Ali Pejman, CA - Institute of Chartered Accountants of BC

laptop, cell phone, the whole thing,” he
says. “And this all helps put deals together
more quickly and allows me to work on
several projects at the same time. The
Internet is also a valuable tool for us,
especially when travelling abroad. Of
course, these same technologies were
supposed to make our lives easier when
we really just get more done in the same
amount of time!”
Brown, who has been with Pacific
Opportunity for four years, estimates that
technology has doubled the speed of doing
business in the past year alone.
“With e-mail and cell phones, we put
together public offerings in three months
that used to take six months to do and
acquisitions in six months that would
previously have taken a year,” he says.
He acknowledges that the negative
side of rapid technology is the pressure of
increased client expectations, as well as
the increased concerns about privacy,
confidentiality and security.
“CAs just need to stay on top of it
and be aware of what’s going on out
there,” he says.
Allan May, CA, Director of Finance
for Resort Communications
Group, has been a CA since 1991 and
articled with Deloitte & Touche LLP,
Chartered Accountants. He is, by his own
admission, the “totally wireless man”.
“Cell phone, laptop, personal digital
assistant, voice mail, e-mail at home and
the office and with all those great portable
devices, I am always in touch,” May says.
But he acknowledges not everyone is
operating the same way.
“It still all depends on the client,” he
points out. “Some are on the leading edge
and have taken full advantage of technology
to minimize the paper flow and
maximize efficiencies in communications
and financial reporting and operations.
Others haven’t had this success and mostly
it’s because of a lack of long-term planning.
They don’t fully understand what exactly
the technology they’re purchasing can
do...so it doesn’t really work out for them as
well as it could. They don’t go forward with
a ‘technological road map’, as it were.”
On a global scale, May says CAs should
be aware of the opportunities technology is
providing beyond our local environments.
“Not many CAs are providing services
on a global scale yet and I think in some
cases it’s the clients holding them back —
they continue to want paper-based
comfort,” he says. “Many high-tech firms
are doing paper-free communications of
their annual reports and other financial
information, but most of the bricks and
mortar clients are not there yet.”
May says he has seen incredible
change in technology since he began his
articling in 1988.
“But for many small to medium-sized
businesses, they can’t totally accept the
new world technology has created,” he
points out. “For example, they want to
keep their computers as long as possible to
realize the depreciation benefits under the
tax rules, so many of them are keeping
obsolete machines too long and holding
back their companies from the newer
technologies. I would suggest that the tax
rules around write-offs be updated so
clients can purchase new computers, stay
competitive and get the advantage of
write-offs for re-investing.”
At Deloitte & Touche LLP’s Vancouver
office, Steve Figner, CA, sports
the title Senior Manager in Enterprise Risk
Services and focuses his work exclusively
on technology risk.
“Personally, I have seen profound
changes in technology and how that has
affected the way we do business,” Figner
says. “When I began articling in 1994, we
were still talking about mainframe environments
and today, in my department, we
all have cell phones we send e-mail from,
state-of-the-art laptops, personal digital
assistants and soon we’ll have the ability to
access network resources from our home
computers. I’ve witnessed the evolution of
the Internet, e-business
and now we’re in the
middle of a wave of
enterprise resource
planning for the large,
integrated software
programs.”
In the big firm
environment, Figner says they see larger
clients with more sophisticated technology
needs and they have geared up to
service those needs.
“Technology has introduced tremendous
opportunity into the big business
environment, but we also see how it has
introduced risk as well,” Figner points out.
“The integrity of the data, security issues,
confidentiality, privacy and so on. It’s only
going to get riskier as more and more
companies move into e-business.”
Figner says he is thoroughly impressed
that the Canadian Institute of Chartered
Accountants and the Vision Task Force
September 2000 / Beyond Numbers 9