Software Satisfaction Awards shortlist unveiled

Account managers at these companies know which users will give them the votes they are looking for. All you need to do is ring round those clients in the course of every day client managment activities and prompt them to vote, plus add a few yourself for good measure. Judging by the number of people that voted you obviously don't need to make that many calls before..... Hey presto! Shortlist.

Sorry, I'm just a cynic!!

I noticed that the shortlist are mainly big companies like IRIS, Pegasus and other big names.
I am sure this is only marketing as I know IRIS is not good at all and not friendly.
I have used Pegasus in the past, when I used to work in industry. As an accountant in practise,
the best accounting software is VT. VT is excellent to use in incomplete records and small
company bookkeeping. Taxcalc is very good and also moneysoft. We dont charge large fees to our
client and therefore we want the most efficient software and will save time.

Not being one to miss an opportunity to blow 12Pay's trumpet.

I think that you'll find that any voter apathy in the world of traditional on-premise software stems from ignorance rather than the lack of a desire to make their voice heard.

Most suppliers, as another comment identified, don't publicise a vote like this to their general user base. They ring up 20-30 of their favourite tame customers and get them to vote. In general that is going to be the way to "manage" a good score. The rest of their users never even find out that the opportunity to rate their software was there.

We preferred to use this vote as an opportunity to find out what the mass of our users think of us. So we mass mailed them all inviting them to participate. And I suspect that will show up rather strongly in the results with a ludicrously high percentage of the overall payroll systems vote going to 12Pay who are a very small minnow in that big pond. Because we abandoned all control over who voted for us we probably won't win, but at least potential users will derive an honest appraisal of the views of our userbase from our score.

In my opinion the value of the whole exercise would be greatly improved if all suppliers could be somehow incentivised to get their userbase to participate. One way, I suppose, would be to reveal the actual numbers voting in each category, as well as the percentage. I suspect that in some categories the numbers voting must be pretty tiny.

Yep you are sooooo right.
I have introduced many to VT, and always they say "it's fantabulous, amazing, improved my life, why did i put up with xxxzzz all these years?" etc.......

if only i had shares in them!

i agree the BIG BOYS just use their databases to solicit votes.
Why can't an independent panel of experts (chaired by me) do the judging?

what about some price comparisons?

e..g Arithmo for a practice of 100 clients = £4100 pa. Sage £loads c. £2,000?, but probably less, Qbooks ditto. we need a good comparison site listing all the ins/outs!

The only credible way to assess user satisfaction (amongst accountants at least) would be to approach the ICAEW, ACCA, CIMA and others and independently canvass their members without any of the software houses having any input at all.

Too expensive though.