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IT Faculty survey: Which systems are winning?

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13th Mar 2012
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Why read a survey when the suppliers can tell you what it says? Following recent controversies, Simon Hurst takes a step back to assess the results of this year’s ICAEW IT Faculty IT in practice survey.

Would you be interested in knowing that less than two thirds of existing users would recommend the practice management package you are about to invest in?

Practice management performance scorecard

IT Faculty practice management survey 2012 results

(Source: ICAEW IT Faculty 2012 Practice IT survey; brands with at least 30 users. Colours highlighted in green indicate a difference of 0.3 or more points above sample average; Red strips indicate a difference of more five or more points below average. 2007 figures in brackets)

Or that the number of firms suffering a business critical failure using a particular personal tax product had increased from 0 to 13%?

Tax software performance scorecard

IT Faculty tax software performance scorecard

For many years now the ICAEW’s IT Faculty has been conducting surveys of the use of IT within accountancy practices. The 2011 survey is free to members of the Faculty and, although the price to non-members is £145, a year’s membership of the faculty only costs £105. As a faculty committee member I should declare an interest, but given the resources and effort that go into producing the survey and given the benefits of making the right IT decisions, £105 for the survey with a year’s membership of the faculty seems good value.

The survey covers a range of areas with some fascinating insights into the transition to iXBRL, the emergence of Cloud working and changes in home and mobile working included in the 2011 survey.

Not surprisingly, however, the software suppliers’ performance ratings tend to attract the most publicity and controversy. The survey answers questions that anyone considering the purchase of new software, or just reviewing their existing systems, should be asking. These answers are all the more important because they are based on an independent survey of actual software users. As well as obvious ratings such as performance, reliability, ease of use and ongoing support, there are the headline questions, some of which we mentioned in the introduction:

  • Business critical failure rate
  • Likelihood to recommend to others
  • Plans to replace in next 12 months.

Suppliers whose products have done well in the survey are always keen to publicise those results, and this year has been no exception with the IRIS summary provoking a heated debate in Any Answers. As well as disagreement over how to portray the results fairly, this debate also touched on the niche product versus integrated suite issue. In fact, the Technical & Development Manager of the IT Faculty, Paul Booth, investigated this issue in an article on the Faculty’s IT Counts site: Niche accounting practice products push ahead . Paul’s article examined the way in which niche products outperform integrated suite components in the survey. This was a finding echoed by John Stokdyk in a comment to the IRIS summary debate. John suggested that this results from greater focus. The niche suppliers are able to focus on an individual product and the users have generally focussed on just that product in choosing to buy it, thus making it more likely that it will be a good fit for their requirements. In contrast, a product in an integrated suite might have been chosen because it was only an adequate fit, but the benefits of integration outweighed deficiencies in each individual product.

So, read the suppliers’ edited highlights if you like, but will IRIS tell you which accounts production packages actually received the highest recommendation levels?

Accounts production software
(with bubble size illustrating market penetration)

IT Faculty survey - accounts production software

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