The other day, the Twitterverse started humming about Sage allegedly touting a SaaS accounting solution priced at £9.99/month to sit alongside SagePay. It had to be Duane Jackson, CEO KashFlow and self appointed Sage baiter. Sage’s move sort of makes sense given the potential value in payment processing solutions for small business. I’d not heard anything from Sage – not that’s a surprise. I shot off an email to the company where I said:
The rumour mill is going nuts. Is Sage privately touting a saas accounting solution to sit alongside SagePay? If so then who can I speak with about this please? Why private? What’s up with having a limited beta and making onboarding selective?
Back came the reply:
…as you already know we are developing in this space but we aren’t going to be commenting on specifics yet. To say we are “privately demo’ing” isn’t entirely correct because we have been working closely withpotential customers since day one on this.
As and when we are ready to talk you’ll be one of the first to know.
In other words: ‘piss off.’ I’m hard put to find words to describe how this leaves me thinking about this topic. Sage has been in the accounting software business since 1981. It used to develop software from the ground up. Years ago it shifted emphasis to acquiring software companies. Has it lost the ability to develop?
The counter argument is that Sage wants to clearly understand from customers what they want. That makes sense until you think about what Steve Jobs, CEO Apple does: he obsesses over design and customers don’t get a sniff until he’s ready to show off Apple’s latest shiny new toy.
Remember what Henry Ford said? “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse” When inventing new software, do innovative entrepreneurs ask customers what they want? No. They get something out the door that solves a problem and THEN test with customers to see if they’re on the right track. Rinse, repeat and hey presto, new solutions emerge.
Customers may play a part in the development process further down the line but not in the initial stages. That latter part is usually about prioritising infill functionality but not about product strategy and never about design. That’s because customers cannot know how to go about dealing with the issues or for that matter what needs doing.
What savvy developers will do is engage with market experts to assess what they’re doing in the context of the market they’re seeking to serve. Often, those discussions occur under non-disclosure if for no other reason than product development direction can go off at all sorts of tangents. The last thing any vendor wants to do is promise but not fulfil. Neither do vendors want pulling in multiple directions at the same time. An example:
This week I have been with a vendor discussing aspects of product and development. That inspired some ideas on my side of the table that, if adopted, have the potential to act as a category killer. The vendor is free to decide for themselves and no-one except us need know. Another example: several years ago, a vendor spoke with me about how to go to market in a particular area. I made certain suggestions. For various reasons the vendor could not do as suggested but picked up the theme a year later. Two years ago I saw a solution that had great potential. But,there was a major engineering design flaw. Along with others, I explained the issue and why it would mean the product could not come to market. The company took some persuading but got the message and then re-engineered. It delayed the solution 18 months but when it came out, it was the right design to achieve the right balance of features, functions and price point.
One of the great things about the current market is that innovation is producing transformational solutions that continue to amaze. That’s why you’d never ask a Sage user what they want. Users of any accounting system don’t inherently want change. Show them something they’ve not seen before and that’s a different story. Anyone taken a look at inDinero for example? Who but an ‘outsider’ could dream that up? But then Sage doesn’t deliver transformational solutions. It extends existing. There’s a yawning chasm of a difference.
