At the recent Digita annual conference, Nigel Harris met the president and CEO of Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting and asked him about the company's strategy for the UK.

The recent received a surprise visit from Roy Martin, President and CEO of the Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting Division who explained how the global corporation was attracted to Digita because of its similar culture, values and vision.

Martin reassured delegates that Thomson Reuters would continue its deep investment in Digita that has seen a 20% increase in staff and 1,200 new customers in 2008 despite the change of ownership during the year.

Chatting informally with Digita MD Jerry Rihll alongside him after the speech, Martin reiterated his commitment not to meddle. “We don’t intend to make the mistake of some other corporations who acquire a business because it’s successful then set about changing it because they think they can do it better - Thomson Reuters knows how not to do that,” he explained.

Why Digita, and why now?

Martin explained that Digita had been on Thomson's radar for some time prior to the acquisition, and the US corporation admired what Jerry Rihll and the Digita team had achieved. More importantly, Thomson felt there was a good match between the two companies in culture, leadership values, relations with clients and their prowess in their field.

With global sales of £800m, Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting Division can and will give Digita access to ongoing funding and technology resources that will help the UK developer grow more rapidly. Martin likened the situation to giving Rihll and the Digita team the keys to the Thomson Reuters technology warehouse – they can help themselves to established technology tools that they can adapt as use as they see fit in the UK.

The first example of this new relationship is File Cabinet, a document management system widely used by US firms that Digita plans to release as part of its UK practice management system by the end of 2009. Rihll added that Digita had been considering writing its own document management application, but gaining access to Thomson Reuters' proven system would let Digita “leapfrog the opposition” while focusing its own development efforts on core products.

It was a Digita decision to adopt File Cabinet, not one imposed by the new parent company, he added. “We're excited to see what Jerry does with it,” quipped Roy.

Knowing that Thomson Reuters is the leading provider of both software and information services to tax and accounting firms in the USA, did the company have plans to move into information services in the UK, in competiton with CCH and LexisNexis?

Not at the moment, replied Martin: “I don't relish being a bit player in a two horse race!” He acknowledged that it would be difficult to generate profits from a market that's only growing by 2% per annum.

How did he see this market developing globally in the near future? The core business for Thomson Reuters is helping firms help their clients with compliance, he explained. In an unprecedented era of complex regulations and ever-increasing compliance requirements, software has a key role to play.

“Governance, risk and compliance”, or GRC, as governments respond to high profile business failures by increasing their scrutiny of the financial controls inside corporations was a big growth area. Web-based software will be an ideal tool to help multinational companies achieve compliance, since such systems cross borders in a way that tax and accounting compliance tends not to.

Is “cloud computing” the future? Both executives responded enthusiastically. Thomson Reuters already runs a huge secure data centre in the USA and has considerable experience with ASP, SaaS and Web applications there.

Rihll's view of the Cloud was, “It's the future, it's got to be.” And with Thomson Reuter's financial and technical backing, he added, “nothing is too big” for Digita/

Conference delegates saw glimpses of some big future developments in Digita products promised for the next 12 months, so it looks like there will be plenty more this time next year.