IRIS has launched IRIS AccountsOffice. A dodgy name to be sure as it’s one that bears a striking resemblance to one readers here already know. Never mind. IRIS is aiming this at the just under Line 50 brigade, positioning it as a Sage competitor. That’s brave but foolhardy.
- Sage can outmarket any of its on-premise competition simply by cranking up the PR foghorn and knocking on a few extra doors.
- IRIS doesn’t have the market presence to make much of a dent. At last count, it had 450 UK resellers, an eighth of Sage’s
- It still has to overcome trust issues following the debacle with its payroll product earlier this year
It’s not all bad news.
- The new product is a subset of Exchequer which has always enjoyed good reviews. Upgrades to Exchequer are claimed to be seamless for those who outgrow the product
- There’s a link to IRIS Accounts Production so it will appeal to practitioners who fancy their hand as resellers and implementers
- The company has just filched one of BDOs top boys as product manager
With regards to the even dodgier named online version, Rob Steele who runs the Exchequer division at IRIS is on record as saying that companies in the space he’s aiming at might well prefer to hold data on-premise. If that’s the case then why are they bothering with this hybrid version?
They’ve adopted a stratified pricing model where price per user depends on what the user does. This is dreadful. It didn’t work in the past with players like Siebel and Oracle. I see no reason why it should work today. Also, I’m dubious about a stand alone accounting package of this type. I’m not convinced there’s a demand, at least in the short term. It’s SoSaaS. They’ve got SOP and POP but wouldn’t the logical thing have been to develop a nice online procurement offering?
So for example, I know that Twinfield is adding in CRM capability. A departure yes, but one that takes it to another level for its chosen market. NetSuite is already in the game with a rounded offering but as I understand it, is not making especially great progress in the UK.
