On dumping email
March 22, 2008
My IBM sparring partner Luis Suarez is trying valiantly to give up email. He’s created a spreadsheet to record how far he has got in his efforts to divest himself. This week was not good but he explains why:
…here is the main reason why the number of e-mails has gone rather high this week, compared to other weeks: social software!!! Yes, that is right! The same social software tools that I have been using all along are the ones that have increased my weekly intake of e-mails! Can you imagine that? How did that happen? Well, because of something that is just so simple, that everyone takes it for granted: performance & availability!
As you can imagine, inside IBM we have got a rather robust corporate e-mail infrastructure that has been going strong for a good number of years. In fact, I cannot remember the last time when my Lotus Notes e-mail was down! However, I cannot say the same thing about some of the social software tools we use. Yes, that is a right. A good number of those various social tools are actually still running in pilot servers, while we test them and take them to the extreme, and with very limited support. Yes, the everlasting flavour of beta!
I know the feeling. The fact is that for many situations, the kinds of tool I really want to use are not yet robust enough to be put into production environments but they are ‘good enough’ to put on long term road test.
I’d love to dump email but the facts of business life are that the world revolves around it. What I’d really like is for the world to revolve around my calendar and task requirements. Right now that’s pretty much impossible but I live in hope.
My del.icio.us bookmarks for March 19th through March 20th
March 20, 2008
These are my del.icio.us bookmarks for March 19th through March 20th:
- The Secret Diary of Steve Ballmer: Great MacBook HotAir Commercial! - Although a tad facetious, it captures well the ephemeral nature of what pleases Mac heads
- Taxable Talk Fake Children Are Hard to Prove - Idiotic claims mean this person is looking at a vacation courtesy of ClubFed
- Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang Talks Communities | FastCompany.TV - Jeremiah is a great personand puts out some good tips
- Online social networks | Everywhere and nowhere | Economist.com - You've been warned though I'm not 100% convinced this is true. Yet.
- Energized Accounting: World’s Worst Networker . . . - An accountant finally gets networking - yay
- Paul Kedrosky: Tuesday Night Guide to Financial Criminality - A solid guide on what (not) to do. All in 7 lines. Kudos.
The cat’s out the bag: Big 4 are Big 4x
March 20, 2008
Richard Murphy has long argued that the Big 4 are not a single entity in the way they market themselves but a loose association of affiliate firms. This, as any practitioner will tell you, is not the same thing at all. This is a question Francine McKenna has raised arguing that:
But how “actual ” is this global network? Do the firms really work together seamlessly, depending on each other without question to do work locally and bring it all together under one global partner for a large multinational? Not exactly.
Now it seems, she has proof positive from Kerma Partners who specialise in advising global professional firms:
Dear Francine,
…I am a London-based partner of Kerma Partners; we are a strategy consulting firm to international professional services firms .
My partner Phil Kaszar and I have written about accounting “networks,” and I agree with several of your thoughts.
First, globally, the larger accounting firms have created a perception of market integration that simply does not exist.
Second, the (dis-)integration is a matter of degree: the smaller the network/affiliation – and the smaller the client – the more this non-existence of integration becomes apparent.
Third, accountants have been guilty of excessive risk aversion and thus have too often let risk management tail wag the dog of driving global objectives – this in turn plaintiffs counsel have managed to exploit as you well know and now the options for a “global” firm have become somewhat more limited.
Francine has long argued that the world’s largest companies need coordinated global coverage. I agree. However, what Kerma seem to be implying is that this is an illusion. It follows that for the many companies not needing that same level of cover, the Big 4 represent little more than an opportunity to associate with a brand. This comes over time and again when you look at how many of the FTSE 350 are audited by non-Big Four firms and the degree of campaigning the Big 4 are prepared to undertake in order to protect their hegemony.
Although some may see this as a tenuous link (for which get ready to be blasted over Big Four failures) I do not believe the Big 4 are unassailable. The old boys network in the City may like them but given the costs companies have had to bear in increased compliance fees the last few years, then it seems so-called Tier 2 players like BDO and Grant Thornton might want to use this revelation as a way to develop competitive arguments and strategies.
I hope Jeremy Newman is taking note. The profession needs a shake up to not only improve standards but to show the world that it remains relevant to business.
As a closer, this is often a topic of conversation with clients which are audited by the Big 4. I cannot tell you the number of times that senior executives have slumped when I’ve mentioned compliance cost and what they (don’t) gain out of the exercise.
KPMG back in the dock
March 20, 2008
Barely a week goes by without some salacious news about our friends at KPMG. This week it is the turn of ex-KPMG partner Robert Pfaff’s turn to spend time in the dock. The court documents are well worth the reading because apart from detailing the extent of Pfaff’s alleged fraud, they also show how stupid or should I say arrogant, the man was in the way he spent the profits he derived. For example, the government accuses Pfaff of buying property and vehicles, both of which are easily traceable. If found guilty, Pfaff will be facing a bill of $1.84 million.
What struck me was the extent to which he implicated others in his crimes. According to the indictment, no less than seven other individuals were involved, illustrating well the fact that large scale tax fraud requires the active participation of many players. Needless to say, the US government knows where to first point the accusatory finger.
In a twist to the earlier events, the US government is coming back for a second bite of the cherry. In the second indictment:
The former KPMG partner is charged with “participating in a conspiracy to defraud the IRS by [allegedly] concealing fee income received by [the accused] and his co-conspirators from tax shelter transactions.” He is “also charged for [allegedly] conspiring to defraud a company located in Saipan …. of the right to the honest services of its employees, by sharing tax shelter fee income with officers of that company who failed to disclose those secret payments to the Saipan Company’s Board of Directors.”
as reported by White Collar Crime Prof Blog. The author ponders whether the US government is hoping to use the second indictment to put pressure on Pfaff to turn government witness. According to Business Week:
The new indictment appears to be an attempt by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan to bring Pfaff to trial before three other remaining defendants in a separate, closely watched tax-shelter fraud case here.
This turn of events is worrying. We already know how hard it is to get convictions for tax fraud and very often, cases are settled before they reach a full trial. I can only assume the US government lawyers want to be sure they have a rock solid case against other defendants. That is always helped when someone confesses and implicates others on the back of a guilty plea.
