Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
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12 March 2014 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com TECHNOLOGY IN PRACTICE By Roman H. Kepczyk, CPA.CITP CES 2014: Technology Trends for CPAs My three-day mission w ith my tea m w a s to c a nv a s t h roug h t he massive show foor (3,200 vendors spread out over an area about the size of 35 football felds) to identif y key tech nolog y trends a nd comb through all the gadgets that could impact accountants someday. Below we h ig h l ig ht Ten Trend s wor t h watching and the products that may some day change our world. TABLET/PC COMBOS Tis year, 45% of all U.S. homes will have tablets, making them one of the most ubiquitous Consumer Elec- tronic dev ices around. W hi le the traditional tablet is great for reading o r "c o n s u m i n g " i n f o r m a t i o n , accou nta nts spend most of t hei r t i me work i ng on P C s w it h k e y- b o a r d s , i n p u t t i n g a n d e d i t i n g i n for mat ion. One trend t hat w i l l give accountants the best of both worlds will be devices such as Dell's X PS12 which has a keyboard that folds under when you need it and ASUS's Transformer Book Duet that has a detachable keyboard. Lenovo's Thinkpad 8 Windows PC may become a viable competitor to Microsof's Surface 2 ProTablet, as they have the potential to make it the "single" dev ice needed for the next generation of accountants. One of the most interesting prototy pes d isplayed wa s Tosh iba's "Shape- shifing Concept PC" which could be used in fve diferent confgura- tions ranging from the traditional laptop, to tablet, convertible, canvas mode, a nd enter ta i n ment mode, a l low i ng u s to u se t he dev ice i n whatever format is most suitable for the work at hand. CURVED SCREENS Tis year's trend in high defnition displays is curving them to optimize the viewing angle, including fexible sc reens f rom L G a nd Sa msu ng that bend on command.W hile the f i r s t rou nd i s too e x pen s i ve for ofce/PC use, it won't be long until mu lt iple desk top d isplay s "w rap around " our desks with ultra-high def inition optimizing our v iew of spreadsheets and ta x source docu- ments on our desktop and turning our desktops into a CPA cockpit. Tese could be used in fve diferent con f ig u rat ions ra ng i ng f rom t he traditional laptop, to tablet, convert- ible, canvas mode, and enter tain- ment mode, allowing us to use the dev ice in whatever format is most suitable for the work at hand. WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY Since most of us are carrying a smart phone w ith Internet connectiv it y, why not use that to integrate with wearable devices that can notif y us of events such as upcoming meet - ings, inbound emails, or incoming calls. Tese features are being inte- grated into jewelr y (FashionTEQ Z a zzi) a nd watches (Ga la x y a nd Burg Smart Watches) allowing us to k e e p ou r phone hol s t e r e d . T he a mou nt of m ic ron i z at ion t hat i s h a p p e n i n g i n I nt e r n e t- e n a bl e d dev ices is phenomenal and smar t phones such as the Neptune Pine Smartwatch have so much built into them that they are actually billed as the world's smallest tablet that you can wear on your wrist! 12 March 2014 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com Roman H. Kepczyk, CPA.CITP, is Di- rector of Consulting for Xcentric, LLC. and works exclusively with accounting frms to implement today's leading best practices and technologies. Roman re- cently updated his "Quantum of Paper- less: A Partner's Guide to Accounting Firm Optimization," which is available at Amazon.com and a Certifed Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. T he year 2014 started of awesome with my annual pilgrimage to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas where future trends and bleeding edge products are announced. Many of these products will make it into the consumer market this year impacting us and our clients in our homes, and some will eventually impact the accounting profession and make their way into our frms. cpa_12-13_Roman.indd 12 3/24/14 10:43 AM