Accountants getting value from Office 2007

Its fair to say we've had rather a lot of cynicism from the readers of accounting web as to the value of Office 2007 to an accountant so it's great to see John Stokdyk profile this interview with Richard Abel from Aggrawaal & Co. Good quotes:

"Our Excel users understand the basics and the problems we had were mainly people asking, 'Where's that command?' Most of our people were bright enough to find the commands on the ribbon interface and know what they are doing in the new version."

"The online links make it possible to co-ordinate and share calendars around the firm. "I was using Outlook before, but the new one is a lot friendlier and nicer to use," says Abel. "Sharing calendars in particular has become pretty common around the office - we can see where people are, or make appointments in their absence"

It is interesting to hear Richard comment on taking a longer term view about technology decisions:

Although the cost of the Vista migration ran into "the thousands", Abel says the amount is pretty small compared to spending on salaries. "People can spend too long worrying about petty cash items, but this is something that is going to give benefits for a number of years," he says.

We have a formal case study about to go live on this as well so I'll update this post with the link when it arrives.