Sage in the Cloud, but is it too little too late?
Last week Sage, the UK’s biggest accountancy software supplier, finally released their first real online accounting solution. It looks like a proper SaaS or Cloud offering, unlike the hosted Online 50 product sold through a few resellers from 6 years ago, or their previous failed attempt of SageLive in 2009. I would argue that because [...]
Pearl Goes Bright, and Gets Some Cash
I’ve written before about Pearl, the UK based “mini-ERP” that just seems to do everything. I’ve always thought of it as the little engine that could, with a team of only five people they have managed to build a solution that covers the majority of bases that a real world business might need – stock, [...]
A Tale of Two Generations – Sage Languishes while Financial Force Innovates
Software is undergoing a generational change – I thought I’d pull out an example to show what the old generation is doiing and contrast that to what the “cool kids” are doing. I was interested to read Dennis Howlett’s post about Sage recently. In his post Dennis reflected on the signals he’s getting from his [...]
Xero Now Hosted by MYOB
It’s not Friday, but it’s time for a Friday funny… A couple of years ago, Xero got hold of the URL relating to MYOB’s new (at that time) SaaS product Business Basics Online. I posted about it at the time saying: But in the craziest turn of the story, check out this link –www.businessbasicsonline.co.nz. Yes [...]
Xero Personal – Is That It?
Six months ago Xero (see disclosure statement) announced that they’d be building a personal finance application to go with their business one. I was pleased at the time, in part because I believe the personal/business divide is an artificial one (see post here). This morning Xero flicked the switch on its long awaited personal edition [...]
Personal and Business Finance – Blurring the Lines
I posted a year or so ago that: the distinction between personal and business finance is pretty blurred It was a call for micro and small business accounting vendors to offer a personal finance service in the acknowledgement that most micro businesses have an increasingly blurred line between personal and business expenses. As I said [...]
SaaS Implementation. A Case Study and a Call for a Deeper Needs Analysis…
I spend a lot of time hand waving about the joys of SaaS accounting, I thought it’d be an idea to write some stories of successful implementations – kind of a case-study-lite type series. If you’re a vendor with a story to tell (or even better and end user with a story to tell) drop [...]
Company.com – It’s All About Community
I’m an advocate for small and medium businesses (SMBs) – coming from a SMB background I’m all to aware of the difficulties that those at the bottom of the foodchain experience. I’ve long been involved in business advisory roles and was part of a team that set up a SMB online community a couple of [...]
SaaS Accounting Gains: Now What Say You, McKinsey?
According to Goldman Sachs Accounting is now at the #3 spot in SaaS implementations, reports Dennis Howlett. Not a real surprise, certainly not to Dennis’s readers, or those who follow our Accounting 2.0 series. Still, seeing the numbers makes me feel good, given that I debated a short-sighted report by McKinsey a few years ago, [...]
Zoho Invoice 2.0 Unwraps
Zoho has just unveiled the next generation release of its invoice product. The two most notable changes are the inclusion of a nice business-logic dashboard, and the addition of expenses to the offering. Generally the UI has been greatly improved – there is nice use of tabs as opposed to separate boxes for further information [...]
Online Finance – Rigid Segmentation Doesn’t Work
Recently ReadWriteWeb started a series taking a very high level look at online finance. One of the posts discussed the evolving online finance ecosystem. In the post, RWW editor Richard MacManus interviewed CEO of Xero (see disclosure), Rod Drury and repeated Drury’s assertion that online finance can be separated into four distinct types of markets: [...]
NetSuite Finds Partner, Needs to Tackle Verticals
I had an advance briefing yesterday from NetSuite who are announcing this morning a new partnership with Hein & Associates. Hein is a full-service public accounting and advisory firm with offices in Denver, Houston, Dallas, and Irvine, California. This partnership sees them partner with NetSuite to provide a services offering around the NetSuite product. This [...]
Multi-Currency – The Maelstrom Continues
Disclosure – One of my specialties is accounting software – I quote half a dozen vendors in the below post, some of whom I have past or current consulting relationships with. Full disclosure of all my industry affiliations can be seen here. A little while ago I posted discussing the recent introduction of multi-currency functionality [...]
Xero Gets Direct Bank Feeds in the US (and elsewhere)
US customers have been waiting for automated bank feeds from Xero for awhile now. In New Zealand, Australia and the UK Xero build relationships directly with the banks and many were waiting to see what strategy they would adopt in the US market. This morning Xero announced that they have entered into an agreement with [...]
Intacct Winter 2010 – More Strings to the Bow
Last week I had a briefing from Dan Druker, SVP Marketing from Intacct (more here) on their forthcoming winter release and a review of their 2009 performance. First a recap of the past year: 80% quarter to quarter growth in Q4 Over 3300 customers with over 30000 users Massive uptake from accounting firms with their [...]
