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Hi John,
Is there going to be a part 2 to this? A little more of the gory details of the shoot out?
Reg
It was a very worthwhile day and very brave of the 4 vendors to go head to head so to speak.
This is my quiet time so wanted something that I could implement now so its running issue free by this time next. What I saw were significantly better than the old style PM suite that loosely pulled together your practice suite.
For me with MTD on the horizon the client side of the communication is going to be key so linking with cloud software will take be more important if I am not to become swamped.
Useful features like text message nudges etc to get info in will save a huge amount of time and do produce good results.
Whilst I am sure there are more product launches to come, i would suggest that you take some time out at Accountex to visit Senta and Mtrio as they have great potential to save time, money and hopefully a few less grey hairs.
Thanks for your kind words Glenzy, it was a great day and valuable for us as developers to get all your feedback. Thank you for continued championing of PM solutions. We are doing what we can to help make your lives easier. So any other suggestions are most welcome.
Really interesting and the next thing on my agenda to address as I want to build our practice around a great PM system. We have Digita but its seems very old fashioned compared to some of the newer entrants.
The dilemma is do you do it yourself and set it up using a collection of market leading standard tools etc using Salesforce, Sharepoint, Zendesk, ToDoist, Trello etc. To me the advantage of this would be total flexibility and market leading technology without being tied to one supplier. The disadvantage is the cost of all the separate elements and the time taken and the complexity of knitting this all together (using Zapier etc to automate data transfers and tasks).
The other options are Senta, mTrio, Practice Ignition etc. I've looked in depth at Senta and was initially undewhelmed. However after a fair bit of playing around it slowly grew on me how potentially powerful it could be once fully developed. But at least it offers a 30 day trial, something which MTrio does not currently do. The risk with any of the all in one cloud based solutions is longevity and the ability to switch providers if circumstances dictate (plus the rather steep incremental cost per user).
I'd love to see a properly written up analysis of the pros and cons of each prior to our trip to Accountex!
Hi Neophyte
Having been an Iris user for over 20 years it was a huge culture shock to move my mindset across to best of cloud breed but I (and my bank) are so glad I did.
My practice in now tiny but I'm firmly in your option 1 (with Trello) with the ability to use Zapier being key.
That's my preference too. I'll probably look into the real practicalities of this and build a proof of concept in the first chunk of my notice period.
"a selection of the new breed of cloud software applications that have entered the market in the past year".
That may be true of some of them (many of which will no doubt disappear as quickly and noiselessly as they appeared), but I'm fairly sure that Glide has been around quite a while. Certainly I saw it at Accountex some time ago (3 or 4 years at least), so it's hardly a new entrant. I'm not sure that the world was ready for cloud PM back then, but it's probably something that is about to have its day.
Hi Tim,
Good point, but I would add that Senta has been around for a few years now too, with what sounds like an increasingly established client base.
We always used to use a custom system in Excel. This was fine when it was just me but as we took on staff we needed something that could enable multiple users.
We came accross Glide (www.whatsglide.com) about a year ago. Its great!
It takes a little setting up but the team are great at helping with that. We are now really on top of work and are confident we will not miss a deadline through poor systems (hopefully never for any reason)
Thanks for this John.
It was a great day and wonderful to meet with the varied accountants and hear their views.
There are many solutions available for practices to help gain efficiency and manage deadlines, but our quest is to put all of these tools into one easy to use solution that will integrate with other key players in the market such as Google, Digita and Xero.
By striving for this accountants will only need to manage one database and have everything accessible on the cloud through any device.
It is very early days for some of the vendors at your 'shoutout' but even in the short space of time we have added some exciting new features for our customers and are continuing to build out features that are requested.
Watch this space, it is going to be an exciting ride, and because we built our platform on a strong platform we will be here for the long run.
Is there going to be any detail regarding this and a comparison of the main differences? Also, for a meaningful review it would need to include the non-cloud PM products too. Readers can then either see what they're missing out on or remain content with their existing PM software.
There's no point in carrying out a review of Nissan Leaf's (leaves) and BMW i3's, claiming that they're the best cars on the market simply because they're new and electric, whilst ignoring the Ferrari's and Lamborghini's that have been leaders for years.
As Richard says can we get some details of the actual comparison that was done?
Article otherwise (for the reader) is as useful as a chocolate teapot :-)
I still think all of these platforms miss the most significant challenge that we face in accounting firms - getting the clients to take action. You can be the best bookkeepers, accountants, outsourced FD's in the world but if you don't get the information you need from your clients, you don't even get started. The winner in this space will be the platform that takes the heavy lifting away from the technical people and a large chunk of which, away from people altogether and utilising technology to send effective reminders to clients that drive action. There is so much waste, inconsistency and delay in the client chasing aspect and that's what's really holding us back.