Latest stories from...

Practice

The many ways in which marketing is changing

In this video shot by my JD-OD colleague Jon Reed, Jonathan Becher, CMO SAP gives us some important insights into the many ways in which marketing is changing. During the conversation (flick to 6min 34secs) Becher talks about the contrast between the way he used to buy motor vehicles and the way that happens today. [...]

Read the full article →

Industry

We need a new type of bank

Yesterday I bemoaned the fact it took four attempts to make a payment using HSBC. The so-called world’s bank makes basic user experience mistakes that frustrate the user and which require the re-entry of security codes each time a problem arises. The failure comes in not making clear what combination of letters, characters and symbols [...]

Read the full article →

Cloud Computing/SaaS

Is Sage cloud strategy working? H1 results suggest ‘no.’

Sage has released its first half results to 31st March 2012. For all Guy Berruyer’s PR spin they make depressing reading and the markets know it. As I am writing this, Sage stock price is off 4.35% in morning trading. What worries me is that the full press release takes one more step towards obfuscating [...]

Read the full article →

Is Sage cloud strategy working? H1 results suggest ‘no.’

May 9, 2012 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Sage has released its first half results to 31st March 2012. For all Guy Berruyer’s PR spin they make depressing reading and the markets know it. As I am writing this, Sage stock price is off 4.35% in morning trading. What worries me is that the full press release takes one more step towards obfuscating [...]

Read the full article →

FreeAgent expands into the US. Six key questions

May 8, 2012 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Last week FreeAgent landed a fresh round of funding and acquired 60mo, a small, specialist business intelligence provider from the US which will act as lead partner for FreeAgent’s expansion into that territory. The blog post covering the event from FreeAgent’s side is here. Details of the funding were not made public but the general [...]

Read the full article →

Why I am not (really) following Saasu

May 8, 2012 Cloud Computing/SaaS

This is going to be a post contains contradictions. Bear with me. The other week, there was a comment on my post about my visit to the Australian Xero fraternity. It said: Surprised you haven’t been in touch with saasu, they are more than double the size of xero in australia with much richer features. We [...]

Read the full article →

We need a new type of bank

May 3, 2012 Industry

Yesterday I bemoaned the fact it took four attempts to make a payment using HSBC. The so-called world’s bank makes basic user experience mistakes that frustrate the user and which require the re-entry of security codes each time a problem arises. The failure comes in not making clear what combination of letters, characters and symbols [...]

Read the full article →

Cloud accounting momentum accelerating and morphing to mobile

May 2, 2012 Cloud Computing/SaaS

FreeAgent recently reported that it has passed the 20,000 paying customers mark. Five years ago it barely existed. In the year to March 2012, Xero counted 78,000 customers of which the UK represented 11,000. We’ve not heard from KashFlow in a while on customer count but assume they are marching along at a decent clip. [...]

Read the full article →

Why you need to know your vendor’s roadmap

April 20, 2012 Cloud Computing/SaaS

A minor spat on Twitter got me thinking. See image below: @Ben_asbkltd was looking forward to hearing about the Xero roadmap at an upcoming roadshow event. My response triggered the conversation you see here. In direct messaging, Gary Turner, MD, Xero UK said that the company does publish these things. Well that’s sort of true. [...]

Read the full article →

Managing working capital the SAP HANA way

April 19, 2012 Industry

Some people believe that IBM is purely an expensive services business. True, the company derives a lot of its income from that source and at top dollar. IBM is also one of SAP’s most important implementation partners with a business worth some $6.5 billion a year. That’s a lot of code being deployed around the [...]

Read the full article →

No holidays in January? March and April are our busiest time

April 16, 2012 Progressive practices

In a departure from AccMan policy, the following is a guest post from Chris Maslin. Why did we sneak this one through? Simple. Chris talks of his direct experience in everyone achieving benefit as a result of using online services as the backbone for both his and his clients’ business. What’s not to like? “For years [...]

Read the full article →

Xero Practices UK

April 10, 2012 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Last week I uploaded video I shot while in Australia that showed how some Xero practitioners are thinking about the future. This week I include a shoot I made just before I set off on my marathon travels. Included in this conversation are Ian Woollard of Pearson Buchholz, Andrew Smith of  Andrew Smith Bookkeeping and Laurence Moore [...]

Read the full article →

Progressive Practices in Australia powered by Xero

April 4, 2012 Cloud Computing/SaaS

While on my travels I took the chance to meet with Australian practitioners who are doing cool and interesting things. The video above shows representatives from three Xero based firms. The first thing to note is that they’re not using traditional accounting firm naming conventions. No Dolittle Plunder & Grabbit here. Instead, each has opted [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries