Extranets (or “Client Portals”) have come of age

As further evidence of the growing interest in Intranets (actually Extranets really), John Stokdyk has posted an article on AccountingWEB (“Tax season drives adoption of client portals”). Quite rightly, he says that collaborative web portals are now becoming an accepted feature of accountancy practices.

John says that out of more than 1,100 tax season survey respondents, 13% said they planned to introduce a portal.  And as reported previously on AccountingWEB, the buzz around document-sharing portals has been circulating for a couple of years. But the way that technology adoption works is that once all the hype has died down and the early adopters have overcome the initial hurdles, the wider market quietly goes about implementing tools that deliver practical benefits.

John says that technology enthusiast Kevin Salter says portals are “old hat” now although he accepts it will be a big topic again, because “ICAEW’s IT Faculty has been told that practice assurance reviews are still finding firms who are emailing returns to their clients – and that is no longer acceptable,”

I think portals have come of age. Several reasons for this include:

• The growing acceptance of cloud-based technology.
• Faster broadband access becoming commonplace.
• The explosion in smartphone technology driving desire to access information anytime from anywhere.
• Improved security.

There seems to have been a shift from describing Intranets by that name to a new name “Client Portals”. I prefer Extranets – that’s when a firm allows clients to have access to information rather than for it to be sent by post or email (or, I suppose, hand-delivered).

There are ways that accountants can save a fortune. Processing paper as our grandfathers did is a complete waste of time and money when you look at the options available today.

In case you missed it, I blogged on this earlier this week: “No Dead Trees allowed here! The world of the paperless office”.

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Martin Pollins

Managing Director at One Smart Place

Martin Pollins is a Chartered Accountant and MBA with wide experience in corporate finance and business management. He has served on the boards of several companies, including those listed on the London Stock Exchange, AIM and OFEX. He is Chairman and Founder of OneSmartPlace and was a Council member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales from 1988 to 1996. He was managing partner of PRB Martin Pollins, based in Sussex, the first Accountancy firm to advertise on British television.He went on to create and launch the CharterGroup Partnership (the UK’s first Accountancy network) and then LawGroup UK (at the time, one of the largest networks of lawyers in the UK). In recent years, he helped to raise several £millions to fund British films such as The Da Vinci Code, Bridge of San Luis Rey, Head in the Clouds and Merchant of Venice with actors such as Charlize Theron, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, F. Murray Abraham. Kathy Bates, Gabriel Byrne, Geraldine Chaplin, Tom Hanks, Ian McKellen, Audrey Tautou, Penélope Cruz, Steven Berkoff, Lynn Collins, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes and many more.

He has written over 700 business publications (see Glossaries at https://onesmartplace.com/resources/glossaries/) and is editor of Better Business Focus (see https://onesmartplace.com/resources/better-business-focus-magazine). His Blog, on a wide range of subjects can be found at: https://onesmartplace.com/blog/

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