31 July 2013

Webcasts for CPD

Webcasts are a maturing technology and with the proliferation of free courses by leading universities, I hoped to see some good material for CPD.  Now while some of the university courses could certainly be used for CPD, I was hoping to find something more aimed at staying up to date with UKGAAP/IFRS, UK law and UK business based ideas.

CIMA does have a suite of material available here but at £30 for an hour's course seems expensive (the special offer bulk buys only allow a restricted choice).

I would be interested to hear if anyone has found a good alternative?

16 July 2013

Notes from Modelling and Financial Planning Webinar

Business Modelling and Financial Planning Webinar
Date and time:16 Jul 2013, 10:00
Duration:1 hour
Description:Business Modelling and Financial Planning Webinar

 In this webinar Andy Cooper, Business Consultant from Advanced Business Solutions, examined the challenges that organisations face with the modeling and forecasting process offering insight to how you can develop these processes beyond finance to gain a real business advantage. 
Presented by Andy Cooper, Advanced Business Solutions
  • Move to modelling and planning rather than systems replacements
  • Third of orgs use specialist tool (half for large orgs) - typically not outside finance.
  • Doing more with less and backlash against ERP-like projects.
  • Short ROI - less than 18 months in many cases.
  • 63% of orgs (up from 54% in 2011) plan to upgrade business modeling in next 2 years.
  • But over 70% of BI/BM projects fail.

Action items
Look at Adobe Meeting - worked well for Webinars (from web link with no log in required).
Consider business opportunities of specialising in this area - but with which software?

10 July 2013

Everything you ever needed to know about dropbox in seven minutes or less. | Dotto Tech

For anyone not already using Dropbox for backing up, syncing and sharing, this is well worth 7 minutes of your time.  It could just save you that sinking feeling the next time someone says to you 'when did you last make a backup'?

Everything you ever needed to know about dropbox in seven minutes or less. | Dotto Tech:

If you do decide to give it a try, I'd appreciate you using this link so that Dropbox gives me some extra free storage in case I ever need it.

09 July 2013

Evernote reminders (for Android, iOs and web but not Windows yet)

This video shows you how to use the new reminder feature on Evernote but note you may need to download the latest updates first for Android (it's one that you need to do manually).

03 July 2013

Trello - could be useful for tracking team meeting actions or audit follow ups

Trello is a web based app for collaboratively keeping track of tasks.  It's a crowded market place but here is what makes it different and what task it might be really good for:

What's it like?
Think of being in a team meeting with a pack of post its.  You write a task on each post it and stick it on a board in a column called 'to do'.  There is another column for 'doing', another for 'done' and you can add others for 'waiting' or 'for review' if needed.  The post its (or cards) can easily be dragged from one place to another.

To the cards can also be added further details, checklists, attachments, links, due dates, owners and comments.

What would it be good for?
In a team meeting, a group could brainstorm ideas, allocate them to people with a due date.  The group members can then work on items after the meeting but also add comments later as they think of ideas or as scenarios change. Any invited member of the team can see who made which comment and when and see the progress as a whole.

What else could it be good for?
Suppose an organisation has a list of improvements to implement.  Each item could be added as a separate card with a summary of what needs to be done.  The task can be allocated an owner and due date.  The owner can add comments and then attach evidence when the task is complete, giving a good audit trail.

Other thoughts
It is possible to have different boards for different subjects (separate sharing for each) and boards can be filtered.  Cards can have categories allocated to them within boards.  According to the web site, works on PCs, Android and iOS.

Cost
The basic version (that would do this) is free.