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SSA 13: ERP & business intelligence winners

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6th Nov 2013
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The winners of the AccountingWEB Software Satisfaction Awards 2013 have been announced. Read on to find out how and why the leaders of the ERP and Business Intelligence categories came out on top.

This year more than 6,000 users rated 15,000 products in a survey that encompassed nine business software categories. The shortlist was announced a fortnight ago, but it’s now the time to reveal the winners.

The results below provide a percentage score based on how the software performed on its ease of use, functionality, support, value for money, and users’ willingness to recommend their software to others.

Financials & ERP software winner: NetSuite (87%)

Shortlisted:

  • SAP Business One (82%)
  • Pegasus (78%)
  • Corero Resource 32000 (68%)
  • Sage 200 (48%)
  • Microsoft Dynamics GP (30%)
  • Access (28%)
  • Exchequer (28%)

NetSuite repeated its success in the financials and ERP category this year, and reinforced the increasing presence of cloud applications across the accounting spectrum. The appearance of SAP Business One with 13% of the category ratings - and very good ratings and recommendation score - indicates that a competitive edge is returning to mid-market ERP and accounting. And Pegasus Opera continues to retain a loyal following among AccountingWEB members in terms of both numbers and satisfaction ratings. 

While NetSuite didn’t score the best in value for money, it outperformed the likes of Access and Sage 200 in user ratings for functionality, contradicting the argument that on-premise systems are better at handling more sophisticated activities. The result also suggests that the cost of a solution is not the biggest factor when it comes to assessing enterprise-quality financial systems.

NetSuite also performed strongly in providing support to the users and had the highest proportion of customer advocates across the shortlist, with 87% of those giving a 9 or 10 rating to the cloud solution.

AccountingWEB Editor John Stokdyk commented on evolution of this market: “Sage 200 is interesting because it is a traditional client server piece of ERP software that now has a version that can operate both in the cloud and on premise – a hybrid approach.

“With some elements, someone might well want to be mobile, but back in the finance department with someone more deskbound that wants more horsepower and storage power - I think we’ll see more of that model going on.”

Business Intelligence winner: Pegasus XRL (78%)

Shortlisted:

  • Sage 200 (52%)
  • Cognos (31%)
  • Access (17%)

Pegasus XRL walks away with the 2013 Software Satisfaction Award for business intelligence in a category that was dominated by the native tools that come with many mid-market financial applications.

Pegasus XRL users appreciated the solution’s ease of use, but it scored equally highly across all the ratings.

Though Sage 200 had a bigger share of the BI sample, the percentage of customer advocates (scoring it as a 9 or 10) was much lower than that of Pegasus. But it is also worth noting that Sage 200 fare better in the BI ratings than in ERP. SAP Business One also mirrored the trend for analytic applications reaching users via their existing ERP and financial systems, but there weren’t enough users to make the shortlist.

Business Intelligence embodied only a small section of the vote, with just over 200 out of 15,000 product ratings.

“Business intelligence is still a minority interest among AccountingWEB members,” said AccountingWEB editor John Stokdyk. “Only Cognos of that kind of specialist business intelligence tool made it into the SSA13 shortlist.”

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