accountant

ISACA

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Although it stands for Information Systems Audit and Control Association, ISACA has grownwell  beyond that compliance-based beginning into a real professional association for information systems people, and in particular has a lot of relevance for business systems people.

I joined in about March and I haven’t regretted the subscription yet.  In particular it has a great deal of resources about best practice and IT governance that is very relevant to me as an information systems professional.

Their website is www.isaca.org, and I’m proud to be a card-carrying member.  Brisbane chapter is here.  Doesn’t mean I’ll ever stop being a CPA – I note this latest accountant tom-foolery to put some crazy sounds on your mobile – but ISACA is a professional association focussed on business outcomes.

Career Watch – me six years ago

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Six years ago (!) I was profiled in the CPA Australia journal – in their career watch section, nothing too special. It was in order to promote the IT Specialisation for CPA Australia (technically, I am a ‘Certified Practising Accountant (Specialist in Information Technology); my full handle is a bit cumbersome.

I decided I probably should record it for posterity – see how we’re travelling so to speak.

For the record, Horwath Brisbane Chartered Accountants merged with BDO Kendalls in November 2002 – which is why the names have changed. Incidentally, at least one good reason to merge is the apparent difficulty people have always had with Horwath (here it’s been reproduced as Howarth, and on my first day at Horwath I got a rude shock from a client who pronounced it as ‘whores & whores’ (and they weren’t trying to be rude))!

Fortunately I think I can say confidently that we are developing a niche systems consulting area of the firm, although perhaps not in the direction I thought we would go six years ago!

Career Watch – Micheal Axelsen (30) [editor: well, I was then!]

Micheal Axelsen, B. Comm (Hons), CPA, MinfmSystems, is MD of Horwath Business Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, in Brisbane. He is a specialist in IT, and holds a Master of Information Systems.

How did you specialise in IT? I tutored in information systems (IS) at University of Queensland in 1991. In 1996 when I qualified as CPA, I knew IS was more appealing. I pursued my MinfmSystems degree and knocked on doors until Bruce Hatcher of Horwath gave me a job.

Who has been the major influence on your career? Charles Rheault (my old boss at Brisbane’s Anglican Church Grammar School). He taught me the value of looking after staff, that those with talent should contribute to the community, and to always keep a sense of humour in a crisis. He also taught me the value of eating pizza when working late.

What is the best career advice you have ever had? ‘The patient has the disease’ – you need to be objective, and if you are going to have a long successful career, you need to have balance and be able to draw a line between work and home.

Who do you admire in business? Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975. He was ill in the mid-80’s and was brave enough to walk away from day-to-day involvement (with a considerable amount of cash in his pocket!) and change his lifestyle.

Where will you be in 10 years? Professionally, I hope Howarths has developed into a niche systems consulting firm. Personally, I hope to have attained this elusive ‘balance’.

This article has been posted through to my publications section.

CPA Australia – going places

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Anyone who has half-glanced at my CV or some of my blog posts will note that although I provide information systems consulting services to my clients, I am actually a lapsed accountant.  The reason I remain so passionate about CPA Australia is that I think a Commerce or Business degree from a university is the best entry point into the world of business, bar none.  This is even more true if, as a student, you are not certain of your future direction.  Commerce generally, and accounting particularly, lets you direct your career to meet your changing circumstances and professional preferences.  And of course I think CPA Australia is the best accounting professional body for allowing you this flexibility.  Naturally.

By way of example, I quote the members of the CPA Australia Information Technology & Management Centre of Excellence (which I chair) – all qualified accountants (with one exception), all working in very different fields.  This wasn’t necessarily because they felt that accounting was their best entree into the world of IT, but rather because it allowed their career to be flexible and follow their interest whilst maintaining a leading business professional qualification. 

All of which is leading up to the fact that I note that CPA Australia’s new advertising campaign was launched this week.  I had a sneak preview at the new Queensland President’s networking drinks last week (Lyndal Drennan is the new Queensland CPA President) but the ads are, I think, their best yet.  You can see them here:  CPA Australia Advertising Campaign 2006. 

Nicolette Sharp - the only time she goes backwards...

Desktop Search Tools

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One of the fascinating new tools that have come to the fore over the past several years is an array of tools to assist you to retrieve the work you have already done – the work that is currently sitting in what could loosely be termed your knowledge library (if you’re not well-organised).

These tools include things such as Google Desktop Search (which is just out of beta), the MSN Search Toolbar, Yahoo Desktop Search, X1, and the Copernic Desktop Search. I have done a lot of research since this tool was mentioned at the IT Management Day (I chaired the day in Brisbane, at least partly because I chair the COE – oh, and I happen to live in Brisbane, so that may have helped) by Rob Roe of KAZ Technologies, and from the reviews I have read on the internet and my own experience, I think Copernic is a winner.

X1 costs – and since I am an accountant (there is a time-delay lock on my wallet), and the other tools are free and of great quality, it was never going to get a look in.

The MSN Search toolbar – well, apparently it doesn’t play nice with Mozilla Firefox (my preferred browser). It’s also from Microsoft (I like a lot of Microsoft products – they often just work without ten years geek experience), but the tendency I have seen is to bloatware and security issues. I was unable to confirm this, however, because the real killer for this product is it needs Windows XP to run, and like 40% or so of the business world, I still run Windows 2000 on my laptop.

The Yahoo search bar remains way too close to the beta program for me, so I didn’t really look at it too much. From reviews I’ve read, it seems to be a bit of a resource hog when indexing (even when you’re working).

Normally, Google would have been my tool of choice (what can I say – I already have one new verb “to Google”, meaning to thrash about and find stuff), but although it had a nice and simple interface, and the results were available in a browser, the Google tool is pretty much brain-dead in indexing just my local hard drive. There is a plug-in (too close to the old word, “hack”, for me) to search network drives, but it’s primogeniture is a little hard to determine and it comes with now arranties. Besides, this tool is only just out of beta.

Feeling a bit frantic, I downloaded and installed the Copernic deskbar, and it works for me. Although it doesn’t work with Groupwise (our email system of choice), that’s probably not a problem since neither do any of the other tools . Copernic works with network drives out of the box, it has a nice taskbar search tool, and the background indexing is nice and unobtrusive. I don’t understand why these other tools work only on the local hard drive – beyond the few script kiddies out there and consultants that work alone, it isn’t good practice to have valuable documents sitting on C:.

Some problems I did have with Copernic were when I tried to run it with Groupwise (I have Outlooked installed, so it tried to index Groupwise with somewhat disastrous results – the indexing essentially kept freezing my computer). It isn’t rated for Groupwise, so that’s probably not a surprise.

Also, I found that when I had the preview pane on, a couple of spreadsheets (I think with macros in them perhaps) caused a lovely blue screen of death – so I turned that off. I do suspect that may be a Novell incompatibility.

Finally, because the taskbar takes up some acreage, I decided to turn that off. Which I did. When I went to turn it back on – no luck. I racked my brains about it for 20 minutes how to resolve it and then decided the simple approach was best – I uninstalled the thing and re-installed, and then allowed it to reindex it. It took about half an hour of my life – and I won’t try turning off the taskbar again. The reindexing was unobtrusive (and continues to be) and I have 12,775 documents indexed fairly quickly, I thought, while I zapped out for a coffee.

So in summary, I am using Copernic on my laptop, and I have been very impressed so far (speed is excellent!). A side benefit is that if you show results by date, you can quickly see those files you have been working on recently (presuming, of course, the documents you have indexed are your documents – this will depend on how you work with a team). A tool like this raises issues for IT Governance, desktop stability, and IT installation policies, but that’s a topic for a different post.