The ERP Lifestyle Consultant

Faye Business Systems Group (FBSG) a Southern California technology consulting firm announced today that they’ve joined the Intacct Business Partner Program.  Intacct is a leading provider of cloud financial management and accounting software

In a press release dated January 23, 2011 ,  FBSG CEO David Faye indicates that FBSG will be working on further developing an integration between Intacct and SugarCRM as well as other potential custom solutions.

Faye Business Solutions Group, Inc was formed in January 2010 as a spinoff from Southern California IT consulting firm Faye, Pollack & Associates and in addition to Intacct their website indicates support for Sage ERP MAS 90 , 200, and SugarCRM.

Interestingly the first paragraph of the press release talks about Intacct as being “significantly more partner friendly” which seems to take direct aim at the wide ranging changes Sage continues to make to their partner program including increased certifications, reductions to partner support and marketing of Sage support directly to customers.

The Intacct Business partner channel is run by former Sage Channel Chief Taylor Macdonald who has made some strides in recruiting Sage partners  - most visible so far being Sage Non-Profit specialists JMT Consulting who is noted as being a $4.9 million var on the Accounting Technology VAR 100 for 2011 and Canada’s $ 5.6 million  Equation Technologies who represents Sage Accpac and was ranked # 63 on the 2011 VAR 100.

One of our consulting firms  just received this offer from Intuit.  The promotion appears aimed at QuickBooks users, specifically software companies, who have outgrown their QuickBooks software.

What’s unusual about this mailing  is I’ve yet to see a press release that these two competitors (Intuit and Intacct) are working together.

The promotion also states “we have a new way” which may indicate this is a test or perhaps as yet unannounced partnership.

UPDATE: Intacct PR replies “..I would certainly not characterize intacct and intuit as competitors…”.

Most software companies tightly guard their installed user list and only as a deep last resort would they consider referring an existing customer to a competitor.

Relevant information from the email is below (emphasis is mine):

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The Fall Collaborative of the IT Alliance was held this past week (December 3-6, 2011)  in Austin Texas. The closing session “The Cloud – SaaS Best Practices” moderated by Avalara’s Rob Johson and presented by a panel including Taylor Macdonald – VP Channel Sales Intacct, Jaqueline Tiso , President JMT Consulting and Craig West VP Channel Sales at Netsuite.

Record attendance of 260 technology members was announced. Most IT Alliance members provide mid-market ERP or related services. The conference is marketed as a collaborative and is heavy on member to member sharing of experiences.

One of the hottest topics at this year’s event was cloud computing. Each conference day spotlighted sessions on creating, adapting and how to change a VAR practice to market SaaS offerings which typically charge customers a lower initial price which means VARS have had to retool their thinking about how to market and provide SaaS services.

During last year’s ITA Fall 2010 collaborative I noted that most IT Alliance member VARS who had adopted SaaS as a business offering were in the early stages of ramping up and offering services. This meant there was not much live feedback about actual results of converting from an on premises to SaaS VAR.

This year’s conference was different and one session about SaaS business best practices featured a prominent Sage partner – Jackie Tiso of JMT Consulting - who is  a 9 year Sage President’s Circle winner and one of their top Non-Profit VARs. Jackie and her firm have been providing a SaaS solution since October 2010.  Here are some notable results that Jackie shared during her session.

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Bob Scott reported last night on his excellent newsletter service – Bob Scott’s Insights - that CPA firm Baker Tilly has joined Netsuite as a Value Added Reseller. That firm follows CPA firm Clifton Gunderson who joined the Intacct solution provider program this month as well.

It’s fitting that the announcement of Baker Tilly broke on Ground Hog Day 2011 because it seems as if we are suddenly starting to relive the very successful practice that former State of The Art CEO David Samuels introduced in 1985.

Under Samuels’ reign at State of The Art the company essentially signed up all CPA firms who had $500 and wanted to be a reseller. No specific training was required. If you could fog a mirror you were on board.

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Intacct, a market and technology leader in on-demand financial management and accounting applications for businesses and CPA firms, today announced that Taylor Macdonald joins the company as VP of Channels.

Taylor takes over the position from Jerry Jalaba who left Intacct in July 2009 after about a year in the position of VP Channel Sales.

Intacct is a Saas (Software As A Service) provider noted for their Salesforce.com integration capabilities, complete set of financial accounting modules and strong revenue recognition capabilities.

Most consultants first took notice of Intacct in April 2009 when Intacct, the AICPA and CPA2BIZ announced an alliance that resulted in their being named the preferred provider of financial applications. CPA2Biz was also named the preferred distributor of Intacct to the CPA profession. At the time the alliance covered over 350,000 individual CPAs and 45,000 firms governed by the AICPA.

Intacct described the relationship as ” The alliance will help CPA firms and small and mid-sized businesses adopt “cloud computing” to improve their financial performance, take better advantage of financial advice and make better and faster business decisions. Intacct and CPA2Biz will also co-develop a new version of Intacct’s on-demand financial management and accounting applications specifically for CPA firms and their clients that includes unique content from the AICPA“.

Because Intacct is privately held it’s difficult to get an exact measure of their partner channel – or their revenues. Read the rest of this entry »

Intacct, a SaaS provider of accounting and ERP solutions endorsed by the AICPA and used by many industries including software companies, say’s that there just may be a light at the end of the recession tunnel.

From Intacct SVP of Marketing and Business Development Dan Druker’s Post:

In the fourth quarter of 2009, we started to notice our Software industry customers provisioning more users in large numbers and subscribing to more modules too – which I took to mean they were coming out of the recession. This trend only accelerated in the first quarter of 2010 – leading to Intacct putting together record quarters for both Q4 and Q1, dramatically exceeding our plan.

Around the first of the year I was talking about this trend with MR Rangaswami, the CEO of Sandhill group, who is an old friend from past lives at Oracle. We thought it would be interesting to put together a formal research project to understand whether the resurgence Intacct has seen in its software customers is more broadly true in the Software industry as a whole.

They’ve commissioned a study by Sandhill Group of 100 software company executives after noticing improved new Intacct user (seats) license demand in the fourth quarter of 2009.  The results of  the survey, as well as a copy of the data, will  be unveiled in an April 29 webcast. Follow the link below to register and read Dan’s full post.

Bye Bye Recession – Led by Cloud Computing, Software is Roaring Back