Last week, we announced the results of a survey we conducted among Salesforce CRM users into the problems they experience with their existing finance apps. It was really a prospecting exercise, but the results were telling.

Of the 200 SMBs who completed the survey, those that used Quickbooks or Sage and Salesforce CRM (67%) cited lack of CRM integration as their biggest headache. We in no way prompted that response and left the space blank for respondents to complete their answer, so it clearly is bugging people. Of course Salesforce users are typically very reliant on their CRM which heightens the problem. 

Survey participants went one step further to provide color on how the lack of integration impacts their work and their companies, including:
• “We have a double entry problem between Salesforce CRM opportunities and QuickBooks purchase order records and we don’t have our finances in the cloud.”
• “Our accounting app leaves finance very disconnected from business, as opposed to being in the thick of it.”
•  “Does not integrate with Salesforce CRM, which we are increasingly adopting across the organization. We are faced with a large integration challenge or a change of financial application.”
• “Invoicing needs to be integrated into salesforce.com.”
• “We had to build our own A/P and A/R in salesforce.com, and it isn’t connected with our accounting app.”
• “Our accounting app cannot track sending and receipt of invoices without manual entry in salesforce.com.”

Other frustrations cited by respondents included a lack of multi-company functionality, an unwieldy amount of manual data entry, incompatibility with Macs and an inability to scale:
• “[QuickBooks] doesn’t do multi-user gracefully.”
• “I have a multi-product, multi- sector, i.e., multi-revenue stream business. Quickbooks cannot handle it without excessive data input.”
• “We use Macs and PCs and even the online version does not work on both.”
• “[The program] generally feels like 1999.”

Today we announced a partnership with CloudApps, a new company that delivers a Force.com-based emission management solution. Together, we will provide an end-to-end carbon management and accounting solution. Companies of any size will be able to measure, monitor and account for their current carbon emissions and engage with their employees to dramatically reduce future emission levels and operational costs.

Customers will be able to manage the emissions, costs and the cash flow implications of carbon. And because of the advantages cloud technology affords, they will always have access to the latest technology dealing with the latest legislation.

The full announcement can be viewed here www.financialforce.com/carbon-accounting

In a guest post on TechCrunch, Marc Benioff of salesforce.com talks about why enterprise software should take its cues from Facebook and become more social.

In it he asks why isn’t all enterprise software like Facebook?

Typically, social networking tools and business have been kept very separate. The fact that many bosses have banned the use of these tools and labelled them unproductive has not helped. But like anything, it’s about how they are put to use. The technology behind sites like Amazon is impressive and is something all enterprise software vendors can learn from. So, the question is – how can we repurpose these tools, based on the kind of technology we are all used to using in our personal lives, to enhance our work lives?

Cross department communication is still a problem in the workplace. We still work in silos at our individual workstations despite in many cases spending our personal lives socialising online. Actions are often delayed if someone is out of the office and not accessing email, which is still the communication tool of choice. Many companies are making good use of tools like Instant Messenger, but what if we could extend those benefits for more advantage? If Chatter and similar enterprise tools can help overcome this and some of the problems related to antiquated software that many companies still rely on, based on the kind of technology we all know and love, that has got to be a good thing. Then if department specific processes can be built in aimed at specific and only relevant groups, it has to be a no-brainer.

At FinancialForce.com, we are looking at how we deliver extra advantage to our customers using these tools. From the perspective of an online accounting software vendor that speaks salesforce, we believe that as more and more businesses grow their presence on sites like Facebook, there are integration opportunities to enable better collaboration with business for finance related processes. We’ll talk more about this in the coming weeks so watch this space…

Investment Bank, Goldman Sachs, has released a new technology report emailed to subscribers last week, titled ‘Techtonics: Unstoppable shift to SaaS continues’. It confirms the rise in popularity of SaaS and highlights the areas where utilization is increasing.

The diagram below shows that accounting and billing is the 3rd most popular area for SaaS adoption at 49%. Interestingly, the report also says that it has been the biggest growth area since April 2009 at 20%, ahead of call center automation and eRecruitment.

cnet.com covers the report and provides a few highlights:

•An “SaaS first” policy is being enacted in the majority of small and midsize businesses. Goldman’s survey highlights that 58 percent of respondents always consider an SaaS option when making an application purchase decision. At total of 39 percent prefer an SaaS option, if available.
•Web conferencing and sales force automation continue to rank as the most utilized SaaS applications; accounting and billing shows significant improvement, underscoring broad acceptance in all application areas.
•Accounting and billing, call center automation, and eRecruiting were the largest gainers, with 20 percent, 18 percent, and 17 percent increases, respectively, from April 2009.
•Data warehousing, supply chain management, and product life cycle management require more customization, or are more embedded within the core of a company than cloud applications. They are also utilized by a smaller group of individuals, which could impact the time to, or volume of, deployments.
•Amazon.com is used by 67 percent of the survey respondents. It is clearly the out-in-front leader, despite being a “newcomer” to enterprise IT. For internal clouds, VMware’s leadership remains pronounced, with 83 percent of respondents using its virtualization technology.
•Platform-as-a-service layers are gaining momentum, dominated by Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2, service, with 77 percent of respondents choosing EC2 as a preferred partner, well ahead of Google
•Forty percent of respondents indicated that they would be more likely to use SaaS solutions in a weaker economy, due to perceived total cost of ownership (TCO) benefits

As we enter 2009, there are few predictions you can make with confidence – except the old cliché that ‘everything will change’…

However, one prediction we are confident about is that 2009 will be the year that Cloud Accounting really takes off. By which we mean, starts to gain market awareness, acceptance and share. Why? Well, because:

- a number of key players will be in the market with viable offerings that are proven (or will be through the year). Prominent amongst these will be Sage with SageLive and, of course, CODA with CODA 2go.
- the economic situation will play to the strengths of cloud computing, particularly for SMBs, with low capital requirements and relatively low running costs that can be turned on or off as the client requires.
- the general prominence and acceptance of cloud computing will continue, with Google, Salesforce and Microsoft all pushing forward the agenda with huge investment and new services being launched Read the rest of this entry »