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09/21/2009 12:00pm | Leave a comment | 0 Responses
The Sky is Falling for Big ERP…(But Clouds are MUCH Closer for Buyers!)
By Karen (Northup) Watts
No
doubt you’ve seen the proliferation of articles and reports from the technology
analysts, business strategists and even the financial user community about the broadening
interest in internet accounting solutions. It likely comes as no surprise to the CFO’s
reading this blog that cash is king and spending much of it – particularly on a
lump software purchase -- is likely not
on your “to do” list for 2009 or even 2010.
Certainly the recent financial statements from the Big ERP software
crowd have more than proven that out.
Of
course it’s hard to see that unless you wade through the numbers and call out
the real headline as Infoworld did last
week:
The Infoworld headline reads:
ORACLE PROFITS RISE BUT SALES FALL IN Q1
New software license revenue drops by 17 percent, but
Oracle still increased profits by improving its operating margins
While
you’ll note that whopping 17 percent DROP in the InfoWorld headline…here’s how
the SAME news was distributed via Oracle:
ORACLE REPORTS Q1 GAAP EPS OF 22 CENTS UP 8%,
NON-GAAP EPS OF 30 CENTS UP 3%
Operating Margins Up Over
500 Basis Points
Now I can see the smiles from my fellow CFO comrades (I was a CFO prior to founding Corefino)…and kudos
to the marketing machine at Oracle for focusing on GAAP EPS versus a disaster
in new sales. Even so….is anyone REALLY
fooled here by what’s going on?
To make the story even more interesting – instead of
continuing attempts to camouflage the disaster befalling the on-premise enterprise
software model and perhaps working feverishly to jump aggressively to a more
affordable, less rigid alternative delivery model like SaaS accounting
-- you’ll appreciate that Oracle and SAP continue to stand toe-to-toe in point
blank range firing at each other.
We’ve all seen the SAP and Oracle ads for the better part of
10 years -- each claiming that they are BIGGER than each other in one category
or another. But here’s your latest proof
that despite the end of their world as Oracle knows it, here’s the executive
quote from the Oracle release…a veritable tome to insular internal thinking:
“We
grew faster than SAP in every region around the world, including Europe, where
our applications business grew 3 percent in constant currency versus negative
39 percent for SAP’s most recent quarter,” said Oracle President Charles
Phillips. “Our applications team also executed especially
well in
(See the full text of the Oracle release here).
And while the buyer market clearly has tired beyond the pale
on this macho-style “Size Matters” obsession…the big software solution boys
continue to measure their successes against EACH OTHER’s
…errrr… benchmarks…. and not the buyer’s needs.
I say that’s great. As an alternative provider of a
cost-saving, ROI-building and strategically-enabling online accounting
solution…I hope that Oracle, SAP and the other on-premise enterprise vendors
ignore prevailing facts that software buyers have had it with the big
on-premise spend and are looking to the internet cloud. Certainly at Corefino, the surge in interest
on our cloud-based, SaaS solution for the routine accounting function has moved
us to top 10 search destination for cloud-based accounting and other similar
terms.
If you want to ditch the rich ERP solution, gain a
completely outsourced people-place-platform solution whose excellence will let
you sleep better at night (and whose frugality might even lead you to a snicker
in your dreams) …call or write us at Corefino.
Cloud computing for accounting is here, it’s proven, and it’s saving our
customers as much as 50% or more off the on-premise accounting software model.
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