ACCPAC Partnership Conference 2003 ● Quebec City ● August 21, 2003 ● 8:00am

David Hood opened the conference with a recap of the company’s successes since last year’s Partnership conference. Key points were as follows:

·         ACCPAC has experienced double digit growth while remaining profitable.

·         The industry has continued to see mergers, but success in the SMB market requires much more than acquisitions.

·         Companies must have products to meet the needs of the market, products that are integrated, and companies and products must be global.

·         Today there is a global SMB channel that is application smart. David states the industry players ACCPAC, Microsoft, and Sage, are the three poised for success.

David Hood went on to discuss the consolidation of the accounting software industry and his discussion included the screen below in which each accounting package was represented by a yellow dot, and the yellow dots morphed into Pac Men which gobbled each other up. It was cute.

David continued by making the following comments about ACCPAC’s key competitors:

Microsoft – “Microsoft is making and breaking promises to their channel. [For example,] Microsoft is allowing their entire channel to sell the CRM product” [– even though Microsoft had previously promised to only allow selected SBM resellers to resell this product.] David added, “the new Microsoft CRM product is not particularly good and choosing Microsoft CRM locks you into Microsoft”.

Sage – “Sage has kept its promises, which were nothing to begin with.” Their recent product strategy now surrounds application integration to connect their products together. ACCPAC is already there and has been there for two years. Sage is getting around to doing what ACCPAC is already doing and Hood indicated that he was pleased that through their new strategy, Sage was endorsing ACCPAC’s strategy which as been delivered for more than 2 years.

According to Hood,  ACCPAC continues to work on the end-to-end business management applications. For example, ACCPAC Pro Series now integrates with CRM, POS, WMS, and HR. (customer relationship management, point-of-sale, warehouse management, and human resources for the uninitiated). ACCPAC Insights for budgeting and consolidation solutions is now available for Pro Series and Advantage Series. ACCPAC will continue to enhance the end to end strategy. ACCPAC is doing well because we embrace change.

CRM

David indicated that “change is upon us. The SMB CRM market is only 20% penetrated. The decision to buy CRM is driving accounting software selections.” In 2002 ACCPAC had 150 CRM partners and today there are 650 and increasing. The number is increasing because CRM strategy is founded on giving partners freedom of choice. (Later in a private meeting, David Hood reported to Accounting Software Advisor that 55% of new ACCPAC CM customers were already ACCPAC Advantage users, but the remainders were new ACCPAC users. Hood added that one in 5 new ACCPAC Advantage and ACCPAC ProSeries customers are also purchasing ACCPAC CRM, and while it is difficult to quantify, David believes that many of the new customers purchased ACCPAC Advantage or ProSeries because of CRM. There is clear evidence that ACCPAC is having good success with CRM.)

David went on to explain that “ACCPAC gives the customer freedom of choice of platforms, database, and operating systems. The freedom of choice strategy allows customers to modify their choices down the road if their needs change.” (It is true that ACCPAC runs on many platforms, but read on to find out what Hood was really referring to…)

ACCPACcrm.com

ACCPACcrm.com (shown above) is an online CRM hosted solution which allows anyone to instantly begin using a web-deployed CRM solution. ACCPAC is offering customers 30 day free subscription to ACCPAC CRM allowing customers to employ internally if they want to. Hood claimed that ACCPAC strives to be the most channel friendly company, and as proof revealed this offer to the channel: With each subscription to ACCPAC CRM, 20% of the revenue of new clients goes to the ACCPAC partner that refers the ACCPAC CRM product. All partners of ACCPAC partners, whether authorized or not to sell CRM, can sign up for ACCPAC CRM – free until January. Partners need to sign up by the end of August for a free subscription.

David continued by describing how the competition in the CRM market stacks up. According to the ACCPAC score card are the following ratings:

ACCPAC                            3.45

Epicor Clientele                3.20

Microsoft CRM                   3.20

Goldmine                          2.15

Click here to see David Hood’s complete presentation on ACCPAC CRM

- END -

Go back to the ACCPAC Partnership Conference Intro page.  Visit our home page featuring reviews of all the top products. 

______________

Read our Mission Statement
Read our Disclosure Statement
Read our Disclaimer Statement