A tailored approach to helping clients on the digital journey
There is no doubt that the shift toward digitisation is being felt widely everywhere, including in the accountancy sector. As part of that shift we’ve seen legislative changes being introduced, like GDPR and more recently Making Tax Digital (MTD), which have firmly pushed businesses towards a new way of working. There is plenty of compelling evidence, though, that this new way of working is a better way of working.
Digitisation offers businesses a huge opportunity to boost efficiencies and productivity by automating administrative tasks. Our own insights, carried out by an independent research firm, revealed UK businesses spend 120 days a year working on administrative tasks. To put that into context, that equates to £30.8bn that small and medium-sized businesses have lost collectively due to a lack of productivity associated with unnecessary administration.
From an accounting industry perspective, digital technologies are enabling practices to receive, process and communicate data far more efficiently than before, while enabling them to engage with clients more often, helping to build deeper relations and add more value. MTD in many ways has paved the way for accountants to help clients who have not already done so take the first step towards digitisation and a more productive future.
First step
Getting clients to take that first step though, even among those now required to do so under the new legislation, isn’t always straight forward.
The simple fact is not all clients are the same, and many will have their own views on the digital transformation that’s taking place. There will be some who just don’t want to, whether through a fear of change or a lack of understanding around the benefits of doing so, and some who may have the will but don’t have the skill. What we know works well in overcoming some of those hurdles is a tailored approach, one that is shaped by putting yourself in their shoes. Here are a few tips that might help with that:
Start by segmenting clients out by identifying where they are on the digital journey. That may include looking at current bookkeeping processes, what their capabilities and resources are to make the switch, and their appetite to do so. It will entail drilling down into any pain points and putting those in the context of their business plans.
VAT threshold
Then, if they do fall within the VAT threshold and are now required to submit their returns digitally, making sure you communicate clearly what the process will entail, how you can support that and the digital tools that might be right for them. It’s important you share plenty of digestible information on why making this change is a good thing for their business, and their teams. Once they have got a better understanding of the bigger picture, only then should you start to knuckle down to the practicalities and the onboarding process.
We know introducing change can often feel a bit overwhelming for busy business owners, so making sure they feel they have the support of a trusted advisor is key to easing any concerns. Make sure there is a tailored service plan in place, with the promise of plenty of ongoing advice and training if needed. And as part of that hand-holding, sit down with them and plan out a roadmap that includes a few test-runs before they need to submit their first VAT return digitally ‘for real’.
MTD marks a great opportunity for businesses to reap the productivity benefits of digitising tax and taking an important step to streamlining the way they run their business. It offers-up richer insights to make more informed business decisions and reduce time wasted on unnecessary admin tasks. From an accountants’ perspective, MTD will undoubtedly have an impact on client relationships, but one that comes with new opportunities. At the very least, it’s a chance to get in touch with clients and enhance your trusted advisor status by helping them make the switch to a digital way of working – which is happening, whether they like it or not.
I will be with hosting a ‘Making Tax Digital: Fast Track Clinic’ on the Sage Stand (stand 720) at Accountex on both days between 12pm and 1.45pm. I will be joined by Verna Gellvear from the Customer Stakeholder Readiness Team from HMRC and Chris Downing, Product Director, Accountants, Sage, and we will be sharing further advice on how we can help you with the agent and business sign up journey.
Changing how we work: why accountants must help clients master digitisation
No profession is immune from the seismic changes being wrought by digitisation. This revolution has been particularly keenly felt in the accountancy sector, where long-established ways of working have been swept away by new reforms and regulations such as Making Tax Digital (MTD) and GDPR.
But practitioners don’t just have a duty to adopt new digital skills and processes; they must also help their clients to master them too. They will struggle to do this if they haven’t already made significant progress in their own digitisation journey.
The good news is that Sage’s Practice of Now 2019 report, which we will be sharing at Accountex, paints a picture of a profession that has already made great strides towards building the practice of the future. Half have formally examined their business practices in the last year, with a further quarter having done so in the past five years.
Increasing digitisation
The increasing digitisation of tax – especially when mandated by governments or regulators worldwide – is among the chief reasons for accountancy practices to evaluate their business practices. And while there might have been some pain involved in adopting new digital-first practices and acquiring the necessary skills, the move to digitisation has brought transformational benefits to accountants who have mastered them.
And master them they certainly have – for the most part. Sage’s research shows that the majority of respondents who took part in our research have achieved greater productivity through adopting new technologies, while for more than a quarter the biggest benefits have been time savings that enable them to focus more on their customers.
Even more encouragingly, it seems that the profession isn’t content to rest on its laurels, with over half looking forward to adopting artificial intelligence applications in the next three years, helping them to cut down some of the drudgery involved in data entry and routine communications by automating many of these processes.
On the horizon
Digital technologies – both those already in use and those on the horizon – are enabling practices to receive, process and communicate data far more efficiently than before, while enabling them to engage with clients more often (and more accurately).
There is certainly more work for accountants to do, and not just within their own businesses. The opportunities presented by new technologies are not limited to delivering efficiencies and better compliance, important as these are, but in strengthening the relationship between accountants and their clients.
To outsiders, accountants are sometimes seen as number-crunching functionaries. We know, of course, that they can play a crucial consultancy role, partnering with clients to improve their own internal practices, strengthen compliance, and reduce the cost and complexity of financial administration.
Look to the future
As accountants look to the future, they need to give careful thought to how they can share the lessons and best practices that they have acquired over the last few years. They must help clients as they digitise their own finances and learn how to integrate data streams from across the business.
Accountancy practices need to become their clients’ coaches, taking time to understand their particular pain points and recommending technical solutions to these problems. This will be impossible unless accountants have mastered the same technologies themselves and can act as an exemplar for best practice.
The benefits of the great digital leap forward are too important to remain locked up within accountancy firms. If clients are the biggest influence on their practice’s culture – as our research has shown – then accountants need to concentrate their efforts on helping their clients extract the same value out of digital technology that they have enjoyed.
That’s why accountants should work with their software partners to ensure that they achieve full mastery of technology, before sharing this knowledge with their clients for to achieve deeper, more fruitful future relationships.
To find out more about the latest innovations in accounting technology and the findings from our industry research, visit Sage at stand 720 at Accountex London.
Residential property portfolios: three ways to help with income tax planning
Since April 2017, when legislation changes were made to tax breaks on buy-to-let property, the yield is no longer as attractive as it once was.
As a result, some landlords with just one buy-to-let have – or are – deciding to sell, avoiding the strategy altogether.
Historically, finance costs were fully tax deductible for the owner. However, this is in the process of being restricted to basic rate income tax only. With the nature of the property sector being ‘illiquid’, selling a property isn’t straightforward. Therefore, retaining the asset – and implementing a strategy to ensure the income generated is tax-efficient – is high on the agenda for many.
1) Transfer of income/ownership
For husband and wife cases, it is worth reviewing the income tax position of both. If the buy-to-let property is in the name of the higher earner, it may be a good idea to transfer ownership to the other as to utilise their personal allowance, or pay tax at their marginal rate (if a basic rate tax payer).
For example, say the wife is a higher rate taxpayer (subject to tax at 40%) while the husband is paying 20% (basic rate). If the buy-to-let is in the wife’s name, transferring it to the husband would ensure the income is taxed at 20% rather than 40%, providing this falls within his basic rate tax band. The transfer would be exempt for both inheritance tax (IHT) and capital gains tax (CGT), as this would be classed as an inter-spouse transfer.
2) Venture capital trusts
Investments into VCTs provide 30% income tax relief (to a maximum of the income tax paid) of the initial investment amount, so can be a useful tool to reduce any income tax liability generated through the property rental income.
Other advantages include tax-free dividends, tax-free gains upon disposal, and the ability to invest up to £200,000 per tax year. The points to consider with VCTs, are that the investment must be held for five (illiquid) years to retain tax relief. They’re also deemed higher-risk investments.
3) Enterprise investment schemes
Enterprise investment schemes (EIS) have been helping smaller companies raise finance by offering generous tax relief to investors. Similar to VCTs (and again higher risk), the income tax relief available upon investment – 30% – can be advantageous, and this time, it only needs to be held for three (albeit illiquid) years to be retained; gains are also exempt from CGT after this period of time.
Clients can invest up to £1m per tax year, with the facility to invest another £1m providing this is made into knowledge intensive companies. Also, the investment qualifies for business relief once held for two years, meaning no IHT is payable on the amount.
These scenarios won’t be applicable to all individuals, yet, they provide some options for those affected by the changes in legislation. Come speak to Mattioli Woods at Accountex on Stand 221 to discuss further!
Why fraud keeps happening and how to stop it
Financial fraud continues to make headlines around the world—the recent Patisserie Valerie scandal in Europe comes straight to mind.
With modern technology, and seemingly loads of checks and balances in place, it’s fair to wonder how this type of fraud still takes place. Here are four examples of common fraud schemes designed to fool an auditor.
Client provides false information
With today’s technology, a dishonest client can easily manipulate or create a false statement and provide incorrect contact information. For years PFGBest, a commodity brokerage unit of Peregrine Financial Group, Inc., looked financially sound because the confirmation responses showed that the bank statements matched the firm’s financial statements. PFGBest CEO Russel Wasendorf concealed a multi-year $215 million fraud using a combination of Photoshop, Excel, scanners, and printers to make very convincing forgeries of nearly every document that came from the bank. He opened a post office box and put the address on the counterfeit bank statements. When the auditors mailed confirmation requests to the bank’s false address, he would intercept the request, type in the amount he needed to show, forge a bank officer’s signature, and mail it back to the auditor.
Client provides the contact name
When auditors do independently validate the address, phone and fax number or email for a financial institution, they often still do not validate an individual clerk within the confirming entity. Typically confirmation fraud involves collusion, where the company being audited requests certain individuals within the bank to either provide false information in the audit confirmation response or to leave off information that would be material to the financial statement audit. Olympus Corporation’s accounting scandal hid $1.7 billion in investment losses from investors over a 13-year period due to executives arranging for foreign banks to only provide the balance amount while intentionally not providing material information to their auditors.
Client influences the confirmation process
With a little effort, a dishonest client can create third-party credentials that closely resemble legitimate credentials. For example, an inexpensive fake website, displayed as if it were for a legitimate financial institution, can be quickly created to provide illegitimate contact information. This appears to be one of the techniques employed by China-Biotics, Inc. (CHBT), which directed their auditors to a fake bank website to deceive the auditors with false audit confirmations and online verifications.
Signature verification is impracticable
Given all the possible loopholes to circumvent the paper confirmation process, it's not practical to think an auditor has the resources to validate the signature of the person responding to a confirmation request. Fraudsters know that the effort required to validate the signature of the confirming entity is rarely used proactively to prevent fraud. With this in mind, fraudsters falsely responding to a confirmation request simply scribble the signature of anyone, to include the signature of a legitimate signatory, to effectively validate a paper confirmation response.
Confirmation’s secure, digital platform helps eliminate fraud associated with the confirmation process. All parties are validated, and the auditor retains control of the process from start to finish. Visit Confirmation at Accountex, Stand 865, to learn more.
How to balance work and life as an accountant
Working in accountancy is not easy and doesn’t always lend itself to an equal work-life blend. We know from our research that 36% of ICAEW members are currently unhappy with how they balance their work and home life. Striking this balance is tricky, especially with today’s 24/7, ‘always on’ culture.
Accountancy is a particularly competitive environment and one, which is accustomed to busy schedules and mounting workloads. This was supported in our research which found that over half (54%) of ICAEW members work late in the office on a weekly basis, and 22% do this every day. Workload pressures also resulted in 47% taking work home with them, with a quarter (25%) doing this every day.
From the findings above, it’s imperative for you to learn how to look after yourself whilst managing your day to day workload with a methodical approach. So, how does an accountant balance work and life? By learning to become more resilient and knowing to separate the two. Ultimately, it’s about being present during your down time, in order to make the most of it. This creates a clear boundary between your home and work life. Additionally, juggling tight deadlines and multiple clients are part of the job, so being able to keep a cool head and put absolute trust in your abilities and skillset will translate into your personal life too.
Utilise your time well and find time in your day to eat healthily, rehydrate and leave the office for fresh air. Exercise can be especially beneficial as it relieves tension, releasing feel-good endorphins and improving or stabilising your mood. Taking a rest to supercharge your afternoon can pay dividends too, but only if that’s acceptable at work! Working through your lunch is never the most effective option and is often counter-productive as you become fatigued the fewer breaks you have.
Establishing a good work-life blend means setting boundaries and sticking to them. No one can work long hours constantly, so if you want to climb to the top of the career ladder, listen to your body, take a rest and use your energy in concerted bursts of effort. Trying to integrate our work and personal life in a responsible and reasonable way will not only benefit ourselves but our loved ones and also our colleagues and the company we work for too.
For information and advice, visit Caba HERE or on Stand 591 at Accountex
HMRC’s new portal for submitting R&D claims
With not much in the way of public fanfare, HMRC recently launched their beta online platform to support the submission of SME R&D claims.
As we’re in the R&D software platform business ourselves, you can imagine we had been awaiting this development with bated breath! So, now that it’s broken cover – what does it look like and what’s it for?
Well, our first impressions are that the tool is surprisingly basic and comes with a couple of fairly substantial limitations. The good things first – it allows SMEs to present their R&D claim information directly to HMRC.
They can enter the usual costs – employees, connected and unconnected EPWs and subcontractors, software, consumables and costs for clinical trial volunteers. They can also enter a technical description of their projects, covering the baseline state of technology, the advance attempted, and the technical challenges faced on the way.
The big catch is that the portal assumes that the SME knows what they want to claim for – and that’s a big assumption. If you’ve ever been asked to assist with a client’s claim, you know that they usually need help in assessing their SME status, the boundaries of their R&D, and whether their work would even be considered eligible by HMRC.
In the new portal, however, there’s not much in-built support to help claimants or agents who are unfamiliar with the scheme to answer these questions. It also doesn’t help companies to calculate whether they’re an SME, or support SMEs who have received grants, or undertaken work as a subcontractor to a Large Company.
This means that complex claims with expenditure eligible under the SME and RDEC schemes are essentially not supported at all. That affects a pretty chunky number of companies, particularly within the life sciences and manufacturing sectors.
Maybe these areas will be addressed in the future. In the meantime, we’re confident that WhisperClaims, our award-winning cloud based platform for R&D tax submissions, will continue to prove more useful (and useable) to our accountancy clients, helping them generate significant additional revenues by delivering truly comprehensive R&D support to their clients.
WhisperClaims www.whisperclaims.co.uk
The change to becoming an advisory-led firm
If you’ve made the decision to become a business advisory firm and operate in the high value sector of the market then well done! You have made the first change in a process that will differentiate your firm from compliance led businesses.
If you make the change then you will be spending more fee earning time advising clients and less time on producing accounts and tax returns.
Create a vision or your future practice in two years, see what your people need to learn, how they need to develop and help them to embrace that change.
Change is necessary to reposition so share your vision with your team early, people don’t generally like change, but it is essential in today’s environment. Get your team on board early.
The next step is to systematise compliance work using cloud accounting software and most importantly choosing software that allows bookkeeping and the filing of accounts and tax returns directly from that package. This will speed up your MTD quarterly or year- end procedures. You may choose to outsource work or use an offshore team for production, the most profitable firms do this already.
Once you’ve reorganised compliance now is the time to “Position” as an advisory firm. This means you demonstrate you can help business owners with their future and not just the past. Your web site should prominently feature advisory services such as Finance, Strategy, Wealth Management, Tax planning and profit improvement. Readers should immediately understand your sales proposition. You should put educational resources and articles on your web site.
All social media should demonstrate you advise “on the future”, use case studies, testimonials and focus on the benefits of advisory. You need to this daily and you may choose to hire a social media person to help you. Content should come from your team if practicable. Example reports such as a strategic plan, “what if” scenario and similar should be sent to prospects and clients and available for down load for your web site.
Team training to use planning tools and to become more aware of the opportunities to advise clients will need to be done regularly. Use your Wealth management, finance, tax planners to educate your team and to encourage discussions with clients about their aims, hopes and ambitions. Generating advisory work typically requires a conversation about a client’s future.
Positioning your firm and making the changes now will keep you ahead of the curve and it is more rewarding advising clients about their future rather than “filing away” their past!
The Business Advisory Manual (B.A.M) contains the guidance, training and tools, to position your firm as a business adviser and the resources to make this happen.
B.A.M is supported by the Business Adviser Hub, a dedicated resources centre containing the training, marketing resources, engagement letters, checklists, guidance notes and calculators to help you become more confident in promoting and delivering advisory services.
See more at Accountex on Stand 676 or HERE
The true meaning of cloud: cost and customer experience
There’s no shortage of buzzwords in accounting: Advisory services, AI, fintech - and, of course, ‘cloud’, or more specifically ‘cloud accounting’.
The term ‘cloud’ has been bandied around for the last five years. The trend made its mark in the profession a while ago, but in the last few years, something changed. You may have heard of it: Making Tax Digital.
As many industry experts have pointed out when MTD was announced, the quarterly filing requirement and expense updates with HMRC triggered a second boom in cloud adoption among practitioners.
But what happened after this second boom is telling. While accountants drove the cloud boom, businesses lagged behind in cloud accounting software adoption. In other words, once the initial MTD panic fizzled after MTD for income tax was delayed, cloud adoption waned, too.
This cycle of cloud boom and bust shows that, for too long, the real benefits of cloud software, both from a customer experience and cost perspective, have remained elusive. Cloud was a feature, something tacked on to make the software more marketable rather than more effective.
To extract the real benefits of cloud – whether that's improved security, the elimination of annoying, repetitive task or good old-fashioned value for money – it needs to bind every corner of your practice’s work together.
That is what sets Capium apart; it has been a true cloud system from day one. It offers the decentralisation you expect from the cloud, but it goes so much deeper than that. As much as it liberates your accounting software from the desktop, it consolidates your workflow into one place.
That means a clear overview of all your work in one place, increased efficiency, reduced cost and clear accountability and resource management. True cloud accounting will filter into every corner of your practice.
You could finally offer sustainable, flexible working and deliver amazing, always on customer service from anywhere. This is a different vision of cloud accounting: No longer a buzzword or an added-on feature -- but the central pillar of your practice and customer experience.
Capium are at Accountex on Stand 410
Software for everyone: Capium is designed with accountants in mind
Capium is designed for everyone. In other words, our users aren’t just business owners, but the legion of agents that represent them.
That’s an important distinction to make because accounting, more so than ever, is a collaborative enterprise. It doesn’t happen in steps and stages anymore, bouncing back and forth between client and accountant.
Instead, it’s a continuous, iterative process involving both stakeholders. Making Tax Digital is deepening this dynamic. With quarterly filing requirements, MTD is a logistical challenge as much as it is a technical one.
The era of digital tax means accountants need better communication, more fluid workflows and secure data capture all through one, centralised and simple-to-use software. Both the accountant and client will work side-by-side under MTD.
Capium is an end-to-end software, including practice management (along with a CRM) and SME data capture tools, all of which connect seamlessly with our core tax software. And best of all, it all just works from day one.
Top tips – start offering finance to your clients
The British Business Bank’s recent Small Business Finance Markets 2018/19 Report found that only seven percent of UK businesses turn to their accountant or financial adviser when in need for finance. In comparison, 37 per cent reach out to their bank directly for help, while 19 per cent conduct their own online research. Even more striking, 20 per cent of UK businesses don’t act at all if in need of additional funds.
These numbers clearly illustrate that there remains a significant untapped opportunity for accountants and business finance advisers when it comes to helping their clients raise finance.
Working with a range of partners, we often hear it can be difficult to initiate conversations with clients about sourcing funding and knowing when it is required. Recognise the predicament? If so, the following tips will help you get started:
Identify your clients’ needs
How do you know whether one of your clients might need additional funding? Planning ahead is crucial. Luckily, a growing number of businesses are getting in the habit of cash flow forecasting. Accountants and financial advisers are therefore in the perfect position to help their clients develop a proactive attitude towards business planning.
That said, it is not always easy to anticipate clients’ needs months in advance. We see an increasing number of partners investing time in building stronger relationships with clients in order to better understand their exact business needs. Not only can they then start offering the right support and advice when it comes to funding and business planning, but crucially, they are in a better position to deliver it at the precise time required.
Find out how much funding your client needs
Once you have identified the requirements of a client, how do you know how much additional funding a business needs? For George Wright, MSIF Finance Hub Facilitator, this is a daily task when supporting the growth of businesses: “One of my first questions when dealing with a business looking for funding is ‘How much do you believe you need?’ If it’s an amount that they know, I will always ask how they have arrived at that figure. My reasoning for this is that irrespective of the amount that the business might ask for, they shouldn’t be applying for funding without having undertaken some kind of forecasting, whether this is a simple cash flow or an integrated set of forecasts.”
Gregg Harding, Business Finance Specialist at Oxford Innovation, a business advisory organisation, believes that intermediaries can add value by sometimes asking the more uncomfortable questions: “Helping clients with a ‘sanity check’ and determining why the funding is necessary is where accountants and financial advisers can really make a difference. New funding might increase a business’ turnover, but is it having a considerable impact on their profit? And if the client is taking quite a risk, does it, ultimately, make business sense?”
Stay on top of a changing industry
In order to be able to advise clients about the different funding options available to them, it is crucial to stay up-to-date with current trends and developments, but also to make the relevant industry contacts. Regularly attending trade shows, networking events and reading relevant news and publications all help to provide a solid understanding of the funding landscape.
With the advisory landscape constantly changing, knowledgeable and dynamic accountancy and business advisory practices are set to be the real winners. Ultimately, they will be in a better position to attract and retain clients than their competitors, and by extension, grow their own business.
Ben Bradnam is Spotcap’s Business Operations Manager and will be speaking at Accountex on Wednesday, 1 May, on Business Funding Beyond Banks. Find out more about Spotcap here:
Scanning solutions boost MTD efficiency for accountants
Making Tax Digital Is Simple With Fujitsu ScanSnap Scanners
If you represent a business, you'll be aware of HMRC’s Making Tax Digital policy. To recap, it's a plan to ensure every business and individual has access to their own digital tax account. As of April 2019 businesses operating above the VAT threshold of £85k will have to use this system to digitally keep their VAT records and file their VAT returns using MTD compatible software.
If you’re used to dealing with paper, this can sound like a daunting proposition. Fortunately, Fujitsu’s cutting-edge scanner hardware and the ScanSnap Cloud are the ideal solution for HMRC’s Making Tax Digital plans. Read on to find out more…
What exactly is Making Tax Digital?
If it’s not something you’re already thinking about, it’s important to know that businesses are now mandated to use the recently announced Making Tax Digital platform to meet their VAT obligations.
If you’re running a small business with a turnover below the VAT threshold, you can choose to use the system but you won’t have to. The deadline has been extended.
Benefits of the online portal
So what are the benefits? Well, apart from the end of the dreaded tax return, this change means users won’t have to give HMRC information it already has access to – such as from employers, banks and other government departments.
It also enables people and businesses to keep an eye on their tax in real time. No more waiting till the end of the financial year – or longer – to find out how much tax is owed to HMRC or due in repayments.
Just as with online banking, with Making Tax Digital, businesses will be able to access a comprehensive online account. Digital record-keeping software will be linked directly to HMRC systems enabling people to send and receive information using the software – and that’s where your Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner comes into play.
Fujitsu ScanSnap scanners
Scanning documents is a simple and effective way to ensure all the documentation you need for your VAT and tax returns is stored securely in one place and is easily accessible for your online accounts.
ScanSnap Scanners from Fujitsu enable everything from printed receipts to invoices and even parking or train tickets can be quickly and simply scanned in. ScanSnap Cloud will even identify the type of content you upload and route it directly to your preferred cloud service, so there’s no need to even boot up your PC.
You can rest assured everything you need is held securely online and all in one place, making it easy to submit your VAT and online tax return when the time comes. It’s organised, effective document-keeping – ideal for businesses large and small.
Check out our comprehensive selection at www.ScanSnapit.com. Until 12 May anyone purchasing a ScanSnap iX1500 can claim a free ScanSnap iX100.
Why add scanners to your product portfolio?
Digital transformation has been around a while but it is only really just starting to come to the thinking and realisation of small and medium sized businesses who are looking at ways of becoming more efficient, working smarter and saving money.
There are several advantages to scanning documents and merging them with digitally born material, all of which can help open up a conversation with your customers around document scanners and the need for a dedicated scanning device.
Save Money - Document scanning eliminates the need to maintain paper based filing systems. This reduces the costs associated with filing, archiving and long term storage of paper records
Productivity Gains – Studies have shown that employees spend twenty percent of their day searching for information. Using document management software, users can access decision making information in seconds, saving time and improving productivity.
Collaboration – Many document scanning systems integrate with business applications allowing faster access and the ability to share information in real-time.
Easy organization - Electronic documents can be organized much faster, better, and more easily than paper documents. In addition, finding, viewing, and sharing electronic documents can be achieved with unprecedented speed and ease – instantly.
Smarter working – The proliferation of mobile technologies and the ability to scan and view directly to either smart devices, via a cloud service or via a network means more efficient ways of working can be adopted enabling you to build a business around your employees rather than the other way round. Costs could be saved for example in office space and office overheads should staff be based at home. Adopt a more proactive and forward thinking approach ready to embrace the challenges of operating and competing in the 21st century.
Free your Space - Space has become an expensive asset. Save time and money on expensive office relocations and free your space and make the paperless office dream a reality.
Disaster Recovery Planning - Would your customer’s business cope in the event of a fire or flood? Can they afford to lose those valuable documents if they are filed incorrectly after use? Document scanning allows them to keep a set of their records on cd or dvd in another location or office or in the cloud to reduce the risk of losing their valuable information to natural disasters.
Deterioration of Quality - When information is currently on paper there is a problem of deterioration of the original page. Paper can fade over time and be torn through excessive use. A scanned image will not fade or deteriorate
Efficient Retrieval - Enables access to important information from a desk. It can be shared through offices and other branches saving time and money on physical page retrievals, copying and faxing.
Legal Admissibility - General opinion is that scanned images are likely to be admissible in court, with the same weight as of evidence as photocopies which are considered as secondary evidence. There is a potential reduction in the weight of evidence if the authenticity of the copy is questioned (e.g. if a signature is being disputed).
Document and Records Retention - Records need to be retained not only for the purposes of business use, but also to meet legal and regulatory obligations such as for GDPR compliance. For example, in the UK, Acts like Sarbannes Oxley and The Companies Act 1985 (Section 221) requires companies to keep accounting records sufficient to give a "true and fair view of the state of the company's affairs and to explain its transactions." It also requires adequate precautions be taken against falsification of records and to discover any falsification that occurs.
Recent legislation directives are really becoming focussed on the virtues of operating a digital workplace, embracing mobility and collaboration.
Equally digitised and searchable content allows a public sector body to respond to Freedom of Information and Subject Access requests promptly and within permissible time limits.
Greener - Scanning is a paperless process, and often there is no environmental cost when documents are distributed electronically. If documents are scanned less paper is wasted, transport of documents is reduced and the amount of landfill used is reduced. Reducing paper, its transport and the amount of bleaches used in recycling benefits the environment.
Customer Satisfaction – Response times are reduced, information is available in seconds from a computer, remote locations and global business offices are connected and able to respond to customer needs faster and more efficiently.
Fujitsu are exhibiting at Accountex on 1-2 May at ExCeL, London, on Stand 1031.