MICROSOFT UNVEILS SMALL BUSINESS ACCOUNTING: In a push to gain small business clients, Microsoft has released a beta version of its new Office product, code-named Magellan. This would be Microsoft's second edition of its Office suite for small businesses, a market segment on which the company has increasingly focused.

The number of sophisticated businesses - law firms, financial advisors, insurance brokers and so on - with ineffective Web sites seems to be increasing at a geometric rate.

Cross-selling is the Holy Grail of CPA marketing. In its simplest form, cross-selling is the act of uncovering unfulfilled client needs and offering your firm services to fulfill those needs. And while no one would argue the value of serving client needs, it is our experience that cross-selling meets with unnecessary resistance in most firms. In this article, we'll explore some of the reasons for this resistance and share our ideas for developing a cross-selling culture and implementing cross-selling strategies and methodologies in your firm.

Two of the hardest tasks in financial advising and planning are getting clients - and then keeping them. Software can help with the first, but success in getting new clients is largely a matter of marketing expertise.Keeping your clients also is difficult. As their advisor, your clients expect you to be able to help them not only establish their financial goals, but also to achieve them. These goals are not necessarily static - they can be a mix of maximizing capital, maximizing income, offsetting income realization, or any other application of wealth and assets that the client's imagination can come up with. The strategies for accomplishing these goals are what the client is paying you to come up with.

Outsourcing is an emotional topic.

There may be no phrase in the English language more satisfying to say or hear than, "Problem solved!"For accounting and information technology professionals, it embodies a special meaning, in that someone, or something, has enabled their business to sidestep a potential hurdle and continue their strategy of providing client services to reach the ultimate goal of any business - profitability.

HIGH-END AND MID-MARKET ACCOUNTINGACCOUNTMATE 6.5

Contact information for the vendors of the Accounting Today 2005 Top 100 Products and Ones to Watch.AccountantsWorld

Best Software has appointed Ray Jimison as senior vice president and general manager of its Specialized Business Solutions Unit.

Driven by legislative and accounting changes, 2004 saw some of the biggest shifts ever seen in executive compensation, according to human resources services consulting and outsourcing firm Hewitt Associates.

Mphasis, which provides information technology and business process outsourcing through its operations in India, has launched an application service provider model of its Virtual Tax Room, used in outsourcing tax return preparation.

Business and accounting software provider Creative Solutions has released UltraTax 1040, a new offering to its Web Service suite, which enables firms to provide 1040 clients with a secure portal to complete their tax organizers and access an electronic copy of their completed tax returns.

Chief executives of the nation's fastest growing private companies expect a significant increase in productivity over the next 12 months, with most of the credit going to workforce efficiencies and technology improvements, and some attributed to good old-fashioned restraint, according to a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Online application provider NetSuite Inc. has unwrapped NetSuite Advanced Forecasting, a forecasting solution that enables users to triangulate projections using a trio of key performance indicators.

Obsolete and redundant software is a major drain on companies' information technology budgets, according to a survey by Business Performance Management Forum.

Citing slowed growth and slighter profit margins, the personal computer market will consolidate by 2007 according to information technology researcher Gartner Inc. in its Predicts 2005 report. The firm also said that within the next two years, three of the 10 largest PC manufacturers will leave the consumer market. Gartner said that PC revenue growth is expected to average roughly 2 percent a year from 2006 to 2008. Other prognostications in Predicts 2005 paper include IT services and outsourcing organizations continuing in a cost-cutting mode via increased automation and labor substitution, and that real-time, demand-driven supply chain management would become the foundation of users' SCM strategies.

Intuit's QuickBooks financial software has been around for over a decade.

Business management products provider Best Software Inc. named more than 70 companies as winners of its President's Circle for 2004, an annual program that fetes the company's top-producing small business division and mid-market division resellers.

STF LAUNCHES LATEST SUPERFORM PRODUCT: STF Services Corp., a Syracuse, N.Y.-based provider of electronic business forms, unveiled Doing Business Forms, a new product entry in its proprietary SuperForm line that provides businesses and business advisors with a collection of the filings required at the critical points in a company's life cycle.

There are more than 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States, receiving more than $240 billion each year in charitable contributions. They are service organizations and charities whose missions are to meet the social needs of the nation and to improve the quality of life of those they serve.