Tag Archives: ICAEW

Is your community manager a shortcut to Enterprise 2.0?

Posted on by
Reply

A while back I wrote a post on 10 ways to convince CEO’s to get blogging. Today I saw a tweet from Euan Semple reflecting on a point by Lee Bryant at the Corporate Social Networking Conference:

@euan Agreeing with @leebryant that it takes years to really get social stuff going in a business.

So what advice would I give if a CEO put me on the spot and asked for my ‘cheats’ way of advancing social media in the enterprise? Talking to Rachel Happe at the Community Roundtable I better understand there’s a lot to be gained from using your online community, firmly embedded in your organisation, to drive this forward. The danger is community manger burnout. But maybe a properly managed CM strategy is a direct route to socializing the enterprise? After all shouldn’t I know by now, that was partly my role at the ICAEW; it even says so on my LinkedIn recommendation:

“When implementing a community based software inside a corporate ecosphere, the biggest challenge of all is the cultural change. Stuart is the answer.” April 10, 2008. Bozhidar Zashev , Commercial Manager, Consultcommerce Ltd.

If that’s of interest check out Dennis Howlett’s recent interview with ICAEW’s John Pearce, Director of Digital Communications, where he explains the role of cultural change in the online communities in this short video: “It’s a learning curve,and a cultural change, and (in response to a follow-up question from Dennis) …we are not frightened to fail”.

Will accountants use Twitter, maybe Google has an answer?

Posted on by
Reply

Spotted this new use by Google of their Adsense platform to advertise ‘tweets’ from the Twitter account of tax preparation software TurboTax, in ‘Advertising Age’ a couple of days ago, and posted on ICAEW’s IT Counts:

Twitter may still be tweaking its own business model, but Google has found a way to use the popular microblogging service to sell ads.

When a user clicks on an ad from Google, it takes them to TurboTax's Twitter page.

When a user clicks on an ad from Google, it takes them to TurboTax’s Twitter page.

The search giant has started offering marketers ad units that stream their five most recent “tweets” across the Google AdSense network. The first marketer to use the ad units is Intuit, whose TurboTax brand is trying to boost its Twitter followers.

And nice to hear from Mark Lee, who started the discussion about the value of Twitter to accountants in the UK, in response to this comment who’s started a twitter listing of all UK accountants, tax people and suppliers to the accountancy profession:

If anyone reading this thread is on twitter and wants to be added to the list (it’s a sort of twitter accountancy directory), just do the necessary (no charge) here: www.TaxAdviceNetwork.co.uk/twitter

The performance of the top 3 UK accountancy websites

Posted on by
Reply

I was interested to see the results of the comparison of site stats between CIMA, ICAEW and ACCA taken from compare.com. No doubt CIMA will soon change with the new online community launch CIMAsphere:

You get a different picture with Google Trends which ranks search volume and news reference volume though, where CIMA is the baseline rank (1.00):

cima
1.00
acca
1.12
icaew
0.08

Google Trends for ACCA, ICAEW, and CIMA

Google Trends for ACCA, ICAEW, and CIMA

This Is Not a Recession

Posted on by
Reply

Liked the attitude of this post from Tom Peters, which came about thanks to a post on ICAEW’s IT Counts. I totally agree, that’s what I’m working to myself and will try and feedback thoughts accordingly. But my main point is the person who first needs to be different is yourself, to change you own attitudes, and all else flows from this accordingly. Well, that’s my self-empowered approach! We’ll see how well it pans out over ’09.

This Is Not a Recession

Don’t think of our current economic crisis as a recession. Instead, think of it as a recalibration.

Everything is different now.

If you think of it as a recession, you may be tempted to “hunker down” and wait for the economy to cycle back.

If you think of it as a recalibration, you will be motivated to focus on what you have to do differently, since everything is different now.

The way your business generates results is different, now. Your customers think differently, now.

Your customers care about different things, now.

Your customers act differently, now.

Your customers may actually be different people, now.

Customers aren’t disposable anymore; more than ever, you have to create sustainable customer relationships.

Everything is different now.

I’m posting this on January 7, 2009. One thing I’m convinced of is that the world I am working in today is different from any world I have ever done business in. The world has been reset. We can no longer look at the “LY” column on reports to use last year as a benchmark for what will happen this year.

New, new town

Posted on by
3

Thanks to everyone who’s sent their good wishes for my new community consultancy role with Sift, in Bristol. It was excellent experience setting up ION online communities at the ICAEW, which I aim to put to good use for my new clients.

My one remaining thought to help IT Counts achieve ‘take-off’ and move from to the next stage is two-fold. Firstly, promote the login integration with the corporate site. Secondly, couple that with explicit news that the ‘consent to be contacted by MS’ is removed from the sign-up process. Of course there are plenty of other things that are needed to achieve sustainability. Coming up with a compelling reason to sign up and take part is part of that.

Web 2.0 delivers new finance model for business?

Posted on by
1

I was at a talk at the RSA last night for a sneak preview of a new film Us Now about the potential power of ordinary people using web 2.0 tools to change everything from the way government works to the ownership of football clubs. To quote internet guru Clay Shirky change happens not when we adopt new tools, but when we adopt new behaviours. And web technology can make this happen easier than ever before.

After the film I realised the film’s real power was in describing an alternative model for financing projects, based on web 2.0 technology, from BHO to banking. Fortunately as I work at the ICAEW this realisation came a little quicker, and I blogged it on the ICAEW’s IT Counts.

As you’d expect the US is way ahead of the game on this, it’s already got a catchy title ‘Finance 2.0′, with discussion at a recent Silicon Valley event including the US-version of Zopa called prosper.com.

IT Counts open to the public

Posted on by
Reply

The ICAEW’s IT Counts website is now open to the public. It’s already won a Web 2.0 Strategies award, and is shortlisted for the 2008 Accountacy Age Awards. Be interesting to see what kind of demographic visitor profile it attracts with its focus on accountancy, IT and business with topics ranging from better use of MS Excel (did I mention it’s sponsored by Microsoft?) to the latest SocialCalc wiki spreadsheet from Socialtext, with the chance via Dennis Howlett to become one of the first users. There’s even mention of the credit crunch. Of course if you want to use the site to make contacts, post blogs and comments you have to register but at least now the content is open for all & Google to read.

IBM to launch social networking center

Posted on by
Reply

I see IBM are working with Dow Jones and Thomson Reuters’ healthcare arm on a new web 2.0 software center in the US. Nice, I used to work with Thomson Reuters’ healthcare arm in the UK (with the affable Jeremy Snelling) and talked with them on improving their data feed for Medicexchange.com. Now I’m working in the finance sector through the ICAEW on ION, the social networking community. All pretty interesting from a business viewpoint for my part, + a nice coincidence from a nerd standpoint.

Office 2.0 Conference ION case study

Posted on by
1

“Can organizations build web communities with predictable success?  This workshop calls on our experiences of building ion (the institute online network) — the award winning collection of web based communities for the ICAEW member network — as well as other communities powered by WordFrame, and the available research material.  The Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales is the UK’s largest professional membership organization for accountants in the UK.  In the workshop we use this case study, combined with direct experiences to provide a set of guidelines to help you start and manage a successful and sustainable web community.” [More..]