Look behind the curtain

I am pleased to report that we just finished up another record breaking quarter at Intacct. There is just a ton of momentum for cloud-based financial applications.

A big reason why Intacct has so much momentum in the market is that the products really work well, offer very high ROI and our clients are extremely happy - as I've said here before we survey our clients every quarter, and each time more than 9 out of 10 of them tell us that they would recommend Intacct to their friends. We also try very hard to be nice people to work with, and I think this matters a lot too.

What was so interesting to me this past summer was that it felt in many ways like we were back in the 1980's. With the popularity of cloud financials more players are entering the market and in many ways it felt like we were back to the old days in helping buyers really dig in and do their homework to make sure they didn't accidentally procure the wrong system.

What was new this summer was that we saw very aggressive and often misleading sales and marketing tactics by a number of the newer or less financially focused players in the market. My personal opinion is that it is insane for a cloud-based ERP or financial applications company to take a hyper aggressive Oracle-like sales approach - the core financial system of a company is just too important for snake oil sales tactics - but they were doing it nonetheless.

What this means is, that to ensure they make a good decision, buyers really need to buckle down and do their homework. They need to see functionality based on their own business cases instead of just hearing about it from a sales rep or seeing a canned demo and they need to look deeply at underlying architecture and core capabilities of the systems they are evaluating.

I'm talking about digging deep into things like understanding the very major differences between single-ledger and multi-ledger systems. Or really thinking through the implications of built-in multi-entity functionality vs. multiple single entity systems tied together via reporting. Or understanding why highly multi-dimensional systems are critical to delivering good business intelligence.

I remember the big debate back in the 1980’s (or was it the 1970's) about whether a single ledger or a multi-ledger approach was best. Multi-ledger of course won the battle, and today nearly all of the successful mid-market and enterprise class financial applications – from Intacct to Microsoft to Lawson to Epicor to Oracle to SAP – are multi-ledger systems.

But you know what - not all of the cloud-based financial systems are multi-ledger. You can't assume that just because a system is relatively new that it is also deep or that the publisher has learned from the lessons of the past.

That's what I mean by back to the 1980s- It turns out that in 2010 there are once again very stark differences between financial applications when it comes to underlying architecture. It's no longer just a feature battle between mature products with similar architectures, you really have to dig unto the underlying and very different architectural details to understand how the systems are going to work for you in production.

So what are some of the really important questions that anyone looking at financials in 2010 should for sure be asking?

• Is the system single-ledger or multi-ledger?
• Is the system single-book or multi-book?
• Is the system multidimensional? - How many drillable, pivotable dimensions do the financials support (you need at least 9, more is better.)
• Does the system manage financial actuals only, or can it also manage operational data and planning scenarios?

The answers to these and many other related questions really do matter enormously in terms of the performance, scalability, reporting, controls & auditablity, security & segregation of duties and the close process you will enjoy when you go to implement the system and put it into production.

You get the idea. The point is that you have to do your homework - and if you sense aggressive sales and marketing tactics it's all the more important. Really look behind the curtain and if you are happy with what you see, I am sure you will join the 9 out of 10 people who say that they are so satisfied they would recommend cloud financials to their friends.