Keep Up or Get Out of the Way!
Author:
Brian Walsh
[Fulltext] "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind." Winston Churchill.
"Heavy lifting is out; brains are in." Tom Peters. We live in interesting times!
Like it or not, the dot.com phenomenon cannot be ignored. While commotion on the markets over the last couple of weeks might suggest that the high-tech bubble is about to burst, the fact that virtually every traditional business is working on its e-business strategy at the moment, suggests that the dot.com phenomenon in its broadest sense will be with us for some time to come. Just recently PricewaterhouseCoopers has reported a staggering 400 percent increase in revenues for the past fiscal year in its e-Business practice. This amounts to $1.6 billion in revenues. Evidence from the Fortune 500 suggests that traditional industries are now beginning to strike back against their dot.com competitors and it is likely that in the long run they will have the staying power and financial resources to see off the competition.
Our world is changing at an unprecedented rate. Not so long ago, the Internet was scarcely known outside universities and research Institutes. Today, according to a recent Am�¡rach survey, 600,000 Irish users or 22% of adults, are online. Some of these presumably are accessing the Net on their TV sets, others on their WAP mobile phones, most on their PC. Up to 50 Irish dot.coms are expected to float on NASDAQ in the next five years. In London that figure is 150, in Germany 200. Not so long ago, email was the preserve of researchers, scientists, and computer nerds. Today we cannot imagine doing business without it.
These developments pose challenges for Chartered Accountants if we are to maintain our position as premier business advisers. Simply to keep up with the pace of change, businesses need to find answers for questions on issues ranging from technology to investments, from human resources to international business practice. And as businesses are forced to accelerate their own pace of change, so they require the professionals they depend on to either keep up, or get out of the way.
Knowledge is critical in this environment. The advisers who succeed will be those with the ability to make the right information available to the right people at the right time so that they can act on it. As Chartered Accountants, we need to take this seriously. We need to know where the knowledge is, what it's worth, and how best it can be put to use in our businesses and for our clients. As a recent report by PA Consulting Group notes: "It has become conventional wisdom that the organisations that will thrive in the next decade and beyond are those that understand the value of their intellectual assets and work actively to increase the return on those assets."
The more complex the marketplace, the greater the value of good advice. This knowledge economy presents new opportunities for Chartered Accountants. Let's make sure we make the most of them!
Brian Walsh, FCA
Chief Executive