9 keys to successful recruiting
Bruce Marcus, the author of 15 books and a consultant and strategic planner for accounting and other professional firms, and The Bay Street Group, LLC offer their recommendations for making a firm appealing to recruits and for enhancing the recruiting process.
Listen, learn and anticipate client needs.
How? Join the study. Get the answers.
by Rick Telberg
At Large
Not to sound too much like your mother or anything, but couldn’t you do a little better job at your job? Couldn’t you do a little more to satisfy your clients?
We think that’s a good question. So we’ve been asking and we’ve been looking for what CPAs have to say about keeping clients satisfied.
Employees Place Value on Compensation and Benefits
Alexandria, Va. [SHRM.org] – Nearly eight out of 10 employees report overall satisfaction with their current positions, according to Society for Human Resource Management.
Compensation/pay, benefits, job security, flexibility to balance work/life issues and communication between employees and senior management were the top five contributors to job satisfaction, according to employees. The top five employee aspects mirror last year’s findings; the main difference was that communication between employees and senior management replaced feeling safe in the work environment as the fifth important aspect.
Yes! Says new research… – SMB IP Communications and Managed Services Market Opens Up
NEW YORK (AMI-Partners.com] — Small and medium businesses have so far been slow to adopt converged communications. But that could change soon — and fast.
AMI-Partners says the total U.S. IP communications and managed services opportunity-including managed IP-PBX, managed security, managed backup/business continuity, managed networks, VPNs and web hosting in the U.S. SMB space-is estimated to be over $30 billion for 2007 and will grow at a CAGR of 15.6% out to 2010.
powerOne® professional financial software makes answering and sharing what-if questions fast and simple
Beaverton, OR [Research in Motion Ltd.] – Infinity Softworks, Inc. a leading provider of calculation software for mobile computers, announced the release of powerOne® for BlackBerry® smartphones from Research In Motion (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX: RIM). Designed for real estate, financial services and sales professionals, powerOne software performs what-if scenario analysis that can be instantly personalized and emailed right from the handset.
More at BlackBerry.com…
The trial version is available from Infinity. READ MORE →
How to succeed in accounting.
by Rick Telberg
On Careers
Everybody’s got advice for the new grad, and accountants, it turns out, are no different. We’re getting excellent results from our new survey searching for career advice. Though it shows a lot of variety, the advice is not contradictory. It’s good advice, with 60 percent of it coming from professionals in the field for 10 to 30 years. We think it’s worth sharing.
Join the survey. Get the answers.
U.S. Small Business Administration
Marketing is all about satisfying customer needs. The following represents a comprehensive list of marketing ideas. Use it to help better understand customer needs and ways to satisfy those needs.
Diverse breed of new entrepreneur drives micro-biz trend
by Rick Telberg
At Large
I know what you’re wondering: What’s next? One minute, humankind is hunting and gathering; the next, we’re harvesting amber waves of grain. Then all of a sudden we’re building infrastructure and factories like crazy, but pretty soon everyone’s racing down the information superhighway.
So what, you wonder, is next?
Well, Intuit and the Institute for the Future have done some thinking on just that question, and what they see coming is yet another economic transformation. If you’re a finance or accounting professional, especially in a small-to-medium-sized shop, you’re going to like this one. It’s got small businesses popping up by the millions, all of them in need of someone who knows accounting, finance, payroll, and other aspects of business management and administration.
How the rent-versus-buy concept applies to the accounting profession
What do CPAs want in ERP? Join the study. Get the answers.
by Rick Telberg
At Large
If you or your company hasn’t yet confronted the question of shedding some operations and outsourcing them, then hold on; you will.
Outsourcing, especially finance and accounting outsourcing, is growing by leaps and bounds as businesses strip down to their core competencies and as alternatives spring up near and far. Outsourcing represents an opportunity for CPAs to add value in a variety of ways, ranging from helping companies make the right decisions to taking on the work themselves. The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals estimates that outsourcing is already a $6 trillion-a-year industry worldwide. And it’s not just an option for Fortune 500 companies. It’s been estimated that outsourcing by small businesses in the United States will become a $25 billion market by 2009.
READ MORE →
A $170-million judgment against BDO Seidman LLP could put the global firm out of business. The firm plans to appeal.
A Florida jury found BDO guilty of gross negligence for failing to spot a fraud that led to the bankruptcy of E.S. Bankest LLC, a Miami-based financial-services company, and the loss of $170 million in investor funds, the Wall Street Journal reports. The verdict leaves BDO potentially open to punitive damages that under Florida law could be triple the amount that investors initially claimed. In a legal filing last September, the firm said such a penalty could sink the firm.
The verdict was a victory for Banco Espirito Santo SA, a Portuguese bank that is a former investor in Bankest. Banco Espirito sued BDO, claiming the auditor negligently failed to spot the fraud. In assessing damages, the jury will weigh BDO’s role against the role of others at Bankest, who actually perpetrated the fraud. Two former Bankest executives have been sent to prison after being convicted on criminal charges connected to the fraud.
An attorney who represented Banco Espirito, said the jury’s verdict showed that BDO “chose not to do the right thing” in its audit work and was compromised by a conflict of interest involving one of its executives and a company connected to privately held Bankest. BDO said it disagreed with the jury’s finding and that the firm is “confident that this verdict will be reversed on appeal.”
In a separate action, BDO is suing Banco Espirito Santo, claiming the directors it appointed to Bankest’s board were negligent.
More at the Miami Herald… READ MORE →
CPA Trendlines Technology Journal of Accountancy
