TGS Digested Week 21: Are you working in a state of ‘spreadsheets and chaos’?

Monday 2021.5.24

TGS Walks Round the World

Monday the 24th was a public holiday in many countries so hopefully, you used the time to walk around your part of the world as part of TGS Walks Round the World.  I was at the beach (again) and you can see my 6km (every little count) walk here. We’ll be delighted if you can share pictures of your walks on LinkedIn, Instagram, or the TGS WhatsApp group. Remember to use the hashtags #tgsmademedosomething #onesharedhome and tag us in the posts so we can push your posts out further across our social media.

Tuesday 2021.5.25

Productivity and Practice Management

We participated in the Digital Transformation Forum Day 1 and learned about how accountancy firms are currently succeeding with digital transformation. How is your firm succeeding with digital transformation? Are you winning or are you still working in an atmosphere of ‘spreadsheets and chaos’ as one of the panelists remarked? The Digital Transformation Forum raised a lot of topics for our TGS Innovation & Technology Committee to discuss.  We’ll be talking about some of the topics below in the next TGS Intech committee meeting on the 7th June at 2 PM CEST and it would be great to have a member of your team with us.

👉 Register here!

❔ How are accountancy firms executing digital transformation strategies in a post-Covid world?

❔ How can you cater your outsourcing for large clients?

❔ What are the pains and pleasures of digital transformation for accountants?

❔ Are you set up for hybrid meetings?

❔How do you make sure everyone feels included in a hybrid meeting?

❔What are your digital transformation goals for 2021/22?

A recent Gartner Poll discovered that it takes an average of 13 minutes to start a Zoom meeting with external participants. This is a long time. Longer than a coffee break and without any of the caffeine boost advantages. If you only have one Zoom meeting a day (and who has only one?) this calculation means you lose out on 43 hours of work in a year. That’s almost a whole week lost to simply connecting so maybe it’s a good idea to invest in a seamless video-conferencing system that detects when you enter a meeting room and automatically switches on devices and connects to the meeting. This kind of technology exists, it’s not very expensive and could be a big time saver.

The question about how to make remote participants feel present in a meeting when some of you are together in the office is a good one. Where do you stand on this issue? If everyone can’t be in the room, should no one be in the room?

There were also a lot of small tips for quick wins that can help your online meeting experiences. One is to keep faces on one screen and content on another. You are probably used to sitting in a meeting room with a device where you can take notes and manage your Powerpoint but are you recreating this effectively in your online meetings? I like to keep three windows open on my laptop so I can have one eye on the faces in the meeting, another eye on the slideshow, and my hands taking notes (or checking the net when I have to). See the attached image for what I mean. 

You will have to disable ‘full-screen mode’ for Zoom’ and resize your other windows. If this is not something you already do it’s a good idea to learn how to do it. Let me know if you’d like us to run a short course about how to do this. 

What are your Digital Transformation Goals for the year ahead?  Here’s ours at TGS.

• Where can we apply robotics?
• How can we change the mindset of our team to do that?
• How do we make sure our recruitment and onboarding changes what we’ve done and hires team members who can deal with new technology and that can help the others to be able to use tech.
• How can we set up effective partnerships with schools and universities to change the path of recruitment?
• How can we better integrate and automate our use of data?
• How can we leverage the data we have about our clients? (Spoiler: this data is often spread over different locations and does not interact.)
• How do we shift from compliance and advisory in our processes and how do set a value for this?

Wednesday 2021.5.26 

Transfer Pricing Developments in the US

This Wednesday, our TGS members Guy Sanschagrin, the US King of Transfer Pricing from WTP Advisors in the USA, and Jeroen van der Linden, Netherlands King of Transfer Pricing and Tax Partner with TGS Lime Tree in the Netherlands spoke about recent Transfer Pricing developments in the U.S during an insightful webinar co-hosted with Quantera Global.

This webinar was the opportunity to learn more about the U.S and the Dutch Tax environments. Did you know that the US has one of the oldest and most mature transfer pricing regimes in the world? As a result-oriented country, the U.S is a place where Transfer Pricing is a revenue opportunity, especially for ‘separate return’ states. 

This webinar was very interesting for Transfer Pricing specialists or for TGS members who could be interested in transfer pricing in the U.S. However, as a non-Transfer Pricing specialist, I might need another webinar that explains more about the basics of Transfer Pricing: it’s a complex topic. And that’s exactly what we have planned. We are hosting an ‘All you ever wanted to know about Transfer Pricing but were too afraid to ask’, series of webinars starting in Q4 this year. Keep an eye on the TGS U page (or this column) for updates. 

Thursday 2021.5.27

TGS Live (TGS Community and benefits)

We’re still experimenting with TGS Live each Thursday and this week’s edition was a recap of the recent online regional events and a reminder to sign up for all the TGS workgroups in June. There are many opportunities to interact with us so please come along to our TGS Live on LinkedIn or Youtube. Remember to ‘like, comment, and subscribe’. 

Day One of TGS Americas Regional event. 3 solid hours of conferencing and then another 2 hours of a ‘marathon’ walk for TGS Walks Round the World. Look out for the discussion article we will publish next week to continue the work we started in today’s workshops. 

• What’s the best way to organize professional training in your firm? 
• How can you best motivate your team to use TGSU? 
• How can we convert more referrals into sales? 

Where did you walk this week? If you haven’t heard about the project already, you can read all about it in the TGS Walks Around the World launch article here.

Friday 2021.5.28

TGS Americas Regional Event: Day 2

Day Two TGS Americas Regional event. Normally we should be in Miami for the Americas event and we would have been able to see most of you face to face. Again, look out for the discussion article we will publish next week to continue the work we started in today’s workshops.  

• TGS is an active Participant of the UNGC. What CSR actions can we adopt that will be useful for our clients, increase our business and improve our quality?
• We share a global registered and protected brand: TGS. How can we use it to amplify our firm communication locally and internationally? 

It’s impossible to do other than Zoom for the moment and we are happy to hear that all our members are staying safe. We look forward to seeing you all in real life next year, the year after, and for many years to come! Think Global Sustainability and have a great weekend.