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We work with a very interesting online portal for companies that are looking
for business management software, ERP and CRM systems, called FindAccountingSoftware.com.
It's a great service for companies that need new systems and want to talk to
several different vendors.
Once in a while you come across some of the most amazing things there. Like
this morning there was a company, small company, that wanted a stand alone
Accounts Receivable application. What? Of all the possible stand alone
applications A/R has to be the worst. It's the heart of your company for gosh
sakes, and you want to push it into a corner by itself?
This would be a huge undertaking for even a Fortune 500 company with a
250 person IT Department. Three vendors took the lead, which is amazing and just
goes to show that people will sell you anything if you show up with cash. The
worst thing about this is that there is actually a 'consultant' helping these
poor people.
What are we doing? How can our small businesses be competitive if they are
blowing huge sums on sticking corks into the dike? How can they ever become
efficient and customer oriented if they run 7 different systems and a bunch of
half-assed, mostly broken interfaces?
It's sad, really. The business owner only knows that all this technology
costs them a ton and they can't make heads or tails of it. They become fed up
and then seek to get by on the least possible solution. Someone has to help them
stop the bleeding. You should be able to look up the customer record in your
system and see everything from sales activities to service issues, orders,
balances, issues and new opportunities.
A lot of the fault of this type of thing goes to the IT industry, really.
What have we done to our customers that they get to the point where they're
looking for a standalone A/R system? If we don't go to market with value, driven
by values like integration, then we shouldn't complain when the market
treats us like soul less marketeers.
The 'incumbents business model is broken' has been a familiar refrain
recently in the blogosphere, here
and here. This refers to the
fact that the big on-premise business software vendors are losing steam to web
based accounting and customer relationship management solutions because their
business model of broken software and huge yearly maintenance fees is broken.
Here's another reason the on-premise vendor's model is broken: They will sell
you anything; in fact, they prefer an interface solution because after
you sink all the cash into it you won't want to change it, ever. | 
