by Nigel Harris
23 March 2010
Digita’s eighth annual conference last week saw several hundred people come together, Digita customers mixing with the company’s sales and software development teams, sharing suggestions and gripes, receiving one-to-one help on Digita applications, and clocking up some valuable CPD at the feet of top speakers including Francesca Lagerberg and Bill Docherty.
Digita MD Jerry Rihll kicked off the two-day event in his customary upbeat style, plus the obligatory corporate video that reminded delegates that Digita is now part of Thomson Reuters worldwide organisation under the slogan “Local strength, global vision”.
Trying to be innovative can sometimes feel a bit like this extract from Winnie the Pooh, explained Jerry:
“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.”
Innovation is very difficult to do from the inside – Digita therefore places great store on this annual opportunity to interact with customers and get their feedback and idea. And they are certainly a loyal bunch. Jerry reckoned the conference room held a total of some 500 Digita customer years, with some customers having been with the company for 18 years.
“The future is just a series of nows” was a theme of Jerry’s keynote speech, and he has certainly managed to deliver a lot of the future to his customers over the last year. 2009 was a successful year for the company with 22% customer growth, over 98% contract renewal and all its products certified for Windows 7 (a unique achievement in the UK).
The company now has a full product set, with the over-arching Practice Management application rapidly taking shape. It was good to see that all of the 2009 conference promises had been delivered, so we had no repeat promises this year! In fact, FileCabinet, the paperless office system brought over to the UK from Thomson Reuters in the US, which was only briefly mentioned at the 2009 conference has already been successfully deployed in a number of UK firms, together with the new NetClient portal product.
The company has not neglected its core personal and company tax products, with a number of enhancements due in 2010. Both products achieved impressive success rates of 99% in online filing of tax returns in 2009 – significantly better than the success rate of HMRC’s own software!
2010 brings the challenge of implementing iXBRL for online Corporation Tax and company accounts filing, but the company is already well into test filing and expects to have the upgrade ready for late summer 2010. This will be done for both Digita Accounts production and for the larger corporate product Abacus, which Thomson Reuters acquired from Deloittes last year.
Jerry closed with the question many are asking online now: Where the hell is Matt? The answer appears to be, dancing.
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