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One consultant has urged accounting firms to forget price when selecting a software solution and instead select an offering based on the time savings it will generate.
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'Too much emphasis on price' in software, accountants told
20 July 2017
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Speaking to Accountants Daily, Mayflower Consulting director, Sarah Penn said that many accountants put too much emphasis on price when searching for and selecting a software offering.
“There's a lot of discussion at the moment, I’m hearing a lot of vendors talking about how they're going to be cheaper than XYZ. But I would say price should be the last thing on your list,” Ms Penn said.
“If you're an accountant looking at software, the amount of time and effort that you are going to save by picking the right package is way, way more valuable than picking the one that's $20 cheaper per portfolio.”
Ms Penn said it’s vital that firms select the correct software, as changing software later down the track can be a difficult and expensive task.
“When you implement one of these systems, it's quite a change to the way you do things in your business, you do not want to start down one road and then decide it's not quite right and try and change, that is a very expensive thing to do,” she said.
“So you want to do your homework upfront and absolutely not get taken in by anything just because it looks the cheapest.”
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Ms Penn acknowledged that accountants are numbers people, but this is one scenario where they should put the numbers aside.
“I think when you deal with numbers all day it's very easy to think if that one’s $20 cheaper per client and I have 100 clients well that's $2,000 I’m saving etc,” she said.
“But you have to be really careful because at the end of the day, clients couldn't care less if you charge them $20 more or less, it won't make a difference, but it might a big difference to your business in terms of what you can and can't achieve with the software.”
“Think about the time saving, not about $20.”
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