review how you can get started with social media.
Read more...Building Big Communities: Do You Need Social Media?
- Monday, 08 June 2009
- Running a Firm
- Written by Kathy Yakal
When I joined the Rotary Club of Los Osos, CA, I got a lot of handshakes and a free breakfast, a presentation about the organization’s history, and access to 30 other businesspeople looking to network. I got the chance to provide humanitarian service, as the group’s charter states, and I got to socialize with the group’s members and their friends who wanted to do the same thing.
When I joined FaceBook, I didn’t get any handshakes or free breakfasts, and I can’t say I’m helping build goodwill and peace in the world. But my universe isn’t limited to the people in the meeting room at the golf course on Friday mornings . It’s only limited to every person I’ve ever known who’s joined the wildly popular Web site and a lot of people I’d never met before joining.
Read more...IBM and Intuit Collaborate to Help Small and Medium Businesses Work Smarter
- Wednesday, 03 June 2009
- Running a Firm
- Written by
When IBM announced last week a new business solution for the small and medium market, some technology reporters called it an iPod for the business world. IBM calls it the Smart Cube (just one aspect of a larger IBM Smart Business solution) – described by IBM as an appliance that comes prepackaged with applications needed to run a small or medium business including email, calendaring, security and finances.
Read more...Emerging Technologies 2009
- Tuesday, 26 May 2009
- Running a Firm
- Written by Richard Oppenheim CPA
The frequency of technology change ranges from annually to hourly. Emerging technology products and services announced today can quickly migrate from concepts for tomorrow to ideas from yesterday. In no way does this mean that the new will always replace the old. Changing what you use is not a requirement. One can choose to ignore the new and stay with what is currently in operation. However, often times, change provides an upgrade, an improvement or enhancement to what is being done now. In some cases, change may provide an opportunity for increased revenue or decreased expenses or both.
We are experiencing dynamic changes as new technologies emerge. For example, RIM’s Blackberry and Apple’s iPhone changed the way we use cellular communications – as much more than just a telephone. In 2009, cellular phones are replacing land lines and Smartphones are replacing cellular phones. So there is a trail of technology emerging, growing and giving birth to new capabilities and new opportunities. Even with these changes, there are lots of people still making effective use of landlines and cellular phones.
Read more...Implementing a Systematic Approach to Growing Your Practice
- Friday, 22 May 2009
- Running a Firm
- Written by Hugh Duffy MBA
If you have a “systematic approach” to marketing, your firm’s growth will be far better than if you use the “fly by the seat of your pants” approach. That’s because a systematic approach is more predictable and consistent in delivering the results you want.
Systematic Approaches Are Used Everyday
Each weekend while watching sports, we see leading athletes use a systematic approach to deliver consistent, and superior, results. In basketball, the systematic approach to free throw shooting used by Steve Nash, Dirk Novitski and Jason Kidd is far more effective than that used by Shaquille O’Neil or Ben Wallace. In golf, Tiger Woods and Phil Michelson use a systematic approach for every single shot.
Read more...Document, Forms, Content & Knowledge Management
- Monday, 11 May 2009
- Running a Firm
- Written by John Higgins CPA.CITP
Life can be funny at times. For the past five years or so, those of us who inform, educate and advise accounting professionals have been beating the drum about the virtues of “going paperless.” Well I just returned from a conference of CPA firm IT directors, where I facilitated a panel discussion on electronic document management systems (EDMS). I was only half surprised to hear a number of the participants complain that despite having implemented an EDMS, they are printing more paper than ever before. There is nothing like the real world to screw up a good theory!
Read more...Why Most Accounting Firm Web Sites Fail
- Friday, 15 May 2009
- Running a Firm
- Written by Hugh Duffy MBA
Seven Important Things About Your Website
According to current polling information, only 57% of accounting firms have a website. Or said another way, 43% of accounting firms do not have a website. It’s scary to me that in today’s day and age 43% of accounting firms do not have a website.
I have visited over two hundred accounting firm websites and in so doing I have identified the most common mistakes firms make with their websites. Overall, the quality of websites in the marketplace has improved dramatically as mid-sized firms have really gotten on board and made sizeable investments over the past few years. But there are many significant mistakes that remain common. Here are the top seven:
Read more...Avoid SEO Firms That Guarantee Results
- Friday, 08 May 2009
- Running a Firm
- Written by Hugh Duffy MBA
Many shoddy search engine optimization (SEO) firms solicit their services by guaranteeing top placement in the search engines. We’ve all received the unsolicited email messages (spam) about how they can move your website into the top position in no time at all.
Read more...WS+B’s Experience with Tax Document Automation
- Friday, 08 May 2009
- Running a Firm
- Written by Jim Bourke CPA.CITP
As we migrated from a manual to an all digital environment on the tax side of our practice, it was only natural that we moved into the area of tax document automation. Tax document automation is viewed as the ability to populate tax preparation software, automatically (with little or no human intervention) from a digital image of a source document such as a W-2, 1099, K-1, 1098, etc.
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