Twinfield blog

I’m writing this blog while on a plane and will have to post it later, as internet connectivity is unfortunately still not standardly available in the air. Together, my colleague Gerard-Jan Bentvelzen and I are travelling to London. It’s been a while since I’ve been there, but is now highly worthwhile as we are seeing [...]

Historically, accounting practices have been guarded about sharing information freely and being too open with clients in order to protect their competitive advantage, but the Internet and the increasing popularity of social media tools have changed the ground-rules. Many other professional service organisations now provide products or services online for free, in order to show [...]

As UK organisations face up to the implications of zero growth during 2012, SMEs are, once again, looking to cut costs to the bone. But these organisations are at a significant disadvantage when compared to some European competitors. In the Netherlands for example, the relationship between business and accountant has been fundamentally transformed over the [...]

Software as a Service (SaaS) has become an increasingly accepted way of sourcing technology, offering accountancy firms new ways to interact with clients. This gives small businesses access to a range of real time services, from cash flow forecasts to tax planning, that bear no resemblance to the traditional annual accounts provision and discussion of [...]

Growing numbers of accountancy firms are exploring the potential of Software as a Service (SaaS) based financial software. But how confident are clients about the security of data that is stored in the cloud? How easy is it for the accountancy practice to allay fears about the corruption or loss of business critical financial data or explain the compliance and governance implications of the shift from on premise to SaaS approach?

On the face of it, the dynamic world of social media and the traditionally conservative, structured world of accountancy seem poles apart. Tweeting, sharing multimedia content and collaborating online hardly sound like features that would add value for figure-hungry clients or the firms that serve them. But just as the public is now being given [...]

The accountancy market is in a state of flux – squeezed by the trend towards lower priced book-keeping services at one end and the push into the mid market by the Big Six at the other. But as the UK’s SMEs brace once more for a tough 12 months, there is a massive opportunity for [...]