Best Software CEO Ron Verni's mantra term for Insights 2004 was "We move at the speed of customer." While it's certainly a great tag line for an aggressive marketing campaign, it doesn't, in this writer's opinion, embody the type of leadership our market needs. You'll notice I used the word "NEEDS", not "WANTS". After being an active participant on virtually all sides of "the market" for nearly 30 years I have come to the conclusion that we (my brethren in the practice of public accounting) aren't well-versed enough in the possibilities afforded by modern technology to make reasonable requests of our technology vendors.
Practicing accountants didn't ASK for paperless office solutions, but when those solutions were brought to market they were quickly adopted. Workflow management via enhanced trial balance software --- same scenario. ASP delivery and client portals --- the same. You get the picture. Developers win by surprising and delighting their customers, not by meeting their base expectations. Best has done a magnificent job of assembling a huge arsenal of products. Now it's up to them to "delight" the profession by building integration that transcends repackaging with a common logo and offers true data interoperability. That was Ron's promise in his keynote address. That Best would roll out a common "Rosetta Stone"-type middle-ware application that would facilitate write-once and transfer often data exchange and synchronization between [eventually] all of Best's products. Very ambitious, indeed.
The second annual Best Software confab drew over 3,000 attendees to Orlando. While Best employees seemed absolutely ubiquitous I was assured they accounted for only about 15% of the total --- or about 3 employees per product! Of more interest to me were the 170+ vendors exhibiting at the show. I've been at every major accounting technology trade show and/or conference in the country over the past ten plus years and thought I'd seen every vendor. Wrong! At least 2/3rds of these vendors I had never seen before. They exist to serve a specific slice of users of a specific software application. And since Best has accumulated such an impressive stable of products the "adders-on" are numerous. It is actually quite impressive to see so many products, partners (Best-ese for resellers), and consultants happily buzzing around the behemoth facilities at the Gaylord Palms with not much more in common other than the fact that they all write checks to Best Software.
