[Fulltext] Having a website can open a door to new business provided you use it in the right way explains Conor O'Kelly.
It's 1st April 1999, four days before the end of the 98/99 tax year and with time running out I'm looking for some last minute BES schemes to invest in. Schemes are thin on the ground this year and many are already full. However I've identified a portfolio of three or four schemes through the media. One is being run by a large practice in central Dublin, barely a mile away from our own office and another is being run by a small sole practitioner in the South of the country. The Dublin practice hasa large pool of secretarial labour to churn out prospectuses, type covering letters, address envelopes, dispatch marketing brochures in the post and attend to telephone enquiries. The small practice does not. Margins are tight and staff are preoccupied with P35s and year end compliance work. However details of their BES Schemes are available on their website which I can access 24 hours a day. From there I can connect to the websites of their BES client companies, examine a wide range of company information, director profiles, audited financial statements (endorsed by a link from the practice website), and a wide range of online complementary information to aid my investment decision. The prospectus can be downloaded and delivered directly to my desktop in minutes. I'm happy to proceed and fill out an online application form on the practice website. A quick call confirms that the small practice is happy to receive funds electronically and, with the aid of my Internet banking software, I transfer the funds to the practice account. The deal is done. No so for the large practice located only a mile from my own office whose investment pack sent by post takes five days to arrive and lands on my desk on the 6th April - too late!
Science fiction? No. This is a true story. It is simply the new face of practice management. A small practice with limited resources has taken advantage of Information Technology as an enabling business tool to deliver excellence in client services in a competitive business environment.
Developing New Digital Products & Services
This practice has been quick to embrace the Information Age where economic order is dictated not by physical resources but by knowledge and the ability to manage and create value from it. Since its inception information technology has had a major effect on business, by improving productivity, lowering costs, creating new products and markets, and helping companies more fully understand consumers.
Society, business, marketing and technology drivers are moving corporate organisations to a more consumer orientated business model, one in which the management of information is becoming more critical. The challenge for practice managers must now be to develop new digital accounting products and services to cater to the new emerging society.
WebTrust & The Role of Auditor
With more of their client companies seeking to publish financial statements online auditors will increasingly be called on to express an opinion on online content. The traditional delivery channel for financial statements and the audit report has heretofore been paper and published media. Increasingly client companies are choosing the cost economics of online media, such as the WWW to deliver their financial statements. With little evidence to date that online content is being audited, and with growing scepticism among users of online financial information, users are increasingly likely to seek the reassurance of the audit report in the form of a digital signature or by way of an online audit report published on the website. This will put pressure on practice managers to embrace the Internet as a delivery channel, extending the service they currently bring to print media into the extended world of online publishing.
This may form part of a broader audit of the client's online trade. Users of not only financial statements but online trading models may look to the reassurance offered by the Chartered Accountant brand as evidence of proper trading practices. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland is at the forefront of this endeavour by supporting and actively promoting the WebTrust initiative.
WebTrust works by providing a seal of approval that is displayed on websites. The websites are checked to ensure they have trading methods and arrangements suitable for their industries. They must be safe from electronic viruses and their operators must ensure that information received from the public is kept private and confidential.
If this audit function is not carried out by professional accountants it is inevitable that new certifying authorities will establish themselves online to provide this service.
If the profession fails to embrace the WebTrust opportunity or falls behind the development that are currently taking place, that may lead to an erosion of the Chartered Accountant brand.
Practice Management & The Learning Organisation
In an era when knowledge management systems are set to change the competitive nature of business, practice managers face a unique opportunity to embrace this new discipline as a powerful practice management tool.
Corporate Intranets can now be set up and run from desktop PCs. With almost all the world's leading taxation and financial institutions now online, it has never been easier for accountants to seek out information and stay informed of developments. Once captured this information can be made available across an entire practice with relative ease. Online tax libraries can be created instantly and cheaply directly from tax authorities on the WWW and stored in-house giving staff unprecedented access to a cheap and extensive technical knowledge base which was inconceivable even five years ago. Unlike CD-ROM libraries, technical bulletins can be downloaded from the Web to update the practice library when needed and can be distributed inexpensively throughout the organisation to staff desktops via the Intranet. Filed returns from the Companies Office and the Inspector of Taxes can be scanned from desktop PCs using commonly available packages such as Adobe Acrobat and Lotus Notes to create a powerful profile of a client which is then quickly and easily accessible to all staff members in a practice. Internet client mailing lists, online helpdesks, Intranet based tutorials, software support and electronic brochures are all set to become key tools in the accountant's arsenal.
Reinforcing Client Relationships
As staff come to rely on this technology as a practice management tool, so the knowledge spreads throughout the organisation with increased ease. A dynamic learning organisation emerges, sensitive to movements in both the market and in client needs, and flexible enough to respond quickly to meet these new needs as they emerge.
In the rapidly moving world of business, clients have a trusted business advisor in the Chartered Accountant. The world of e-business is movingly even more rapidly and many clients are confused by the array of technical jargons and media hype. Reinforcing
the relationship with the client can be achieved by creating a learning environment for those who may not be familiar with the new emerging business models. Becoming a trusted partner of the client is the key to maintaining these relationships. This can be achieved by providing them with new valuable accounting products and services.
Putting the Theory into Practice
Indeed practitioners may increasingly find that electronic commerce is fast becoming a matter of competitive necessity, and no longer a matter of competitive choice. Recognising this, the Institute's CPD Department has developed a series of workshops on website design that is running this Autumn.
Accountancy Ireland, Vol. 31, No. 5 October 1999