Intacct upgraded its on-demand accounting software with Intacct Spring 2008.

At the Microsoft Convergence Conference last month, there were no lengthy expositions involving lessons from the travels of great explorers. But there was a slide with the new leader of Microsoft Business Solutions wearing a cheesehead. It was clear that Kirill Tatarinov, who wore the Wisconsin symbol, would not evoke lessons of Lewis and Clark. But neither could I picture long-time leader MBS Doug Burgum performing karaoke at the house of blues as Tatarinov did (to bad reviews).

Does most of your business result from Web sites? Or does most of it come from referrals? If it comes from referrals, as a lot of CPA firm business does, almost every potential client will still check out your Web site before giving you a call.Does yours grab and hold a visitor’s attention, making them want to read on? Studies show that you must win your visitor’s attention in less time than it takes to blink an eye, so dull, boring Web sites with extraneous information and poor graphics are a definite turn-off.

EPICOR TAPS NEW CEOEpicor Software has named Thomas Kelly as the company’s new president and chief executive, succeeding former CEO George Klaus, who will continue serving as executive chairman of the board.

Firm technology requirements have changed and will continue to change. The definition of IT has expanded and impacts everyone in your firm. Its size and the amount of IT knowledge that your chief executive or managing partner has dictate the type of technology leader that your firm needs to be successful.Yes, you read correctly — the CEO or managing partner’s understanding of technology and commitment directly impact success. The buzzwords today are “integration” and “innovation.” IT leaders must understand the firm’s vision, and firm leaders must understand how technology innovations can accelerate the achievement of that vision. Integration is a two-way street.

Everyone is looking for community. And nobody knows quite what it is. From software vendors to traditional print publishers, the talk is about building community to produce an environment that binds customers and users to the vendor and the vendor’s products more tightly. Who has the most powerful glue?

CCH said its Accounting Research Manager database has added daily e-mail updates at no additional cost to the service.

Spotting an attractive young female at an accounting software conference is like finding a "needle in a haystack."

Time and billing software developer ImagineTime has beefed up its paperless invoicing capabilities through alliances with Wells Fargo, ComData and GoToBilling to process payments from credit cards and automated clearing houses.

Practice management, as an application, appears differently to different viewers. To some, practice management is all about revenue management. To others, it’s about time management, and to yet others, it’s about project management.Practice management encompasses all of these areas and more. At its most basic definition, practice management is about resource management. Every firm is constrained by the resources that it has available, including staff hours and availability, and economic factors. A good practice management system allows a firm to maximize the use of these resources through awareness of how staff time is employed, making sure that the right resources are applied to the right tasks, and that revenue is generated in a profitable manner and collected in an appropriate time.

SAGE RECOGNIZES RESELLERSSage Software named MIS Group as its overall business partner of the year for 2007 for North America. The Dallas-based group resells several of Sage’s products, including Sage MAS 90 ERP, MAS 200 ERP, MAS 500 ERP, Sage Timberline Office, Sage Master Builder, Sage SalesLogix, SageCRM, Sage Abra HRMS, Sage FAS Fixed Assets and Sage Timesheet.

Arthur Andersen was well known for its training program and facilities at St. Charles, Ill. While Accenture now trains at that site, the requirements and strategies for training are far different than those prevalent when most firm owners entered the profession. Time changes many things, but the urgency of instilling a training-learning culture within your firm has never been greater. Now is the time to act.I know your first reaction: “We’re not Accenture or a Big Four firm.” True. But you’re a professional services firm that competes for quality talent — and a learning culture is integral to sustained profitability and even existence in today’s economy. Small accounting firms compete in a knowledge-based business, and must understand the value of training and learning in good times as well as bad.

The fact that it took two shuttle buses to get from the hotel to the Orlando Convention Center , where Microsoft held its annual Convergence user conference says something. There was a quick walk from my room at Disney’s Caribbean Resort to the hotel’s shuttle to take me to a bus stop to pick up the shuttle to the convention center. It took 48 minutes to get to the show.

Whitebirch Software has released the latest version of its business planning, forecasting and budgeting software, Whitebirch Planning 7.0.

CCH has begun offering batch processing for its Tax Zone Locator and other products on the CCH Tax Research NetWork.

Intacct has launched a business solution provider partner program that expands the accounting software developer's existing channel partner program to provide value-added sales, integration services and support.

NetSuite has begun rolling out its Business Operating System, a software-as-a-service application development system for software developers, independent software vendors and value-added resellers

About 25 years ago, a new trade newspaper entered a market serving what were then called computer specialty stores. As they say in the business, it was the fifth book in a seven- book market in terms of the measurement that counted—advertising revenue. When it went out of business in 1989, Computer+Software News was the No. 2 publication in a two-book market. Now, it’s a no-book market. That’s because computer specialty stores don’t really exist anymore. These were the stores best known through the chains such as ComputerLand and MicroAge that started out primarily selling hardware, but got squeezed out by direct sales organizations like Dell Computer and the mass marketers like Computer Depot. That one magazine left in that market was then called Computer Reseller News, and although other publications came and went, CRN, as it came to be called was the only one left from the mid-1980s. And it doesn’t really do the same thing, and in the face of the Web, has cut back its once-weekly frequency. That scenario comes to mind many times when I talked with VARs who sell mid-market accounting software. They could disappear in just the same way, or change so much that they aren’t the same kind of businesses. The reason for indirect distribution, the use of resellers, occurs because the cost of some products is low enough that the manufacturers can’t afford to employ sales forces to sell them. The Web changes things since there’s no software to physically distribute, and it removes some of the rationale for using VARs. There has already been talk, since as a prediction a few years ago by Doug Burgum, the longtime head of Great Plains and then Microsoft Business Solutions, that the market would some day have margin-less software. Certainly, the trend from vendors is always to reduce profit margins. And then there are the conflicts between vendors, whose direct sale forces can offer cheaper prices, and the resellers selling the same products. There are credible reports of serious conflict between resellers and the sales forces for NetSuite and Sage Software. It’s too early to predict these factors will result in the end of software reselling as we know it. But it’s something that could happen.

Backup and recovery are critical for anyone who is building a data-protection structure. From the earliest days of computing, setting aside a recoverable second copy of essential business data has made the difference between a business' survival and its painful death.

INTUIT'S ACCOUNTANT STRATEGY