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The latest from the forums

Since the last newswire we had the first IT Forum of the year, which took place on the 18th January.

The meeting was held at the offices of Carter Backer Winter and started with a review of the last meeting’s action items and a discussion concerning the IT Sessions at the Annual Conference. There was little interest in the offerings of most suppliers with the exception of Bill Duncan’s Virtual Office. Attendees felt that although a little long winded it was actually a good concept and we would all get there eventually.

We then had a round table discussion of significant IT activities undertaken in 2010 and our plans for 2011.
Milsted Langdon has rolled Digita Accounts production and are pleased with the results. They have also upgraded to Practice Engine version 8, and are piloting iPads for partners and Senior Staff to disseminate management information. Rowleys have rolled out Docusoft as a Document Management Systems at a price of £12k for 25 users. CBW has implemented a web based credit control system from Morten Smith and HBO have adopted OpenBooks, a web based accounting system that links to Iris.

There then was a discussion concerning how to calculate or perhaps better understand how to achieve return on investment in IT. Firms seemed to be happy spending large sums on IT without really measuring the return they had been expecting to achieve. Some firms felt that this was largely a waste of time and the return would be self evident. Others were of the opinion that at least having a written understanding of what benefits should be achieved by rolling out new software would provide some guidance for partners.

Then followed a discussion about the use of social media in firms. It was agreed that social media is becoming a more important issue for marketing but also a concern for control by IT Departments. It was felt that you could not control what staff did in their own time on social networking sites like Linkedin or Facebook.

Finally there was a discussion concerning Data protection. It was reported that the ICO is introducing tougher penalties aimed at businesses who lose data. It is now highly likely that if data is lost through theft or accident because of a lack of encryption that firms would be liable to prosecution.

David Watson
Milsted Langdon