Sage trying to slap down KashFlow

Little ‘ol KashFlow must really be getting up Sage’s nose. On the UK Business Forum, Duane Jackson, KashFlow’s boss says:

The lovely chaps at Sage have reported KashFlow to trading standards saying our pricing comparison page “is likely to cause a detriment to Sage (UK) Limited by inducing potential customers to purchase alternative software solutions on the basis of erroneous and misleading information”

What’s the “erroneous and misleading information”? I hear you ask

Apparently they think TAS Books 3 isn’t a product we should compare KashFlow to, despite a number of our customers saying that was one of the products they considered before buying KashFlow.

They’d been in touch and politely asked for a numebr of other changes, which I thought were reasonable enough – so we made them. But I decided to stand my ground when it came to comparing to TAS Books 3 as it’s obviously comparable if our customers have said it was one of the options they’d considered.

I’m not qualified to pass comment on the veracity or otherwise of Sage’s claim as these things are often much more complicated than the parties imagine. Even so, it strikes me as odd that a £1 billion plus company should be going after a minnow like KashFlow. I’m aware the whole software as a service market has caught Sage by surprise.

Despite a number of attempts, it has only recently gone into public beta with SageLive. It must be irking Sage that new entrants are quietly mopping up bits of their turf they thought were rock solid territory.

My sense is that while it is clearly trying, Sage remains behind the curve in understanding the nature of online systems. Competitors like KashFlow don’t have a legacy to think about and can concentrate their efforts on putting the ’service’ into saas.

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Tagged as: Software as a service