Research, recruiting focus of CCH, CSI user confabs

As evidence of the recent merger mania within the tax prep arena, customers from five different vendors were represented at last month's CCH and Creative Solutions user conferences, which were held in Boca Raton and Orlando, Fla., respectively.Both CCH and CSI have made recent purchases of other vendors - Creative Solutions merging Dunphy Systems into its user base, and CCH purchasing ATX Kleinrock and TaxWise as continuing entities.

Nevertheless, industry consolidation yielded to announcements of new technology strategies and staffing dilemmas that emerged as marquee topics of discussion at each conference.