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Accountancy firms wake up to tech opportunities

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25th Dec 2005
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Technology advice and selection/implementation services are now a fee-earning activity for a majority of accountancy practices, according to an ICAEW IT Faculty survey.

In this year's survey of IT use by accountancy practices, the faculty asked for the first time about the technology services firms offer to clients. Two-thirds of the respondents offered software selection and implementation advice to clients; while 56% offered general IT advice; and 31% advised on IT security.

This response was welcomed by IT Faculty chairman Simon Hurst. "Whilst it comes as a pleasant surprise, it certainly indicates that there's a lot of room for increase in number of practices offering services, and range of services they offer," he said.

"But worryingly the lowest figure was for information secutriry, which should probably be the issue accountants should be most concerned with."

Hurst also highlighted that practitioners should be planning to spend more time informing themselves about technology trends. "With people now able to consider continuing professional development in a much wider range of training options than in the past, then they might look to augment their skills and offer much wider services," he suggested.

In a sneak preview of its eagerly awaited findings on user satisfaction, the IT faculty confirmed the strong showing of IRIS Software (as has been the case in IT Zone's own research). IRIS led the market in all but one of software category, and enjoyed a growing market share.

PTP continued to impress users with its personal tax products and Digita Taxability Pro has emerged among the market leaders. In practice management, Practice Engine has emerged as a leading developer.

Unfortunately, the market as a whole has not improved against the faculty's benchmark for business critical software failures. More than one in 10 (11%) of accounts production software users suffered a critical failure during the past two years compared to 7% in 2002). For personal tax, the situation has improved slightly with 8% of users reporting failures this year compared to 11% in 2002.

Sage Personal Tax improved its critical failure rate form 28% last time to 15% this year, while its Time & Fees application had a 13% failure rate compared to 27% last year.

MYOB VPM practice management users experiencing business critical failures rose to 29% now compared with 19% in 2002 and Star Practice Management had a 23% failure rate, compared with 14% two years ago.

IT Zone will report on the report's findings in more detail in the next fortnight, and cross-refer to our own research findings.

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