Software Satisfaction Awards 2010 shortlists revealed
The shortlists for the 2010 Software Satisfaction Awards published on Wednesday reveal the business applications suppliers who gained the strongest responses from more than 8,000 participants in the annual user survey.
New names such as Corero Systems (developer of Resource Financials, shortlisted in the Enterprise Accounting category), Accountz (SME accounting), Phocas (Business Intelligence/CPM) and BTCSoftware (Tax) join the 2010 roll of honour alongside previous SSA winners such as Access, KashFlow and DRIVE.
Run by AccountingWEB.co.uk publisher Sift Media for the past five years, the Software Satisfaction Awards has become an benchmark for monitoring user feedback. As in previous years, thousdands of people from AccountingWEB.co.uk and sister communities such as BusinessZone.co.uk, Finance Week and TrainingZone.co.uk took part in an online questionnaire to rate the service they receive from their business software suppliers.
For a number of reasons some of the industry’s largest suppliers have struggled to win the support of their user communities in the SSA voting. While Sage missed out in the shortlists for the main accounting & finance categories this year, its products performed well in the payroll/HR, CRM and business intelligence categories. Sage 50 Payroll and Snowdrop KCS line up against each other in the Payroll category, with just P11D organiser for competition. Sage 200 made the shortlist in the BI category and Sage SalesLogix is also nominated for the Enterprise CRM award.
Due to a change in the categories, previous award winners such as Access Dimensions (Mid-Market Accounting 2007 & 2008) and PS Financials (Enterprise Accounting 2007 & 2008) are pitted against each other in an enlarged Enterprise Accounting category for 2010, alongside Corero’s Resource Financials, COA Solutions Financial Management and HansaWorld UK.
The awards have also done away with the distinction between on-premise and web-based “Cloud” applications. As with last year, the SME Accounting category has become a fight between the leading lights of the accounting software as a service industry – FreeAgent Central, KashFlow and Xero. Arithmo adds another web-hosted accounting solution to the shortlist, alongside Accountz and Benchmark Software (two relative minnows compared to the likes of Sage and Intuit) contesting the category on behalf of desktop software.
The tax and practice wing of the industry has so far escaped similar disruption from Cloud suppliers, and will be contested by several developers with experience of previous years’ shortlists such as Digita and TaxCalc in the Tax category and APS, DRIVE and Practice Engine in the Practice Management category. In spite of some recent grumbles from AccountingWEB members, IRIS gained a position alongside them on the Practice Management podium.
The full shortlist and further details of the ceremony taking place at the Grand Connaught Rooms in London on Thursday 7 October 2010 are available from the Software Satisfaction Awards website. On the night, the winners will be announced in 10 categories covering accounting & finance, CRM/customer management and training/HR applications, business intelligence and software resellers. Three further awards including a Software Vendor of the Year prize will be chosen by a judging panel.
