A New Acronym, But This Time It’s (Maybe) Justified
FreshBooks (CloudAve coverage here) have just created a whole new acronym, SaaN or Software as a Network. While I’m kind of ambivalent about the nomenclature I’m totally excited about what it means. FreshBooks has noticed something among the way its 700000 or so customers work and that is that data, in their cases invoices, hop [...]
SaaS Accounting – Six (or Seven) Months On
I’ve been running my Accounting 2.0 series since the very first day of CloudAve – now, seven months on, it seems a good time to look back on what I’ve seen. In the past seven months I’ve reviewed around 25 SaaS accounting products, and written 30 or 40 analysis pieces looking at accounting 2.0. I’ve [...]
Review – Pearl 2.0
Accounting 2.0 at CloudAve In an ongoing series of reviews and analysis pieces, CloudAve will be taking a deep look into accounting software for the new world. See the other posts at this tag Introduction & Background Pearl has been building their business software solutions for a decade or so now but have only [...]
*Superstars* of SaaS
I woke at an ungodly hour yesterday morning my time (2am from memory) in order to take part in what was dubbed a session with the superstars of SaaS. Of course being merely the moderator I wasn’t included in that group – but I was privileged to be able to moderate the session that included some [...]
billFLO – Helping the World Communicate
It’s a big week for product launches – and a busy week for those commenting on the accounting software space. billFLO is this week launching its offering which it claims is the first low cost solution providing electronic invoice exchange for small businesses. Think of it as EDI for the rest of us… billFLO was [...]
IAC-EZ Version 1.4 – All About You
Heather Villa, CEO of IAC-EZ (review here) gave me a sneak preview of their latest release which is full of new functionality. There’s a few things that stood out for me that I’ll detail below. I talked about the changes with Heather who told me that they spent a lot of time looking at what [...]
On Aggregation (A Recurring Theme)
I’ve talked about BeeBole a number of times before – not because I have any special relationship with the company (I don’t) but because I really like their ethos of building an aggregated platform for business applications. An environment for an ecosystem if you like. I like widgets, I like flexibility and I like simple [...]
Standards – The Opposing View
Eric posted yesterday looking at why the adoption of standards can be a bad thing. Rather than discussing his post in the context of the recent Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum debacle (I’m sure calling it a debacle will get people from both sides of the divide fired up – but you have to admit it [...]
Building Dialogue is the Most Important Thing
KashFlow recently announced its “HealthCheck”, a very simple report that is based on three areas of a businesses financial data and gives customers a score based on their performance. By KashFlow’s own account it is a simple introduction of a concept – as CEO Duane Jackson said to me; The report isn’t intended to be [...]
The Small Business Web – The Rising Tide of Integration
I alluded yesterday to some stirrings in terms of small business SaaS ecosystems. I didn’t post specifics yesterday as the initiative was somewhat stealth. However at the SXSW conference, attendees were advised of The Small Business Web, a cooperative currently made up of the following vendors. BatchBlue Software Social CRM for Small Business FreshBooks Painless [...]
Solo Mixes and Matches a Complete Brew
Of late I’ve come across a number of SaaS accounting products that offer themselves in a white-label version. The value for the vendor is obvious, they stand to gain from the extra reach of a partner, without having to market the product themselves. It also doesn’t get in the way of any specific marketing that [...]
Ubikwiti – Review
Accounting 2.0 at CloudAve In an ongoing series of reviews and analysis pieces, CloudAve will be taking a deep look into accounting software for the new world. See the other posts at this tag Introduction & Background Earlier this week a post of mine generated some very heated exchanges, both public and private. As I [...]
FastDue – Searching for Some Secret Sauce
There are two distinct product strategies that SaaS office productivity vendors can take. One is to encourage third parties to build complementary solutions to their own, and in this way create a multi-vendor ecosystem. In the business realm FreshBooks is a perfect example of this strategy. To succeed with this strategy, vendors need to have [...]
Business ByNetSuite vs Business ByDesign, Take Two
NetSuite, provider of Web-based integrated business systems for the SMB market is going after bigger fish: the leader in Enterprise Software, SAP. The aptly named Business ByNetsuite program guarantees at least 50% savings to current SAP R/3 customers relative to – watch this! – the annual maintenance fees they are now paying to SAP. Yes, [...]
More Integration from those Charming Canucks
I reviewed a little while ago IAC-EZ a start-up SaaS accounting offering that leverages the relatively huge and sophisticated FreshBooks customer base. Hot on the heels of that integration comes news that Clarity Accounting, another Canadian SaaS accounting company, has finished it’s integration with FreshBooks also To celebrate, those friendly FreshBooks people are offering Clarity [...]
