Running Quickbooks is like....
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If we think about the needs of the SMB market and approach what a baseline product in finance and accounting would look like, we get something dramatically different than QB. Here are some thoughts...
- It should be hosted. The smaller the company, the less that critical software should be running in house. That SMBs would run their financial server in house is a bit crazy as a starting point.
- It should run on a server. Not that every SMB will do this, but that should be their decision to not take their systems seriously, not the software vendor's.
- It should be natively multi-user.
- It should be insanely easy to protect and backup and restore and to egress data.
- It should be cost effective and practical.
- It should be easy to use.
- It should be made in such a way that we are impressed, not embarrassed, to use it.
- It should be made by people we trust and respect, not people we laugh at and despise.
- It should be made by a vendor that wants to succeed by helping us to succeed, not one that exists to trip us up and take advantage of us when we fall.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
QB dominates the market because they make the software for the preferences of the accountants, not the sysadmins. If that's what your accountant uses, as an SMB, that's what you use. You have no choice.
Of course you do, you have the choice to use an accountant who also takes what they do seriously. Why would you ever chose an accountant that isn't serious about accounting? That's totally crazy.
Doesn't matter when they have 97% of the accountants locked up.
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@scottalanmiller said:
If we think about the needs of the SMB market and approach what a baseline product in finance and accounting would look like, we get something dramatically different than QB. Here are some thoughts...
- It should be hosted. The smaller the company, the less that critical software should be running in house. That SMBs would run their financial server in house is a bit crazy as a starting point.
- It should run on a server. Not that every SMB will do this, but that should be their decision to not take their systems seriously, not the software vendor's.
- It should be natively multi-user.
- It should be insanely easy to protect and backup and restore and to egress data.
- It should be cost effective and practical.
- It should be easy to use.
- It should be made in such a way that we are impressed, not embarrassed, to use it.
- It should be made by people we trust and respect, not people we laugh at and despise.
- It should be made by a vendor that wants to succeed by helping us to succeed, not one that exists to trip us up and take advantage of us when we fall.
It's built on a 25 year old codebase which is insanely hard for them to update. Again, I'm not making excuses for them, just explaining why.
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@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
QB dominates the market because they make the software for the preferences of the accountants, not the sysadmins. If that's what your accountant uses, as an SMB, that's what you use. You have no choice.
Of course you do, you have the choice to use an accountant who also takes what they do seriously. Why would you ever chose an accountant that isn't serious about accounting? That's totally crazy.
Doesn't matter when they have 97% of the accountants locked up.
It still matters to the businesses. In any field only a small percentage are really any good or take what they do seriously. Most are just there to coast, take advantage of others not looking to do a good job, etc. That most accountants are not very good or don't care about their jobs or their customers is not surprising. That businesses don't care about themselves and keep using them isn't surprising either. But none of that means that IT pros should look the other way and just act like one bad decision after another isn't bad. Once we do that, we are acting just like those accountants.
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@Nic said:
It's built on a 25 year old codebase which is insanely hard for them to update. Again, I'm not making excuses for them, just explaining why.
Can't be that hard. Their competitors did it in no time with a fraction of the resources. In reality, the cost and effort of maintaining software for which there are no skills on the market is far harder. The only benefit that they get is in screwing their customers through fragility and lock-in. If their goals was quality software at low cost, they could migrate easily to a new code base. I say this because their competitors can migrate you to other code bases that are vastly superior with little effort.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
QB dominates the market because they make the software for the preferences of the accountants, not the sysadmins. If that's what your accountant uses, as an SMB, that's what you use. You have no choice.
Of course you do, you have the choice to use an accountant who also takes what they do seriously. Why would you ever chose an accountant that isn't serious about accounting? That's totally crazy.
Doesn't matter when they have 97% of the accountants locked up.
It still matters to the businesses. In any field only a small percentage are really any good or take what they do seriously. Most are just there to coast, take advantage of others not looking to do a good job, etc. That most accountants are not very good or don't care about their jobs or their customers is not surprising. That businesses don't care about themselves and keep using them isn't surprising either. But none of that means that IT pros should look the other way and just act like one bad decision after another isn't bad. Once we do that, we are acting just like those accountants.
You don't have much choice if all the accountants in a 100 mile radius only use QB. And most businesses are shitty too, so they just go with whatever is handy.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
It's built on a 25 year old codebase which is insanely hard for them to update. Again, I'm not making excuses for them, just explaining why.
Can't be that hard. Their competitors did it in no time with a fraction of the resources. In reality, the cost and effort of maintaining software for which there are no skills on the market is far harder. The only benefit that they get is in screwing their customers through fragility and lock-in. If their goals was quality software at low cost, they could migrate easily to a new code base. I say this because their competitors can migrate you to other code bases that are vastly superior with little effort.
We see the same excuses made by custom fitness equipment vendors. They hire a bunch of devs to make their program, then fire them all when they're done. Now a decade later they tell me to lower my desktop resolution to 1024x768 and 16bit color as a suggestion to help their crusty old code run. Boils my biscuits.
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@Nic said:
You don't have much choice if all the accountants in a 100 mile radius only use QB. And most businesses are shitty too, so they just go with whatever is handy.
Accounting is one of those things that has no reason to be local. We changed accountants over this, it's not an idle threat. Even in the poorest, remotest regions there are accountants who want to make money and do their job well.
I'm not saying that I'm surprised that Intuit has a market in working with crappy accountants to screw businesses that just don't take the effort to run well. I'm just saying that as IT we should never act like it isn't ridiculous on many levels and that businesses that do this can't honestly expect anyone else to actually take them seriously.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
You don't have much choice if all the accountants in a 100 mile radius only use QB. And most businesses are shitty too, so they just go with whatever is handy.
Accounting is one of those things that has no reason to be local. We changed accountants over this, it's not an idle threat. Even in the poorest, remotest regions there are accountants who want to make money and do their job well.
I'm not saying that I'm surprised that Intuit has a market in working with crappy accountants to screw businesses that just don't take the effort to run well. I'm just saying that as IT we should never act like it isn't ridiculous on many levels and that businesses that do this can't honestly expect anyone else to actually take them seriously.
You can't just pretend Sturgeon's Law doesn't rule the universe
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We work with accountants and bookkeepers too, and QB isn't actually that popular from what we've seen. Of course, we only hire good people and only good companies tend to look to us for help, so there is a bit of self selection there. But in the real world of successful businesses, I'm really not seeing QB as much of a thing for the past several years. I don't think the QB stranglehold on the low end business world is as dramatic as people like to think that it is while trying to excuse why they use it.
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@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
You don't have much choice if all the accountants in a 100 mile radius only use QB. And most businesses are shitty too, so they just go with whatever is handy.
Accounting is one of those things that has no reason to be local. We changed accountants over this, it's not an idle threat. Even in the poorest, remotest regions there are accountants who want to make money and do their job well.
I'm not saying that I'm surprised that Intuit has a market in working with crappy accountants to screw businesses that just don't take the effort to run well. I'm just saying that as IT we should never act like it isn't ridiculous on many levels and that businesses that do this can't honestly expect anyone else to actually take them seriously.
You can't just pretend Sturgeon's Law doesn't rule the universe
I don't at all. I'm simply stating that if you are crap, I'm not going to pretend that I don't notice and give you a prize for failing because "everyone should feel special."
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Sturgeon's Law is the basis, or better Kipling's adage from which Sturgeon's was derived we assume, for much of Adams' theory that 99% of workers are "in the way" of the 1% that actually produce everything that we have in spite of the 99%, rather that because of.
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Kipling's refers to products. Sturgeon's to art. Adams' to work.
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It is interesting that over time, as people become accustomed to the laws, that the percentages grow dramatically. Kipling said that 80% of products were worthless. Sturgeon that 90% of art was crap. Adams that 99% of work was useless or negative in value.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
You don't have much choice if all the accountants in a 100 mile radius only use QB. And most businesses are shitty too, so they just go with whatever is handy.
Accounting is one of those things that has no reason to be local. We changed accountants over this, it's not an idle threat. Even in the poorest, remotest regions there are accountants who want to make money and do their job well.
I'm not saying that I'm surprised that Intuit has a market in working with crappy accountants to screw businesses that just don't take the effort to run well. I'm just saying that as IT we should never act like it isn't ridiculous on many levels and that businesses that do this can't honestly expect anyone else to actually take them seriously.
You can't just pretend Sturgeon's Law doesn't rule the universe
I don't at all. I'm simply stating that if you are crap, I'm not going to pretend that I don't notice and give you a prize for failing because "everyone should feel special."
That doesn't change the fact that 90% of everything and everyone is crap
You can call out QB for being shitty and be right, but the reality is that once you lead the market you only have to innovate enough not to lose customers and ride that into obsolescence. People aren't going to change from QB unless there's a crisis, so you've got a guaranteed generation of customers. Yes the millennials will use something else, but the shareholders of QB are old farts who won't live long enough to care. -
@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
You don't have much choice if all the accountants in a 100 mile radius only use QB. And most businesses are shitty too, so they just go with whatever is handy.
Accounting is one of those things that has no reason to be local. We changed accountants over this, it's not an idle threat. Even in the poorest, remotest regions there are accountants who want to make money and do their job well.
I'm not saying that I'm surprised that Intuit has a market in working with crappy accountants to screw businesses that just don't take the effort to run well. I'm just saying that as IT we should never act like it isn't ridiculous on many levels and that businesses that do this can't honestly expect anyone else to actually take them seriously.
You can't just pretend Sturgeon's Law doesn't rule the universe
I don't at all. I'm simply stating that if you are crap, I'm not going to pretend that I don't notice and give you a prize for failing because "everyone should feel special."
That doesn't change the fact that 90% of everything and everyone is crap
You can call out QB for being shitty and be right, but the reality is that once you lead the market you only have to innovate enough not to lose customers and ride that into obsolescence. People aren't going to change from QB unless there's a crisis, so you've got a guaranteed generation of customers. Yes the millennials will use something else, but the shareholders of QB are old farts who won't live long enough to care.I wasn't calling out QB, I was pointing out the reaction that IT should have to businesses that are willing to choose it.
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But Sturgeon's Law points out that 90% of literature is crap. What it leaves out is that the 10% that is good has 90% of the readers. We are not mocking the 90% of authors who are incapable of writing good literature. We are calling out the readers who choose to read bad books instead of good ones.
People produce crap to make money. That is not foolish. Sad, but not foolish. It is people who buy crap when something better is free that we must mock to help them to improve.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
You don't have much choice if all the accountants in a 100 mile radius only use QB. And most businesses are shitty too, so they just go with whatever is handy.
Accounting is one of those things that has no reason to be local. We changed accountants over this, it's not an idle threat. Even in the poorest, remotest regions there are accountants who want to make money and do their job well.
I'm not saying that I'm surprised that Intuit has a market in working with crappy accountants to screw businesses that just don't take the effort to run well. I'm just saying that as IT we should never act like it isn't ridiculous on many levels and that businesses that do this can't honestly expect anyone else to actually take them seriously.
You can't just pretend Sturgeon's Law doesn't rule the universe
I don't at all. I'm simply stating that if you are crap, I'm not going to pretend that I don't notice and give you a prize for failing because "everyone should feel special."
That doesn't change the fact that 90% of everything and everyone is crap
You can call out QB for being shitty and be right, but the reality is that once you lead the market you only have to innovate enough not to lose customers and ride that into obsolescence. People aren't going to change from QB unless there's a crisis, so you've got a guaranteed generation of customers. Yes the millennials will use something else, but the shareholders of QB are old farts who won't live long enough to care.I wasn't calling out QB, I was pointing out the reaction that IT should have to businesses that are willing to choose it.
You know as well as I do how much actual selection power IT pros have in SMB
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@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
You don't have much choice if all the accountants in a 100 mile radius only use QB. And most businesses are shitty too, so they just go with whatever is handy.
Accounting is one of those things that has no reason to be local. We changed accountants over this, it's not an idle threat. Even in the poorest, remotest regions there are accountants who want to make money and do their job well.
I'm not saying that I'm surprised that Intuit has a market in working with crappy accountants to screw businesses that just don't take the effort to run well. I'm just saying that as IT we should never act like it isn't ridiculous on many levels and that businesses that do this can't honestly expect anyone else to actually take them seriously.
You can't just pretend Sturgeon's Law doesn't rule the universe
I don't at all. I'm simply stating that if you are crap, I'm not going to pretend that I don't notice and give you a prize for failing because "everyone should feel special."
That doesn't change the fact that 90% of everything and everyone is crap
You can call out QB for being shitty and be right, but the reality is that once you lead the market you only have to innovate enough not to lose customers and ride that into obsolescence. People aren't going to change from QB unless there's a crisis, so you've got a guaranteed generation of customers. Yes the millennials will use something else, but the shareholders of QB are old farts who won't live long enough to care.I wasn't calling out QB, I was pointing out the reaction that IT should have to businesses that are willing to choose it.
You know as well as I do how much actual selection power IT pros have in SMB
Selective power is not the issue. If IT has no selective power, IT has no function and need not exist. If IT does not select, IT does not exist and is pretend. If IT is to have value IT must have value to provide. Even if management does not listen, IT cannot stop functioning as IT or IT stops existing.
By the logic that "why bother because no one is likely to listen" we literally might as well just stop learning IT, let vendors make all of the decisions and become a part of the majority in calling ourselves IT while actually scamming the businesses that hire us much like QB and the accountants are doing.
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That's the IT / YM dilemma. If we want to be good at IT, we have to do good IT. If we want to be good at IT and/or we want to assist the businesses that we support in their business success we must provide good IT.
If we redefine our goals as "yes men" and our only goal or primary goal is not IT or business but is, in fact, to kiss up and make making others who are failing feel good about themselves regardless of their failings then we can choose to do that - but we can't in good conscious think of ourselves as IT. We are not providing IT beyond what would be provided if we did not exist. We are simply "feel gooders" making people feel good whatever they do.
That was my point about doctors. Plenty of doctors will do this too, tell you anything that you want to hear. But we don't take them seriously.
