Lament from the gilded cage

Posted by John Stokdyk on Thu, 18/02/2010 - 14:57 in Blogs 577 2 comments | report

After 20-odd years, it gets more and more difficult to get fired up for the ritual of software company user gatherings.

Maybe companies like Microsoft and Apple are to blame for pouring so much money and effort into high tech graphics and product launch spectaculars. But once you start listening to the speeches, reading the news releases and interviewing executives it appears that everything said is based on the same script. Hacks who cover political party conferences often whinge about the same sort of thing.

These reveries came to me at the plush Celtic Manor Resort, the venue for October’s Ryder Cup golf match and this week’s UNIT4 user conference. The company formerly known as Unit 4 Agresso recently rebranded as UNIT4 and has an interesting story to tell. Aside from the intriguing transformation of CODA2go into FinancialForce.com, you may not have heard that much about the developer on AccountingWEB in recent years. The company turned its back on us somewhat back in 2002-03 to focus its attention on the UK public sector.

The timing was perfect. With a nationwide move to replace cash accounting with private-sector style “resource accounting” and an emphasis on achieving best value from procurement projects, there was a huge demand from public services organisations for accounting software. Agresso prospered while rival ERP developers struggled on with declining commercial IT budgets.

Up on stage, chief executive Chris Ouwinga and UK managing director Anwen Robinson stressed the core value of “embracing change” that the new UNIT4 brand embodied. But we’ve heard executives use words like “transparency”, “results-driven”, “agility”, and “communication” so often that they come out sounding like hollow buzz-phrases.

Face-to-face, you get a better feel for their personalities: steady, methodical and articulate in discussing the companies products and opportunities. Since we are talking about ERP and accounting software here, perhaps that’s no bad thing.

Perhaps my mistake was to come to their party looking for excitement.

(Editor's note: John says he's feeling better this morning, and is REALLY looking forward to the Digita user conference on 18-19 March)

Comments

Excitement

anwenrobinson | Fri, 19/02/2010 - 10:49 | Permalink

Comments duly noted John - along with 'steady, methodical and articulate' I will ensure you are also suitably excited over the course of the year.

Thank you for attending our conference

Anwen Robinson

MD Unit4 Business Software Ltd

Thanks again

John Stokdyk | Fri, 19/02/2010 - 18:04 | Permalink

After putting me up at the Celtic Manor, welcome to our humble online abode, Anwen and thanks for your comments.

I'm sorry to come across like the typical jaded hack. I know that user events like yours aren't staged for my benefit alone, but I have been professionally conditioned over the years to seek out conflict, excitement and "buzz". As I acknowledge here and in my piece on the UNIT4 brand philosophy, that is not always something you associate with business software.

The user feedback I gathered was uniformly positive, and I don't think that is something you can stage-manage with 600 or so customers. As I mentioned to you on Wednesday, the Unit4/Agresso story is an exciting one for our colleagues on PublicTechnology.net and I look forward to reporting on a few more software thrills for AccountingWEB members in the coming months.

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