Yesterday evening I spoke with Euan Semple, wise man of the web who helps business understand the value of community and the new class of tools that can loosely be described as ‘social media.’ I’d previously seen him Tweet about trying to find a saas/cloud based billing application. Euan is hiring a virtual assistant to handle his billing while he concentrates on what he does best. He felt that his current method is a tad clunky and wanted to discover if saas/cloud based methods would work any better. Twitter provided him with some 20 responses from which he looked at a clutch of solutions including FreeAgent, KashFlow, Blinksale and FreshBooks.
He thought that of all the solutions, FreshBooks looked the closest to what he needs but in the end decided to stick with what he is using: Billings for the Mac and Daylite for his CRM activities. I can almost hear people gasp. His reasons were straightforward:
- Concerns about getting his data out
- Data security
- The ability to customize billing templates and reports
- Cost
Euan has established a way of working that helps him get done what he wants in his business and although the solutions he found looked OK, he couldn’t immediately see a way of being able to replicate what he already uses. Euan was prepared to compromise but in the end felt the sum of those compromises was too great and especially in the area of customization where he says his invoices are an advert in their own right.
There are some terrific lessons for vendors in the comments he makes along with valuable learnings for buyers. Enjoy our 15 minute conversation on a topic that doesn’t often get aired.
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