American Express and SalesForce Aid in Delivering Automation and Collaboration
Intacct Advantage 2014 in Orlando (November 9-13, 2014) drew a crowd of over 1,300 attendees, a record for the company’s annual customer and partner conference. The conference has grown, along with Intacct’s ecosystem and its revenues. Indeed, Intacct has doubled its subscription revenues over the past two years. Following the themes of automation, collaboration and insight, Intacct announced two new partnerships, both of which help its customers leverage innovation in order to unleash their own “super powers”.
Intacct has partnered with American Express Global Corporate Payments to automate and “seamlessly integrate commercial payments and working capital solutions into Intacct’s software.” Intacct Check Delivery Service is the first milestone delivered from the partnership, enabling businesses to send check payments to suppliers, without ever having to write a check, while automatically updating their general ledgers – all with a click of a button.
The second partner is Salesforce.com. Intacct Collaborate embeds Salesforce Chatter into Intacct to create a secure social layer across all finance processes. Have you ever gone in search of scribbled notes and “sent” emails or wracked your brain trying to remember a conversation about a customer, an order, a payment? Employees can now conduct “conversations” right inside Intacct’s application, attaching them directly to specific records such as customers, projects, invoices, purchase requisitions, journal entries, and more. And you don’t even have to be a Salesforce customer. Of course, if you are (and 60% of Intacct customers also use Salesforce), those conversations also get recorded right in Salesforce as well.
Focus on Finance, but….
Intacct describes itself as a “cloud accounting software company” and says it is “100% invested in meeting the needs of financial professionals.” But if you look closely at its solution portfolio, you actually find it satisfies more than just the needs of the accounting and finance professionals. When you add in Intacct’s purchasing, order management, inventory management and project accounting modules you realize that for the majority of the industries the company serves*, the product is actually an integrated suite of modules that provides the full operational and transactional system of record of the business. That happens to be Mint Jutras’ definition of enterprise resource planning (ERP). And even where Intacct does not provide the full suite of functionality for operations, often a partner will fill those gaps.
* Intacct targets high growth small to midsize businesses (those with fewer than 500 employees) in the following industries:
Accounting firms
Franchises
Healthcare
Hospitality
Non-Profits
Faith-based
Foundations
Services
Business consulting
IT consulting
Software and software as a service (SaaS)
Wholesale distribution
So while other solution providers, which fall far short of providing this full system of record, overstate their capabilities and claim the category of ERP, Intacct does just the opposite and understates its capabilities.
So… what’s in a name? Does it really matter whether Intacct calls its product accounting software or ERP? The label itself is less important than the assumption behind the label. Figure 1shows an overwhelming preference for a fully integrated, end-to-end solution. Data was collected as part of the 2014 Mint Jutras Enterprise Solution Study, from small to midsize businesses (those with fewer than 500 employees), in the industries targeted by Intacct.
Figure 1: Preferences for end-to-end solution?
Source: Mint Jutras 2014 Enterprise Solution Study
These companies need more than just accounting to run their businesses and if they perceive that Intacct just provides accounting, they just might look elsewhere for a full solution, even though Intacct may meet the vast majority of their needs.
Much of Intacct’s growth has come from expanding its solution to meet the needs of the entire business. It has doubled its subscription revenue over the past two years. While new customers account for much of the growth it has experienced, added revenue from existing customers is growing even faster. Some of that growth comes from expanding the footprint of the solution and, of course some from expanding the number of users. More users may be needed when the customer’s business grows. But expanded user counts might also reflect reaching into new functional areas of the business… functional areas outside of the accounting department.
And don’t forget the ecosystem that has developed surrounding and supporting Intacct. This ecosystem now boasts 120 partners and according to Intacct, 75% of customers integrate with at least two partners. Many of these partner products are so tightly woven into the fabric of the Intacct solution that it is impossible to distinguish where Intacct ends and partner solutions begin. This is exactly the type of end-to-end integrated solution the vast majority of our survey participants favor.
The two most recent partnerships with American Express and Salesforce both provide extended capabilities, but also go one step further. These new capabilities are embedded right in the Intacct solution itself.
Intacct Check Delivery Service Enabled by American Express Global Corporate Payments
The offering here is quite simple: Intacct customers will no longer have to write their own checks. They will continue to match invoices and, with a click of a button, can send a request to American Express to cut the check. Customers simply choose “outsource check service” as a payment option. American Express has technology in place to secure the communication and automate the process.
Of course Intacct will charge a fee ($1.50 per check) but the cost savings from automating the process, along with the convenience of not having to maintain and secure check stock should make this very appealing to customers.
In bringing this option to market, Intacct and American Express have engaged with a handful of customers. All are excited and planning to throw their existing stock of checks out, along with the hassle of printing. As companies become more and more security conscious, just eliminating the securing of check stock in the office could be enough to justify using this check delivery service. Mint Jutras anticipates a huge rush to take advantage of this service. The savings are very simple, but also very good.
This could also be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of automation and savings. This service is now limited to accounts payable functions and payment is entirely by check, which is still the primary method of payment for many SMBs. Eventually the two companies will add both card and non-card services and perhaps branch into other areas of cash management, which would be a wise choice.
The Mint Jutras 2014 Enterprise Solution Study asked survey respondents to select the top five categories of business solutions in which they were most likely to invest in the near future. Cash management landed in the top three when looking at aggregated results across all industries, and was number one in service industries, a key target for Intacct.
Intacct Collaborate Embeds Salesforce Chatter Into Intacct
Intacct describes this joint venture with Salesforce as a way to “create a secure social layer across all finance processes and across devices through the Salesforce1 Mobile App.” While the “social” connotation is unlikely to resonate with the finance department, the name (and real purpose) of the product just might. Collaborating to speed execution of the order to cash cycle across finance, sales, and services teams is something that should get the attention of any finance team. And improved communication is key to effective collaboration and execution.
In-person and telephone conversations might be effective in getting immediate attention. But the problem with these conversations is this: Once the people walk away or hang up the phone, the conversation is over. There is no formal record of the discussion or the resolution. Email threads have a longer lifespan, but retrieving and recreating the conversation is far from efficient. And how do you directly attach the conversation to the issue around a customer or an order? You better hope the subject line is clear and meaningful. But it seldom is.
With Intacct Collaborate, customers no longer have to rely on memory or separate and external email threads to resolve process issues. Employees can conduct conversations right inside Intacct’s application, tying them directly to specific records such as customers, projects, invoices, purchase requisitions, journal entries, and more. They can involve the right team members in the discussion and retain them for as long as necessary.
And since Intacct Collaborate is embedded right within Intacct, you don’t even have to be a Salesforce customer, or pay extra to benefit from Chatter as a collaboration tool. However, if you also happen to use the Salesforce Sales Cloud, these conversations appear simultaneously in both systems. This enables Sales to collaborate from the system they spend the most time in, while Finance has access to the conversations from the accounting system of record they call home.
The result: heightened visibility and better collaboration.
Launched at Dreamforce 2014 in October, Intacct Collaborate is already live at several Intacct customer sites, including some from a variety of industries:
Canto, a leading provider of digital asset management solutions
“Collaboration is an everyday activity for finance, whether it’s working with Sales to resolve invoicing issues, clarifying and adjusting order policies, or reviewing transactions within the accounting team. As a multi-national organization, Intacct Collaborate is helping Canto accelerate decision-making, deliver better customer service, and move faster as an organization.”
Hans Schaedel, CFO, Canto, Intacct Collaborate early adopter
AWS Truepower, a leader in renewable energy consulting
“Keeping projects moving smoothly can be a real juggling act – from staffing a project with the right resources, to keeping clients and staff on the same page, to maintaining the records of a project over time. We expect that Intacct Collaborate will help us execute more efficiently and maximize our project performance.”
Sophy Lai,CFO,AWS Truepower, Intacct Collaborate early adopter
The Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF), anon-profit that supports and represents nearly 300,000 students attending its 47 member-schools that include publicly supported Historically Black Colleges and Universities, medical schools, and law schools
Conclusions
Intacct targets small to mid-size businesses in a variety of (mostly service-related) industries, seeking to aid customers in “improving company performance and making finance more productive.” And yet its expanding footprint reaches well beyond the finance team and also quite effectively meets the needs of larger, multi-national, multi-entity enterprises. Indeed its installed base includes one customer with over 2,000 active users, another supporting 650 entities and yet another that supports 250,000 transactions a day.
Intacct’s ability to retain these customers through the customers’ own growth phases is a testament to the continued rapid pace of product innovation and Intacct’s foresight and ability to forge strong partnerships with strategic powerhouses like American Express and Salesforce.com. Whether you call it accounting software or ERP, companies with high growth expectations within Intacct’s wheelhouse would do well to consider its solution, not just for accounting, but to run the business.