SME Blog

Excel guru

Simon Hurst of the ICAEW's IT Faculty is undoubtedly an Excel guru.  He has some excellent Excel tips that he shares online at his new blog, the Beancounters Guide to Technology.

The benefit of the online approach is that Simon has, rather neatly, included animation as well as screenshots and text.  Well worth a look.

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A moment in the sun

Recently the weather in the UK has been wonderful and we've had our moment in the sun.  By some strange coincidence so have I.

First there is a profile article from Liz Loxton of Best Practice magazine and then a mention in AccountancyAge by editor in chief Damian Wild.

Damian manages to mention accountants and rapper Vanilla Ice in the same article.  Quite a feat.  It's also good to see the Wiki Wednesday event get such a favourable mention.

Liz's article gives my views on using technology at work and to benefit business.  As a professional journalist she does a much better job at explaining it than I ever could.

Moment of glory over and it's back to making the teas. 

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Technology vs staff cost

Occasionally, as part of work, I get out to the odd awards ceremony.  The last one was the Financial Sector Technology awards in Park Lane.  This is very much an event for large companies.  Big IT teams.  Projects with budgets of £100m are quite possible. Normally, not my kind of event, but we were nominated this year.  RBS won, but the event was worthwhile as I got to meet fellow SME nominee Paul Turner from Advantage Finance.

That's Paul in the picture (right) with comedian Fred MacAulay. Paul's a lovely guy who deserves a lot of credit for saving his SME some serious manpower time - three people full time.  He helped turn a largely manual process into an automated one by the use of a redesigned website; reducing manual processing and unnecessary duplication.

Paul's SME is not the only one that can benefit by the use of technology to save costs. In the past this type of technology was only cost effective for large companies, but costs have fallen dramatically.  Staff cost (especially in the UK) is now often more expensive than the technology.

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Blogger beats accountants

Last July SME Blog posted on Catherine Sanderson and her blog at La Petite Anglaise.  She got dismissed from the Paris branch of accountants Dixon Wilson as a direct result of her blog. 

Google search Dixon Wilson and you’ll find her story on the first page.  On top of this she has just won compensation for her dismissal.  It all adds up to a total PR disaster.

This illustrates the dangers of not understanding how business is changing through new technologies.  It is going to be harder and harder to hide what really goes on behind closed doors.  That’s not a problem if you are proud of what you do, but beware if you are not.

Check out AccountingWeb for a further business persepctive.

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