Skip to main content

The importance of Trust

The importance of Trust

Data breaches, corporate re-structuring and collapses have alerted business to the value of an intangible ... trust.

We are big advocates for the use of email as a communication medium rather than the paper documents of the past. Working in law firms and accounting firms though has always been at odds with "Paperless" and environmentally responsible communication.

I believe that as a profession it is no longer possible to ignore paperless processing. The time has come to embrace the challenges and implement features like electronic payments WITH the requisite controls.

Unfortunately we see a focus on the problem and not the solution. Electronic control systems can close fraud options that are available now.

A recent article in New Zealand is a case in point. OpenEFT would have prevented this fraud.

The conclusion that Lawyers and clients should be careful with emailed instructions could have been ensure you have systems and policies in place that address known risks.

The "don't trust email" advice came after an instance of email hacking where a hacker gained control of both a lawyer’s email account and a client’s email account. Posing as both, he instructed the lawyer to deposit client funds into his bank account and then emailed the client advising that everything was fine.

https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/lawtalk/issue-852/lawyers-and-clients-warned-to-be-careful-with-emailed-instructions

Mr Kennerley says the Law Society’s advice to lawyers and clients communicating with them is that they should assume the emails they receive may not be genuine.

Popular

Year end collection push

I am heartened by the many Collections projects we were involved with last year. These projects will have made a major difference to these firms final collection numbers and more importantly the effort required to collect these amounts. Law Firms Press to Get Bills Paid by Year-End http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304773104579270470475326780 The critical number in here was the drop in total recovery rates have dipped from 90% in 2007 down to 83.5% in 2013.   There are some simple measures to improve your Collections which firms can implement :- 1) Review payment terms. Consider 7 and 14 day accounts. 2) Look at your payment options do you make electronic payment easy? 3) Do you deliver bills electronically as PDF? They are faster and match the expectation of clients for quality and authorization. 4) Have you reviewed your client payment requirements? Some bill consolidation services are too expensive in the long run. Negotiate accordingly or leave these cl

Shopify and WooCommerce gain eCommerce market share

According to BuiltWith a site measuring the top web sites and the technology used behind it the results for August show Shopify building to a 19% share of "Australian" eCommerce sites. There are a few holes here though as this uses geographical data and .au  domains. It is cheaper to use a .com domain though and many sites are hosted on remote servers. BigCommerce also saw some local growth with some better pricing and more attention to new sites. This came at the expense of old systems like osCommerce and ZenCart. The "Other" space has grown which includes Neto . Statistics for websites using Ecommerce technologies in Australia https://trends.builtwith.com/shop/country/Australia When looking globally at the top Million sites Shopify is dwarfed by WooCommerce. As we have pointed out WooCommerce is used by a very large number of sites, it may not be as successful but it gives a shopfront at little cost. The global strength of WooCommerce was throu