Thursday, January 17, 2008

A Small World After All

Recently, friends from Switzerland visited me for the Holidays.  They have their own business back home, and we had an interesting discussion about the differences in financial software between our 2 countries.

As you can probably guess, with the exception of governmental regulations and reporting, there is very little difference in the software needs between the 2 countries.  My friends had just migrated to a new financial system after an extensive search for software that would meet their needs.  Guess what?  European software isn’t any better than ours in the U.S.  In fact, most of their packages are even more antiquated!

My friends’ previous software didn’t even offer interfaces between the different packages (A/P, A/R, G/L, etc.)!  They operate a medium sized company and don’t need a VLFS (see blog, “Beware of the Giant in the Mouse Disguise”), but they have many of the same financial reporting requirements.  Their new system that they selected does offer manual interfacing between some applications, but as with many financial packages, it’s “buggy.” Their major concern was whether their staff would be able to handle all the little nuances of the software in their absence, as support from the software provider was poor.

It is somewhat assuring to know that other countries in the world have the same problems as we do, and we are not alone.  Wouldn’t it be grand if software developers would get it together and really develop good systems, instead of this semi-cooperative, one-upmanship marketing, no-real-change-attitude that we now have?

It’s a small world – let’s pull together!