A review of new software products that can make a big difference to your business

User survey roundup*

By Michael Burns

*This is an expanded version of an article that originally appeared in the January/February 2005 issue of CAmagazine

Welcome to the results of our first-ever customer survey of accounting and ERP systems. As you’ll recall, we announced the survey in the September 2004 print edition. (It can be viewed at www.CAmagazine.com/ERPusersurvey04). The idea was to see how well readers like the system they’re using, as well as their views on the developers and implementation partners. We also asked for some general feedback about return on investment and future plans. Here in this online article, you’ll find additional information – including charts – that we were unable to run in the print version due to space constraints.

To ensure the validity of the results, we accepted only one survey per organization, and it had to be filled out by a CA. We made this restriction because CAmagazine is for chartered accountants, and we knew CAs wouldn’t misrepresent the numbers (this would also enhance the reliability of our results).

Since our sample size is limited   — a total of 129 valid responses — we have reported our findings on totals for all systems, subtotals by tier (high end, mid-market and low end) and given credit only to systems that drew at least three respondents.

What did we learn? First and foremost, that it’s a fragmented market. More than a quarter (26%) of the surveys were one-offs; i.e., there was only one response for those systems. Some of the systems mentioned do not even appear in our annual ERP and accounting software survey. There are still many old legacy systems out there, which are not usually not marketed but are somewhat supported. Customers keep the systems because they generally work, although they are built with old technology and will eventually be replaced.

Overall, QuickBooks accounted for 16% of the responses, followed by ACCPAC (9%), Simply Accounting (6%), PeopleSoft (6%), Great Plains (5%), Navision (5%) and SAP (5%).

All systems

High-end systems

Mid-market systems

Low-end systems

Overall ranking
We asked each respondent to score their system overall for financial, distribution and manufacturing functionality. The possible responses were Excellent (4), Good (3), Fair (2), Poor (1), and N/A. (We excluded N/As from our statistics, along with products with only one response. Note this approach applies to all the remaining statistics.)

Overall, respondents liked their financial systems the most, followed by distribution and manufacturing systems. Looking at subtotals by tier for financial and distribution systems, the high end, on average, did not score as well as the lower tiers. This may seem strange, but could have something to do with high-end organizations having greater expectations. But for manufacturing, the higher-end systems chalked up better scores. The best marks for financial systems go to J.D. Edwards (now part of PeopleSoft and called Enterprise One) and PeopleSoft.

Generic attributes
We asked each respondent to rate their system for ease of use, flexibility, stability, security, documentation, reporting, customization and value for money. On average, the high-end systems didn’t measure up to mid-market and low-end systems when it comes to customization and value for money. The customization response was not expected and again may be attributed to higher expectations. The value for money is not surprising and is supported by our return on investment results below. High scores for ease of use go to PeopleSoft, flexibility to SAP and SYSPRO, stability to J.D. Edwards and SYSPRO, documentation to SYSPRO and Acomba, and value for money to PeopleSoft. There were no high scores for security, reporting and customization.

Developer ratings
We asked respondents to rate the developer of their system on overall satisfaction, continuous improvement, documentation, support and upgrade reliability. Most of the systems in all tiers could use some improvement. Only PeopleSoft ranked high in overall satisfaction.

Implementer ratings - We asked each respondent to rate the implementer of their system on overall satisfaction, on time, on budget, support, product knowledge and ability to improve business process. The implementation partners for mid-market and low-end systems came out ahead of their high-end peers. This is ironic in that the implementation partners for high-end systems are usually very handsomely paid and work for large consulting practices. That said, the systems are more complex, so perhaps this explains the lower ratings. SYSPRO was the only system that landed high scores in most of the implementer rankings.

Return on investment – This time we asked about payback (no. of years), improved customer service (ranging from a high of 4 to a low of 1; these numbers apply to the rest of the questions in this category), increased accuracy, increased revenue, increased control, and better decision-making. The high-end systems have a long payback time – almost five years compared to mid-market (2.6) and low-end (1.8) systems. Scores for the various systems were fairly similar in other areas except decision-making; here the high-end systems did not rate very well. This may seem strange, since high-end companies often invest in tools such as business intelligence to improve decision-making. But their decisions may also be more complex, which accounts for the scoring. Fastest payback goes to QuickBooks and Simply Accounting. High ratings for customer service go to PeopleSoft and SYSPRO, accuracy to PeopleSoft, SAP, SYSPRO and Simply Accounting, increased revenue to SYSPRO, better control to J.D. Edwards, SAP and Acomba.

Costs
We asked for the approximate percentage of costs over the last past five years for licence, maintenance and external consulting fees, upgrade costs related to computer infrastructure, and internal costs represented as a percentage of the total cost of implementation they represent, for the past five years.. Our results show that licence fees as a percentage of total costs are the lowest with high-end systems, followed by mid-market, then low-end systems. The high-end and mid-market customers are spending more on external consulting and internal costs.

Planned investments
Finally, we asked what accounting/ERP system investments were planned over the next two years. We asked about replacing the existing system, upgrading to the next version, adding customer relationship management (CRM), e-commerce, business intelligence (BI), budgeting and/or forecasting and other functionality. A few companies with high-end or mid-market systems are planning to replace their systems; but a large percentage will be upgrading. It looks like many companies will be investing in other functionality, budgeting, CRM and eCommerce. Business intelligence is not attracting a lot of investment dollars, except at the high end.

Post mortem
We had initially planned to provide more information for each individual system, but the limited sample size precluded that approach. Next year we plan to repeat this process, and hopefully will be able to share even more information with you.

Michael Burns, MBA, CA, is President of 180 Systems (http://www.180systems.com), which provides independent consulting services including business process review, business case development and system selection. Michael can be reached at 416-963-1296 or by email at mburns@180systems.com.