Steven Ralston is not your average CA. Far from it.

"I am a Chartered Accountant with extensive programming experience using Microsoft's VBA and some SQL. I have a good understanding of financial arithmetic, and have exposure to derivatives and the insurance industry.

Often, my work could be described as a form of incremental re-engineering.

Many projects I have managed involved a previously developed manual or semi-automated task. Then, as user, business analyst and programmer, I have developed much faster and more efficient ways of accomplishing the same job. Finally, I would train the client's own user before moving on to my next assignment."

While he did have a typical training in accounting and finance, at 'Big Four' firm, Price Waterhouse Coopers, his career took him down the path less traveled.

Always fascinated by technology, and computers in particular, Steve was always at the 'leading edge' of I.T. throughout his career.

Steve earned his B. Com from the Universtity of Toronto in 1973 and qualified as a chartered accountant in 1975. He then spent nine years in the insurance industry before returning to public accounting in 1984 with a small firm in downtown Toronto.

Between 1988 and 1995 he held various positions, such as the Controller at a large food processing company, and GST Auditor with Revenue Canada before returning to public accounting in 1995.

By 1997 Steve had identified a unique market for his Spreadsheet, Programming and Database skills, as an independent consultant to 'Corporate Canada' - working with companies who processed huge volumes of data and either had analysis or reconciliation problems that were usually highly labour intensive, boring to do, and very expensive to resolve.

The answer? Automate the process.

The results? 100% accuracy of huge volumes performed in a fraction of the time it used to take to do the process manually.

The benefits? Thousands of hours of labour saved year after year. Untold amounts of cash saved in costs and better management information sooner than ever before.

If you use any form of database or spreadsheets to manipulate data, chances are that Steven save save you a small fortune and improve the process at the same time.