by Nigel Harris
21 April 2009
The recent Digita annual conference received a surprise visit from Roy Martin, President and CEO of the Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting Division who explained how the global corporation was attracted to Digita because of its similar culture, values and vision.
Delegates were reassured that Thomson Reuters would continue its deep investment in Digita that has seen a 20% increase in staff and 1,200 new customers in 2008 despite the change of ownership during the year. Chatting with Roy Martin and Digita MD Jerry Rihll later, Roy reiterated his commitment not to meddle. “We don’t intend to make the mistake of some other corporations who acquire a business because it’s successful then set about changing it because they think they can do it better -Thomson Reuters knows how not to do that”, he explained.
Why Digita, and why now? I asked. Roy said that Digita had been on their radar for some time prior to acquiring the company, they admired what Jerry Rihll and his team had achieved. More importantly, TR felt there was a good match between the two companies in culture, leadership values, relations with clients and their prowess in their field.
However, with sales of £800 million Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting Division can and will bring to Digita an ongoing investment commitment and access to a global technology resource that they can utilise as they think fit. Roy likened it to giving Jerry Rihll and the Digita team the keys to the Thomson Reuters technology warehouse – they can help themselves to established technology tools that they can adapt and use as they see fit in the UK. The first example of this is File Cabinet, a document management system widely used by US firms, which Digita plans to release as part of its UK practice management system by the end of 2009. Jerry commented that they had been considering writing their own document management application, but now access to Thomson Reuters' proven technology enables them to “leapfrog the opposition” while focusing their own software development on their key products. It was a Digita decision to adopt File Cabinet, not one imposed on them by their new parent company, he added. “We're excited to see what Jerry does with it,” quipped Roy.
Knowing that Thomson Reuters is the leading provider of both software and information services to tax and accounting firms in the USA, I asked Roy if they had plans to move into information services in the UK, in competition with CCH and LexisNexis. Not at the moment, was his reply – “I don't relish being a bit player in a two horse race!” He acknowledged that it would be difficult to generate profits from a market that's only growing by 2% per annum.
I asked Roy how he saw his market developing globally in the near future. He explained that Thomson Reuters' core business is helping firms help their clients with compliance. In an unprecedented era of complex regulations and ever-increasing compliance requirements, software has a key role to play. An area which he sees growing worldwide is “governance, risk and compliance”, or GRC, as governments respond to high profile business failures by increasing their scrutiny of the financial controls inside corporations. Web-based software will be an ideal tool to help multi-national companies achieve compliance in this area, since such systems cross borders in a way that tax and accounting compliance tends not to.
Is “cloud computing” the future? I asked both Roy and Jerry. Both responded enthusiastically. Thomson Reuters already runs the 4th most secure data centre in the USA and has considerable experience with ASP, SaaS and Web applications there. Jerry's view is “it's the future, it's got to be.” And with Thomson Reuter's financial and technical backing, he added, “nothing is too big” for Digita! Conference delegates saw glimpses of some big future developments in Digita products promised for the next 12 months, so it looks like there will be plenty more this time next year.
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