Last week, I had a conversation with a practitioner who’s using Twinfield. Nice. I was asking how they get on with the service and he said they’re doing OK but could do better. They are positioning Twinfield against Sage Line 50 and Intuit Quick Books for their client portfolio. So far so good.
But…they’re finding resistance because Twinfield’s competitors have snazzy dashboard style reporting and Twinfield doesn’t. Oh dear. But I happen to know that Twinfield has something very cool in the works.
Sex and sizzle sell, even where the concepts behind alternative offerings would imply a better way of working. That’s something Sage and others figured out a long time ago and have successfully milked. It’s a way of developing loyalty because Sage is giving its customers something to which they can readily relate and which is genuinely useful. I don’t think it will be long before the SaaS vendors figure this one out.
Technorati Tags: Intuit Quick Books, SaaS, Sage Line 50, Twinfield
Comments on this entry are closed.
Get into the conversation
I'm not so sure this is such an Achilles heel – I'd be interested in seeing what snazzy, dashboard style reporting that Line50 and Quickbooks have. You've reported the exciting stuff we've got coming through in terms of the dashboard, but one of Twinfield's current strength's is better, standard Excel integration and cube style reporting than any of the opposition, as far as I can tell (tell me if I'm wrong). And by standard I mean within Twinfield rather than purchased as a additional product, say like Sage's Intelligent Reporting. However, Excel isn't everyone's cup of tea, and so we need to improve drill down capability in our standard reporting environment, which we are in the process of doing.
Hi Dennis. Achilles heel is far too strong a phrase. We all know different systems have their own strengths and weaknesses. Twinfield is a revolution in how it operates and allows us to truly collaborate with our clients. This is clearly the future way forward in my mind. However, users like familiarity and in particular QB and Sage Line 50 users are looking for similar reporting and drill down functionality. I know that Twinfield are dealing with this. Give users the benefits of Twinfield and the familiarity of Sage and QB and I think you have got a system with absolutely enormous potential.
re: Achilles Heel – hack licence Philip
To yours and David's points – the issue isn't functionality per se but perceptions. I recall seeing an initial iteration of the TF dashboard and thinking: "Hmmm…could be better." Then I saw the second iteration and thought: "WOW," I want one of those.
If I think about how Applix has done with its TM/1 product then there is no reason to suppose TF could not do as well, given the cube building capability. That will take on greater importance as Office 12 gets rolled out with Excel services.
Sage Intelligent Reporter is powerful and not that difficult to configure. It is better than alternatives I've seen and I rated it pretty highly. It is however, a higher end product and that is a different type of sell.
The key is finding a way of getting end clients to buy into the totality in the first 2 minutes. It's a conceptual play where functions come second. We can always talk about a marketing strategy you know
it is often difficult to get meaningful insights into customer (or potential customer) thinking – so this kind of feedback is invaluable.
As an accountant I have a view of accounting software that is very different from business people, and different again from software houses. It is often frustrating from the accountants viewpoint, but must be more so from the developers! I would liken it to the car salesman who works hard to impress his prospect with the advanced engineering features, only to find the buying decision is based on the number of cup holders, or even the quality of the coffee in the showroom!
Hi Alastair. What a terrific comparison, it certainly struck a cord with me.
Only problem is I'm a sucker for a good cup of coffee. I've even got my son grinding the beans and he is only 2 1/2!
Alastair nails it. This is about understanding the audience. When I looked at FreshBooks, I liked it as both a potential end user and as an accountant. But my thinking was very much skewed towards that of the reporting accountant. When Tom Raftery interviewed the CEO his take was wholly that of an end user. I learned a huge amount from listening to that podcast.