About my Magma consulting activities

It seems everybody is concerned about mobile security. Consumers are worried that all of their personal data that now resides on their smartphones – contacts, bank account numbers, emails and so on – will fall prey to identity thieves and crooks. The risk for corporations is higher still as mobile devices become integrated into the office environment and start to be used to access sensitive company information, customer records and valuable intellectual property. Click here to go to the article.

Cloud has finally started to move beyond the hype and into the fundamental fabric of today’s enterprise. As a result, organizations around the world are now gaining valuable insight, not only into the potential benefits of cloud, but also the practical challenges of adopting these evolutionary and highly disruptive technologies.   Emerging complexities   According to The cloud takes shape, organizations are finding particular challenges with data management, systems integration and the management of multiple cloud providers.   The report finds that there is a growing recognition that business process redesign must occur in tandem with cloud adoption if organizations hope to achieve the full potential of their cloud investments. A comprehensive view of the current cloud environment   The cloud takes shape also provides practical and actionable advice on cloud for enterprises and their executives. Read a summary of the key chapters below.   Sett...

KPMG was voted Sustainable Firm of the year at this month’s inaugural industry awards by the International Accounting Bulletin. Avind Hickman, editor of International Accounting Bulletin, said KPMG was able to demonstrate with hard data how much its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives across the KPMG network had made a difference. “It also showed thought leadership by holding the sustainability summit which has underscored KPMG’s already very strong reputation on sustainability services.” http://www.kpmg.com/Global/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Press-releases/Pages/kpmg-ranked-international-sustainable-firm-of-the-year.aspx

KPMG International is publishing some interesting perspectives about adopting cloud computing solutions (what are the risks, the benefits, the financial impact etc.) Embracing the Cloud | KPMG | GLOBAL

The KPMG Talking Shop is a collection of short films in which KPMG experts provide their thoughts and opinions on how various issues or sectors are likely to develop.

KPMG International has released an interesting paper on Web 2.0 technologies within the public sector...you can find the document on several KPMG web sites, like on the Belgian site (the official title is 'Dynamic technologies for smarter government' and is available in PDF format).

Considering the impact of cloud computing on Business models I had the opportunity to follow a very interesting KPMG seminar on Cloud Computing and the impact that this 'style of computing' will have on organizing future businesses. And guess, what? We believe that the shift will be tremendous, that a lot of the current 'fixed asset' and tangible IT (or Telco assets) will be changed, with adapted billing models (how are you structuring your billing scheme when your customers are 'renting' or paying as a service your product? what are the implications for tax purposes? where do you have to pay your VAT when your service is running on a centralized cloud server?) For those who don't know what cloud computing is, Gartner defines it as a style of computing where massively scalable and elastic IT-related capabilities are provided 'as a service' using Internet technologies to multiple external customers . Find more info everywhere on the web, but especiall...

Pretty cool, hu ? I can easily imagine what David could have done without Michelangelo :-)

As I'm always keen to see how the Big four are communicating about their business on the Internet, I searched the YouTube channels with a 'KPMG Belgium' query. And guess what...? I found an interview of Guido De Grefte, one of our most innovative partner in Advisory. Worth seeing, really ! Check the successful professional section with Guido here .

Internal Market and Services Commissioner Charlie McCreevy said : "European capital markets have become much more integrated in the last few years. However, the European Union seems to face fragmented audit markets. In order to ensure a sustainable international audit market, more players are needed to meet the demand by international companies. This is especially true in the light of the current financial turmoil, which might also contribute to widening the existing gap between the Big 4 and the mid-tier audit firms. We all need to think of how to bring new capital into the audit profession. Some have suggested that we should do away with ownership restrictions in audit firms and allow other players - not only audit partners - to invest in an audit firm. Audit firms fear that such relaxation could reduce the quality of audits and pose a risk to auditor independence. I want to hear more about both sides of the argument.. I encourage all those who have a view or experience in this ...

Interwoven has organized, early this week, its GearUp 2007 event in London. The Document management system company presented the new development road map for their products and I have to recognize that I was impressed. The major focus will be on the development of the Universal Search engine (we will retrieve our personal documents, within the billions of the corporate docs, in a few seconds...finally :-) that comes on top of other tools (like Microsoft Sharepoint 2007 for example). If your are interested in the Interwoven products, check http://www.interwoven.com

We just had a nice workshop in Saudi Arabia, in the city of Jubail with some KPMG colleagues. It is all about implementing change managers (or change agents) within a company, how to motivate people and how to reward them as change catalysts. See what has been stated in Wikipedia about the theory of "changing" within organisations via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_management And, by the way, if you do not know where Jubail is, check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubail !!

I just read an article in a Belgian magazine about Banking and Finance. It was all about The growing importance of intangible assets in the stock markets . The article highlighted the fact that traditional audit procedures and processes were only taking into account the evaluation of tangible goods and that the intangible part of our economy was quickly growing. And the author (Marc Luyckx) is right. And I’m still amazed that nobody drives seriously a community about the assessment of intangible assets, sharing information and research results like for some Open Source projects or any ordinary Wikipedia article. The pending question here is to know who has to take the lead in that kind of research. Does the private accounting and audit sector need to work on some evaluation tools (and on what the market will put the credibility and the neutrality of the KPIs into questions) or do we need to have a public ‘political’ initiative, like the European Commission leading some specific...

I received this month the opportunity to be coach of the Bizidee initiative, an entrepreneurship project sponsored by the Belgian Flemish region. We will participate as project coach, helping the candidates to propose their business plan and to formulate their (business) idea correctly. This is certainly one of the most exciting moment in a SME life - when you're about making your idea real and concrete, especially in front of a well-known jury... For more info about the Bizidee project, have a look at their web site .