Every five years or so, each information technology (IT) officer looks back at performance and builds a new corporate IT strategy. A benchmarking study that involves comparing your current IT governance parameters with similar companies is an integral part of strategic planning. Comparable parameters (e.g. IT costs per user or per euro earned, the percentage of technology maintenance costs in total technology costs, or the number of computer hardware units to be serviced per specialist full-time equivalent) depend on the database you’re using, they’re easy to understand, and selecting them raises no questions.

One day I tried out Copilot for Microsoft 365 and realised this GenAI tool isn’t going to replace me at PwC but it will certainly change my daily life. PwC Latvia has been a Microsoft partner since last Christmas, and I’ve been encouraging Latvian companies to test Copilot’s capabilities. Each company can come up with its own scenario and see how it can benefit from using GenAI. It’s important that your company has its own task where it expects added value from GenAI. It wouldn’t be right to use the technology ‘unattended’ and laugh about images it generates with two-headed persons or about Neil Armstrong being hailed as the first astronaut. Below I offer my scenario and findings.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has become an essential business tool that helps companies optimise their processes, improve efficiencies and cut costs. However, to better understand GenAI’s impact on finances, it’s important to consider the cost of this tool from different aspects.

Over 70% of 3,522 business and information technology leaders say they have made significant cybersecurity improvements since 2020, according to PwC’s 2023 survey “Global Digital Trust Insights”. They have done all the right things: re-evaluated their cyber-risks, revised their security documentation, improved their ability to defend against ransomware, and enhanced their user awareness of information security. However, the two years of war, 2022 and 2023, have changed the nature of cybercrime. There were not many complaints about politically and ideologically motivated attacks in 2021, yet such attacks have represented a significant percentage since the war broke out in 2022. The activity of threat actors using their knowledge for political or ideological reasons has remained high and compares with the activity of ransomware and other commercially motivated attackers.

Looking at the ever-changing financial management space, you might think that traditional tools such as Excel should gradually become obsolete and be replaced with advanced software solutions that rationalise processes and build efficiencies. However, despite a whole range of financial technologies being readily available and optimally applied, organisations keep using Excel in their day-to-day work.

Many companies are considering accepting virtual currency or cryptocurrency in payment for their goods or services. Some are even considering buying virtual currency as a financial instrument. What is virtual currency? And how do we account for it properly? This article explores the essence of and accounting for virtual currency.

Companies tend to have two or more digitalisation activities running in parallel – they’re digitalising their document flows, invoices and production equipment data, automating their supply chain, and setting up new systems. These are all important and necessary activities that make your company more competitive, cut the amount of manual work, and make your staff happier. New digitalisation projects are springing up like mushrooms, and it’s getting harder to keep pushing them all forward at the same time. It’s also difficult to abandon a project because every one of them promises a good result for your company. Your staff get burned out and can no longer cope with their day-to-day work and take part in all those projects. The seemingly easiest solution is to have your board choose which of the projects will go on and which will not. That’s not what happens, though, and expecting such help is not justified for a number of reasons.

It was announced in November 2023 that the Electronic Declaration System (EDS) is switching to electronic identification tools and only a limited number of persons will be able to connect to EDS with the username and password assigned by the State Revenue Service (SRS). In response to taxpayers’ questions about the proposed changes, the SRS has issued a letter of explanation. Read on to find out more.

We have written before about the popular artificial intelligence (AI) tool, ChatGPT, from both a functionality perspective and a data protection viewpoint. This article explores the latest trends in using generative AI (GenAI) and offers some AI business predictions.

We have informed our MindLink subscribers that in late 2022 the European Commission (EC) published proposals for amending the VAT directive (2006/112/EC) and Council Implementing Regulation (EU) No. 282/2011 to upgrade the EU VAT system and increase its resistance to fraud. Known as ‘VAT in the Digital Age’ (ViDA), the EU VAT reform aims to modernise and simplify the VAT rules for platform economy members by introducing mandatory real-time digital reporting and e-invoicing for all intra-Community B2B transactions. This article explores the latest developments and the potential reforms, focusing on e-invoicing practices.

We often spend a lot of time in Microsoft Office creating and formatting presentations and writing emails and reports. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) means office workers can now save time on such tasks. We have written before about one of the most popular AI tools – ChatGPT and GPT-4, its operating principles, uses and restrictions (see our article on GPT-4 here). In this article we are continuing our tour of new technologies, looking at Microsoft as a leading AI creator for business purposes and its brand new AI assistant, Microsoft 365 Copilot.

In this article we will look at ways to automate processes using various solutions, that is, how to process incoming PDF invoices that are manually entered into your system, the easiest way to compare data between your systems, and what tools you can use for creating solutions.

The crypto-asset sector has made changes to the payment and investment markets and challenged the tax authorities to trace capital gains arising on crypto-asset trades. On 16 May 2023 the EU Council supported the European Commission’s proposal to require crypto-asset service providers to report on transactions their EU customers perform in crypto-asset markets. This will help the tax authorities monitor crypto-asset trading and revenues, thereby reducing the risk of tax fraud and tax evasion. The reporting system is to be implemented with amendments to the Directive on Administrative Cooperation (“DAC”), which is the main system for exchanging data between the tax authorities. The new reporting rules have been passed in addition to the Regulation on Markets in Crypto Assets (“MiCA”) amending Directive (EU) 2019/1937, and to the Regulation on information accompanying transfers of funds, and these rules are fully consistent with the OECD’s crypto-asset reporting initiative.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently aroused interest in most people. Some are depicting end-of-the-world scenes with AI taking over people’s jobs and later ruling the whole world. Others believe there is no reason to fear AI tools. As always, the truth lies somewhere in between. One of the most popular AI tools today is ChatGPT, which everyone can try out and see what it’s capable of, as we wrote in our recent Flash News. But why are the data protection authorities of European countries beginning to raise the alarm?

Technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI), seem to be evolving faster than people are able to perceive their significance. This is still a hot topic not only in Hollywood but also in everyday life. AI tools are now being widely used by students and entrepreneurs who recognise potential uses of this technology. This growing interest has led to the creation of many tools of this kind, such as ChatGPT, Bing ChatGPT, Jasper, and Google Bard. This article explores the most popular and capable AI tool, ChatGPT, and its newest version, GPT-4, as well as looking at what it’s capable of doing and what its limitations are.