IT Newsletter March 2008 Edition

Welcome to the March Edition of the IT Special Interest Group newsletter

Headlines

1. Essentials For Your Website
2. The Town Planning Approach To IT Governance
3. Cautionary Tales: Web Enquiry Forms
4. IT Checklists
5. Further Reading and References

1. Essentials For Your Website

There are so many features that can be included in a website today that it can be confusing. Which ones work? Which ones do not work? Robert Beerworth has developed some suggestions for what the ultimate accounting website might include to make sure you stand out from the crowd.

No matter if it is a furniture site website, an online travel portal or law firm, every website needs to have a specific reason for users to visit. Gone are the days of having a website merely to publish your office address and phone number. These days most businesses treat their website effectively as another sales person undertaking business development 24 hours a day.

So what makes your website different to the next? Is it the design? Is it the ability to be found? Or is it the features?

It is all of that and more.

So start off by asking the question. What is the main goal of the website? Is it brand awareness? Is it to recruit new staff or is it to drive new business? I thought I would suggest and discuss what the ultimate accounting website might include to be successful and some of the areas that are essential to make sure you stand out from the crowd.

1. Your services
   What services does your accountancy firm provide? Do you specialise in areas like liquidation or forensic accounting? It is advisable to list all of your services that you offer in detail like; business planning, taxation, investment strategies, superannuation advice and lodgment of Business Activity Statements (BAS) to the Australian Tax Office. Whatever the services you provide I would recommend that you write about them in detail (300-400 words on each) as opposed to a simple title. This type of content is rich to the search engines and can help drive traffic to your website.
2. Your staff
   Be sure to include a section which profiles your staff from the senior partners through to the receptionist. Write a mini biography on each staff member making sure you mention their qualifications and expertise. This type of information is essential in establishing the credibility of your firm to prospective new clients.
3. Careers & recruitment
   In a competitive recruitment market your website should be used to recruit new staff, particularly university graduates. What we have found in other industries is to include employee benefits, professional development and training as well as the social aspects of working for your firm. Try to include photos of your office and case studies of previous graduates that have worked their way up in the firm. You may also like to have a positions available section.
4. Online industry tool
   No matter what industry, we always recommend to clients to create something different and innovative which will become a traffic magnet for your site. This could be an essential tool, gadget or even calculator which people find handy. Think about something that has a wide appeal to your existing or future clients. What about a company tax or BAS calculator or even a loan calculator to show the weekly repayments.
5. Case studies
   The case studies of your website should be used to highlight your firm’s previous achievements as well as discussing solutions you’ve implemented for these clients. There should be a wide cross section of case studies from small businesses to large enterprises as well as different industries. Be sure to mention the services and solutions you undertook like being able minimise tax, increase profitability or how you provided business planning for a client that recently expanded its cash flow. However do not mention the company name specifically, rather use anonymous language like "a small western suburbs retailer" or a "Queensland ASX listed company".
6. Lead generation
   Apart from having a simple contact us form or simply an email address, have your web developer create a quotation form as a means to lead generation. On this quotation form, you’ll be able to ask prospective clients specific questions which will aid in developing a quote. For larger accounting firms, quotations can even be sent directly to the partner specialising in that service, as opposed to being lost in the main company email address. Be sure not to complicate the quotation form with unnecessary questions, just concentrate on the basics.
7. Have an opinion
   The Australian Tax Office regularly releases rulings on issues relating to taxation legislation. What do you know about them? Like most professionals, you will no doubt have a professional opinion on the matter and how it could impact or benefit from your clients. How do you tell your clients your opinion? Why not write an article or blog type response on your website and email it to your clients to read. If your opinion is public, you’ll no doubt be found by people searching on the matter. The more persuasive your opinion is the more people will link to your site, building credibility within search engine algorithms.
8. Content
   In the search engine world, there is a saying "content is king", this is because good content attracts users and traffic. A really important section of your website should be a collection of different types of content like explanations of balance sheets, profit and loss statements, directors' duties to prevent insolvent trading, how to present accounts for the purposes of fundraising as well as articles regarding insurance and protecting your revenues from risk. The type of articles you’ll include will really depend on the audience. If you are moving into a new area of specialisation, this could be a good way to attract prospective clients.
9. Checklists
   A useful tool to clients and even prospective clients is providing a collection of simple checklists they can use for particular tasks. These could be as simple as a checklist for setting up a company through to negative gearing, fund raising or even disclosure requirements. You may even like to offer checklists for personal clients like what tax deductions can be done to margin loan or first home buyer’s grants. As this may require a significant investment of time and resources, you may like to look at requiring people to register with a simple email address to access, providing you a growing database of possible clients to market to in the future.
10. Email newsletter
    No matter what industry you’re in you should be definitely undertaking email marketing on a regular basis to your existing clients and prospective clients. On every page of your website there should be an easy method of signing up to your email newsletter. The main keys to success here is designing a newsletter styled email which introduces readers to the topic, then offer them the ability to click through to the article or content on your webpage, allowing them to read further into your content and possibly contacting you or requesting a quotation on a matter.

But there is more…

Finally, and apart from the 10 important features mentioned above, I strongly suggest that you invest in some sort of search engine optimisation program on your website. It is critical that after you’ve invested in significant website, you need to ensure that you’re going to be found in the three main search engines; Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Robert Beerworth is Managing Director of Wiliam Web Design. Visit Robert’s website at www.wiliam.com.au

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2. The Town Planning Approach To IT Governance

Often the most complex issues can be explained simply by understanding the intent and the concepts behind them. In this article, Allen Shatten explores the world of IT Governance by looking at the similarities with town planning, a concept that everyone can understand.

Governance is increasingly prominent in IT consulting assignments. Some events, like mergers, create acute governance pressures. In larger enterprises, especially information-centric ones, IT governance can become a chronic illness.

IT governance is a relatively new phenomenon. It was not listed on board agendas as recently as the 1980s. It has gained prominence for several reasons.

Firstly, IT has become pervasive. Businesses are riddled with IT applications and infrastructure, and in some cases the business and its IT are indistinguishable. Domestic banking, wagering and share trading operations stop functioning when the systems are down. Retail traders rely on EFTPOS. Travel bookings rely on reservation systems.

Secondly, IT has become complex and option-rich. In larger enterprises a portfolio of 1000 applications would not be unusual. Presentation layers sit in front of access and security layers protecting integration layers that interact with application services partitioned from data services. There are product choices for every conceivable business activity. Smaller businesses run networks of spreadsheets and local databases, linked to order entry, inventory, shipping, accounting and payroll systems. Linkages often depend on local knowledge.

The world is becoming inter-connected. Inter-enterprise connections are common. The user community for a single application extends beyond the enterprise, to customers, suppliers, regulators or intermediaries.

IT practitioners allege that business management should set business objectives for IT. But how do business managers know what practical options are available to them? IT practitioners have a duty to present options to the business, but IT professionals are increasingly immersed (sometimes sinking) in technological intricacies. There are not many IT professionals who can present technological front lines in business terms. The old-time system analyst, who knew everything about the business and its systems, is critically endangered.

Projects having significant business impacts range from large to enormous. Project size is relative to its owners; a multi-national bank may be challenged by a half-billion dollar project, whereas a million-dollar project might stretch a medium-sized enterprise.

So it is not surprising that company directors and top management are struggling with IT governance.

There are dozens of IT governance models on the Internet, from ITIL’s (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) comprehensive three volumes through government policy frameworks to private merchandise. Generally, these resources are for experts. To our knowledge, none of these provides a protocol for company directors or top management.

It is possible that we could learn something from another field which, from a governance perspective, is remarkably similar to IT: that field is town planning. Town planning is contentious and sometimes disputatious, but it takes place within a well-established governance regime.

Everyone (in industrialised societies) accepts the need for a town plan because the alternative is urban chaos. The components of a modern city are complex, inter-connected and inter-dependent. New residential areas demand services and transport. Industrial developments compete with recreational facilities for scarce land.

There are lots of stakeholders in town planning. Developers, administrators, residents, commuters, industries, energy suppliers and retailers have competing interests and requirements. All of the stakeholders expect a degree of certainty, so the plan has to be stable, robust and, most of all, graphically visible. The best town plan in the world is useless if the stakeholders cannot understand it.

Changes to urban infrastructure are costly, high-impact, long-lived and are hard to modify once built. Stakeholder engagement in major projects is essential. Decision-makers are administrators and elected representatives having limited expertise in town planning disciplines like air quality or transport engineering. The decision-makers have no choice but to rely on advice from experts.

Modern cities cannot exist in their present form without adhering to a town plan.

The attributes of town planning can be applied to large-scale IT planning. Every senior manager would accept the proposition that IT should be conducted within an overall plan. The complexity of an IT portfolio in a large bank, telecommunications company, insurance company or government department is indisputable. Stakeholders in major IT ventures are numerous and extend beyond the enterprise itself. Major (and sometimes minor) changes are costly, slow to implement and hard to modify once built. Business managers and directors are not IT experts, and they must rely on IT managers and professionals with limited business expertise.

Arranged side by side in a slide pack, the similarities between IT planning and town planning are remarkable. Company directors, top managers and consulting partners recognise the similarities as soon as they are pointed out.

Town planning works because it has some important features

First and foremost: 80 per cent of the governance structure used in any particular town plan originates outside the town. In the state of Victoria, for example, every city and shire has a planning framework, and most of the contents are supplied by the state government, because only the very largest and richest local government bodies could marshal the resources and expertise to create their own governance regime. It is also because lots of planning regulations are best managed in a regional or national context (the same is true of IT).

Second, town planning is governed by a body of laws and regulations, supported by robust enforcement mechanisms. Individuals can try to evade them but only at risk and with difficulty.

It is of interest that another governance area – financial reporting – shares these two characteristics with town planning. All large enterprises in western economies use accounting standards that are supplied to them by the accounting profession. And financial reporting is buttressed by stringent laws and regulations, ever-increasing in rigour. Company officers and directors who attempt to misrepresent financial positions are likely to be jailed.

Town planning has some neat features that lend themselves to local adaptation. Zoning is a well-known, widely used mechanism for preparing and implementing town plans. It enables authorities to exercise controls over land use without acquiring the land. The controls can apply to all aspects of land use – purpose, density, height, appearance or services. Effective zoning is enforceable and widely accepted, and its success is underpinned by a strong legal and political foundation.

How can we apply the lessons and the well-established disciplines of town planning and financial reporting to IT governance?

We believe that it’s possible to describe a future state of IT governance that incorporates the successful features of town planning and financial management. This future state has four sets of attributes:

• An internationally accepted set of governance policies, standards and processes
• Legislative and regulatory enforcement of compliance
• In every large enterprise, a widely publicised, simplified, concise statement of IT strategies and enterprise architectures
• Local regulations for managing coarse-grained architecture domains (zones)

The internationally accepted set of governance policies, standards and processes will probably be sourced from ITIL. Sources in the US Federal Government are another option. The entire framework will be summarised in guides for company directors and senior officers, whose IT obligations will be incorporated in "Duties and Responsibilities of Company Directors and Officers" published by the Australian Government.

These obligations will centre on the professional disciplines that are required to sign off major IT ventures. An IT equivalent of the quantity surveyor will be one of the signatories. Other obligations will refer to consultation and sign-off processes when the enterprise architecture changes, or when important procurement strategies are adopted.

Obligations of directors and officers will be tied to laws and regulations. Corporation law will include appropriate provisions for IT governance and compliance with international frameworks and standards. There will be an IT equivalent of enforceable building regulations and a statutory body (like the Victorian Building Commission) that oversees them.

If you think that the last three paragraphs are far-fetched, consider this: in 10 or 20 years’ time, almost every IT service will interact with services outside the originating enterprise. A major IT failure can already paralyse a company, wreck a supply chain or ground a national transport system. Regulation is inevitable.

The means to produce and publicise concise architectures and strategies has been with us for years. However, IT practitioners are not good at getting full attention from their audiences. Town planners regularly engage in community consultation and IT professionals, especially enterprise architects, will master these skills. Business communities will have no choice but to listen and engage. If they do not, compliance processes will strangle them.

IT plans will be expressed in the form of coarse-grained architectures. For compliance purposes, "zones" will comprise groups of closely related business and technology subjects (architectural domains). International standards will include a standard set of subjects and the elements that they contain. These sets already exist in public sources such as TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) and the US Government’s Federal Enterprise Architecture models. Additionally, standard architectures for specific industries are available for purchase or, in some cases, in the public domain.

We have found that architectural constructions which are suitable for IT service design and procurement need to be simplified and consolidated for enterprise compliance purposes. Effective consolidation is industry sector-dependent; zoning for a telecommunications company is different to zoning for a bank (whereas zoning is pretty much the same for all banks). The key feature of compliance-based architectures is that each zone can be managed according to a clear set of rules and regulations. For example, the rules for managing data services are quite different to those for managing platform infrastructure services.

Standard templates for architectural subjects will be available within internationally accepted standards. Large enterprises will modify the templates to suit their local needs, in the same way as a shire develops its local zoning regulations. The modified templates will require Board or ministerial approval.

This idealised future state would represent IT nirvana for enterprise architects and IT strategists. Town planning offers an extensive field for research for students of IT governance and compliance.

Allen Shatten is a specialist in IT Planning. For more information contact Allen at shattenco@ozemail.com.au An edited version of this article first appeared in "Information Age", the official publication of the Australian Computer Society.

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3. Cautionary Tales: Web Enquiry Forms

While there are many business benefits of using websites, there are also potential pitfalls for the unwary. Peter Ross explores why web forms can be bad for your business and provides some suggestions for using them successfully.

Well I do not know about you, but as an avid Web researcher and on line shopper, I use web "Enquiry" forms and "Contact Us" forms quite often. There are very good reasons why I do, which I will explain later, but I am baffled by the ‘rubbish response’, or most often ‘No Response’ that this generates from the web site business. Surely it can not be so hard to answer an enquiry promptly and accurately.

It seems that the web enquiry forms are often there because the website designer or builder thought they were a good idea at the time, but rarely do they seem to be connected to an established business process at the other end.

First, however I have a "good news" story about Web Enquiry. Recently moving house I searched ("Googled") for a removalist in my area, and specifically searched on a few key words to narrow the result set to a small operator. I found one, and there was a form, so I filled it in. The site allowed two contact methods, the form or a mobile phone number. It was obvious I was dealing with an owner operator. When he called me (from his van) some 20 minutes later to ask how he could help, it was obvious that he had some simple but effective processes in place. He got the job.

I would love to say the experience has been as good with larger more established commercial operations; however that is sadly not the case. Most seem incapable of putting together a suitable and simple process.

I know this has a bit of a real estate theme, but bear with me, that’s just what I have been doing of late. Recently looking at a property for sale by auction, and finding the agent hard to get hold of, I used the website advertisement to send an enquiry on specific questions. No response.

I later attended an inspection and (with this article in mind) asked the agent in attendance if he had received my notes and did he have responses to my questions. "Oh no, my secretary probably opened those, so you will need to send them direct to me, they could have gone anywhere in the office"

In general what seems to happen in larger organisations is one of the following:

• The message never reaches a human (the web site has a hard coded email address of an ex staff member)
• The message reaches a human who does not think it is their job, is not measured on the outcome, or does not understand the process to deal with the enquiry, and hence takes no action.
• Web enquiries are not a core part of the business sales process and as such do not have a priority of attention
• The enquiry is passed on (I suspect not in its original form) only to have someone telephone (at the wrong time) and ask all the very same questions which were advised in the original enquiry
• The enquiry is answered, but the response is dealt with as junk mail without the recipient knowing (happened to me a few times as well). This means the business is unfairly judged and readers are counselled to test these issues on a regular basis.

Now why is it that I, and a lot of people I know like me, use these forms so often that we have formed an opinion on them, and the businesses that own them? As small business operators, or persons employed in busy responsible positions, we do lots of personal research and buying (as well as stuff for work) late at night when businesses are closed. It is a good use of time and means that personal stuff does not have to fall behind (but yes, we are chained to PC’s at home as well as work, but that’s a different article)

Like email (to an extent, though less now) web enquiries allow one to time shift and do product research and purchasing outside normal business hours. What we really want is two things:

• A quick response to the enquiry, preferably by email (which is why we used the form in the first place, to avoid lengthy phone calls)
• Our questions answered by someone competent, not a message that "I will get my manager to call you"

Personally, I do not think that is much to ask.

So why do I think these forms are bad for business?

If we go back to "the man in the van" it is clear that he took control of my enquiry because it was his business, he cared about getting the job, and there was no one else employed to deal with such things, and hence he had to. As the owner he took 100 per cent responsibility for making sure I knew what he could do, by when and how much (all of which I had asked in the form in some detail, and he did not ask me for that detail again). The web form (or more particular a decent business process) was and is good for his business.

It is clear from the way that process was handled that I am dealing with a sole operator who is keen and has efficiently set himself up with communications to make sure he serves customers well in their enquiries.

It is clear that the real estate agent either did not care about the enquiries I had sent through, or did not think that web enquiries were serious enough to warrant a proper filtering and routing process in his business.

One suspects that lots of other businesses seem to perhaps look at their web enquiries infrequently, and deal with them as a batch, which is at least a process, but not a very professional or procedural one.

So what I am saying is that poor or non existent business processes seem to be very quickly exposed by the activity (or lack of it) which comes from the web enquiry. Unfortunately for those businesses, the type of person happy to use the enquiry rather than call is one who will notice such things and perhaps take it as an indicator of overall professionalism. I have simply not bothered following up a number of businesses where I have in fact had a response from a competitor.

What is abundantly clear is that the amount of design and effort required, increases exponentially with the size of the organisation, as does the importance of getting it right, reproducible and auditable. Anything less could be a disaster.

Peter C. Ross CA is a principal consultant at Report Factory (www.reportfactory.com.au ) and can be contacted at peter@reportfactory.com.au

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4. IT Checklists

Checklists are useful tools for busy executives and managers. Defined simply as "a list of items required or things to be done or considered", a checklist has many uses in today’s time-poor world. They can help provide an understanding of a range of complex issues in a simple, informative and easy way and can ensure consistency and completeness in performing tasks.

The biggest risk with checklists is that sometimes the subject matter becomes so simple that everyone reading the checklist immediately believes that they know it all. Too much reliance on a checklist can arm the business executive with a false sense of confidence and lead to poor decisions.

Another risk is that a checklist may become out of date. Particularly in IT, checklists developed around particular types of hardware may become out of date or obsolete as the technology changes. Similarly checklists based around software functionality may not reflect the best practices of today or may miss the expanding functionality provided by many of today’s integrated systems.

Recently a few IT-related checklists have been added to the Institute of Chartered Accountants member’s area of the website. These checklists apply to the following areas of business that interest many Chartered Accountants:

• Practice management evaluation
  If you are in the market for a new practice management system than this checklist is for you. There is a comprehensive list of features typically provided in practice management systems relating to clients, engagements, timesheets, expenses, WIP, fees and integration with general ledger software.
• Document management/workflow evaluation
  This checklist provides a list of suggested features to look for in areas such as document management, workflow, email management, and templates.
• Website/intranet/extranet software evaluation
  There has been a lot written in this issue about websites and some useful information about making sure that your website works for you. This checklist provides a basic list of features to look for in each of the three net-based applications and is a good starting point for information gathering.

Remember as far as selecting appropriate IT for your organisation, checklists may provide a good starting point for your research. They will not make you an instant expert and may not cover some functionality that is available in the marketplace – what they will do is provide you with the opportunity to consider some of the more important aspects of the software before you seek further help.

Judith Merryweather is the principal of Alexer Pty Ltd, an IT Consulting Company. Contact Judith at alexer_info@exemail.com.au

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5. Further Reading and References

In this issue we have identified a number of issues and trends for our contributors. Below is a miscellaneous selection of websites and references that has been compiled to help interested readers undertake further research on these topics.

ICT governance

For a good introduction to ICT governance, the Australian Computer Society has a committee working under its Information Systems Board. The site provides links to various papers, standards and working groups about ICT Governance.

The IT Metrics and Productivity Institute has a good section about ICT Governance. The Institute conducted an interview with Dr Jean Ross, a research scientist at the MIT Centre for Information systems research about her work research work on ICT Governance that provides a good understanding of some of the issues.

One in three companies worldwide are applying IT governance procedures in a bid to assess the performance and security of their IT systems. The IT Governance Global Status Report 2008 canvassed the opinions of around 750 senior executives from 23 countries and found that Europe and the US lead on IT governance adoption rates. Focus points include the:

• Degree to which the concept of IT governance is recognised, established and accepted within boardrooms and especially by CIOs
• Level of existing IT governance expertise and which frameworks are known and are (or will be) adopted
• Extent to which the framework, COBIT, is selected and how it is perceived

Website design

There are many websites that provide hints and tips on web design. These are mostly created and maintained by web developers as a marketing feature and should be recognized as such. However there are some sites that really provide interesting perspectives such as this selection:

• This www.derek.stockley.com.au provides a "Good Web Design Guide" The site covers many of the more common web design issues including useability and layout as well as information about the use of frames and about search engines.
• www.mason.gmu.edu provides a web design principles checklist that is worth a look
• For a more detailed look at page design www.ross.net has some interesting points covering page titles and footers and general layout.

Information Architecture is a term often used in describing the design of a website but it is little understood. In "The many faces of Information Architecture" Patrick Kennedy looks at just what it is and provide links for further detailed investigation into the terms and parts of design.

Then there are many books written about web design and web principles. Check out Web Style Guide (2nd edition)

Checklists

The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) site has a range of checklists designed for use by government agencies. However they provide a useful source of information for anyone looking at improving the way that they manage IT.

NSW Government has developed a checklist to assist its agencies with Website Style Compliance. This provides a useful look at how checklists may be used to support self-regulated tasks and functions.

For further information please contact:

Special Interest Coordinator
Ph. 02 9290 5526
Fax. 02 9262 1310
Email. special.interest@charteredaccountants.com.au

This is an initiative of, and has been prepared by the Special Interest Team of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained therein, neither the Institute nor its employees shall be liable on any grounds whatsoever in respect of decisions or actions taken as a result of using this publication. The information provided is a general guide only and should not be used, relied on or treated as a substitute for specific professional advice or referral to the relevant specific standard. Opinions of authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect policies of the Institute or the IT Special Interest Group.

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