The Best Alternative to QuickBooks May Be Part of a Fully Integrated Framework You Already Use
When looking at the business accounting and finance systems available in the market – particularly considering those which have earned a level of market share – there are visible gaps – big ones.
This is clearly reflected in the numbers, where Intuit QuickBooks leads in the small business market but has no reciprocal in the midrange or enterprise markets.
QuickBooks fits into that early space where the business is just starting out, but QuickBooks Enterprise can expand to keep more detailed customer, vendor and item information. Yet there often comes a point where a business has requirements that extend beyond the ability of the QuickBooks software.
Sometimes the mere thought of change is so terrible, usually based on a bad initial implementation experience, that the business uses the software far beyond what it was built to handle. In other cases, add-on solutions are adopted which offer more in-depth or complex capabilities to handle the growing business requirements. Both options may prove to be temporary solutions, meeting most functional demands as long as business needs don’t change.
If a change is in order, it makes sense to consider the benefits of using tools built on a familiar platform that is essentially a framework for designing exactly the system the business needs now, and which has flexibility and scalability enough to change as the business changes.
We understand that an integrated framework can provide much more scalability and support than a standalone solution.
We also recognize that, in today’s modern business, creating workflow efficiency and enabling user productivity are paramount.
While many products calling themselves ERP systems offer a broad range of functionality, integration, and data management capability, they often dictate more to the business how it must operate rather than revealing how it might operate.
Instead, we believe every business should have the opportunity to adapt their business software to make it easier for users to accomplish their work effectively while delivering the data and insight to guide the operation forward.
The need is for an entire tech stack and framework, not simply an application.
Competing ERP systems on the market typically address more and increasingly complex business processes while scaling to support larger business sizes. But the cost and complexity of these products, coupled with poor or too-expensive implementation services, is often the barrier to their adoption and retention.
In most cases, there is no small business version of the big business software, so the upgrade path is unclear and problematic.
Given the huge gap between the “typical” small business system and the upper-levels in the enterprise applications catalogue – the transition from very small to very large software is not likely to be made in a single step. Yet businesses can reduce the number of migration steps in the lifecycle of the company by moving to a flexible platform that can adapt and scale with the operation.
There are three things every business does: communicate, produce information, and keep score.
Microsoft places at the top with the first two, providing email and other communication tools used by businesses of all sizes around the globe, and creating the Microsoft Office family of productivity tools recognized and used by just about everyone.
In the third spot, keeping score, Intuit QuickBooks remains the clear winner. But when the business needs something beyond QuickBooks, or desires to have a solution that fits better, and maybe even integrates into their current M365 working environment, we can introduce the stakeholders to M365 Dynamics Business Central.
Business Central is part of the Microsoft 365 family of products.
Business Central is part of the Microsoft 365 family of products and is integrated with Microsoft Outlook directly, as well as the rest of the family of applications.
It is all able to be connected to the Microsoft Fabric, which weaves together the solutions and services that drive business operations around the globe.
Microsoft has the framework to provide the entire stack of applications, services and technologies working seamlessly together to deliver functionality and process support to fit the business and how it works.
When a siloed financial solution no longer supports the business requirement, or as operations become unworkable due to software that no longer fits the needs, connect with the experts at Mendelson Consulting to see what options are available.
There is never just one way to solve a problem, but there is usually a best way.
Make sense?
J
Cooper Mann Consulting 