Photo by Found Animals, and included because we needed an Accountant LOLcat to make this topic less serious.

This is re-post of a story I wrote over on What Product. It’s very relevant for accountants but equally relevant for business owners selecting an accountant that suits their needs.

Too often we see accounting systems viewed as pure compliance systems. This may be the case where the accounting system is only being used to produce BAS remittances or gather the info to prepare the tax return. However, as advisors, if you recommend purely basis this need you miss a fantastic opportunity to have the business owner benefit from other tasks accounting systems do for them.

 

Accounting systems are sometimes business systems. They do much more than just the accounts. They create workflow efficiency which leads to reduced operational labour costs. They can also help move the business toward straight through processing where customers do the data entry through their buying and ordering.

 

When compliance is the only consideration advisors drastically lesson the quality of service given to clients. I think you can come to this conclusion yourself by asking this question. Is my recommendation respectful of their business workflow needs and costs or is just about me and my cost of service?

 

Accountants and bookkeepers give varying levels of thought to this in my experience. Some are very good, considerate, and even go through a research phase before recommending any system to a client. They are quite agnostic on software vendors. They ask the right questions of the business owner and also the candidate software vendors to fill knowledge gaps. The decision is an authentic one that supports the business owners business workflow needs which may amount to hundreds or thousands of workflow hours.

 

The worst decisions are evangelised ones. Mostly the industry doesn’t fall for evangelising a particular software product but a surprising amount of firms do. This type of decision is religious rather than scientific. It’s when ego or the status within an accounting software tribe rules their decision process. “I’m an ABC firm” type of thinking. I think it (and I think business owners would agree with me) should be about the numbers. Leave the software vendors interests aside and make a decision in the interest of your clients business model. Nothing else matters in the long run.

 

Business accounting systems perform other tasks beyond compliance such as customer management, scheduling, time capture, inventory management, channel management (such as retail, partner and e-tail sales channels). It is also the system acting as a contact list for marketing purposes in many cases. Most importantly in the era of straight through processing from e-commerce or POS into accounting software it facilitates payment tracking in real time.

 

When I meet business owners I often ask them what process their advisors went through to pick a accounting system or did they just select one themselves. The answers I get back suggest that Micro businesses usually rely on their accountant or bookkeepers advice but small to medium business more often make the call themselves. They know their business better than their accountant so most often don’t even ask their accountant.

 

In my view business owners fall into two main client groups.
(a) Those that see accounting systems as a business system. They see it as part of their technology stack that they have personally selected.
(b) Those that are advised or told what to go and buy.

 

I ask the second type of business owner what made the advisor select the system. Mostly it’s what their practise uses. Often it’s about lowering the cost of producing a tax return and set of accounts which they suggest reduces the clients bill. Many firms explicitly admit it’s not about the client but about them. They say “we don’t provide services unless you use ABC”

 

This is very interesting in many ways. It implies that there are small to medium businesses that dominate their accountant and view them as a compliance or tax advice service provider and there are submissive business owners (generally micro business) who seek and accept advice given to them by their accountant on how to run their business.

 

The vast majority of my friends who own business are in the former category but when I talk to friends who are in sole trader situations or small <5 people businesses I do see lots of them seek and accept the advice as to what software to choose. They trust their accountant, and they should. So in response the industry should reciprocate and ensure selfless advice as to which software the client should use.

A few weeks ago I was approached by the moderator of a LinkedIn group, to contribute to a conversation in which an advisor was seeking advice on “the right product for their client”.

As you can imagine, we receive requests like this frequently, and enjoy the opportunity to engage with others, and share some of our insight.

As I sat down to go through the usual “online accounting vs. desktop software” and “us vs. them” discussion I was hit by another thought: I knew absolutely nothing about the business I was about (by default) to help out. In fact, neither did any of the other advisors or vendors adding to the conversation.

I suddenly didn’t feel very qualified to add anything of value, but I did have another thought: With trust comes a duty of care.

One of the great things about the Australian (and global) software industry is that it is very competitive. This keeps software costs low and ensures your clients get a great number of choices to fit to their specific business model. One of the costs of that competitive situation is that there is a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt in the industry. More recently, with online and social media involved, it can get as ugly, personal and dirty as politics.

 

What I’m writing about here is how to avoid the industry FUD and MUD being slung around, and instead be the trusted advisors you were trained to be – and choose the right solution for your client needs purely out of your duty of care for them.

 

The client comes first. Always.

 

So often I have run into industry participants who have forgotten this basic quality of a trusted advisor. I read with disgust a post on the ICAA LinkedIn group where a person asked what software he should buy. The only detail he provided was that it should have multi-currency. People (should I say the minions serving software companies) recommended their favourites without a clue as to what this person’s business model was about. If we want an authentic relationship with our clients then we must ensure their interests are served first which means recommending nothing unless you have asked the right questions. It also means buying the accounting product that’s right for your client’s business, and not your own. I call this selfish-service not service.

 

Some might say that practice efficiency is the only thing to worry about, the bottom line of your cost of sale. I disagree completely with this assertion. Businesses that do this tend to go broke over time because they aren’t operating for the customer, but for themselves. This inauthenticity manifests itself through the culture, through customer churn and in destroying trust.

 

Your charge model should be elastic with respect to client complexity. The more complex a business model then it’s more likely the supporting systems won’t work as cleanly with you practice systems. An example might be dealing with a client which has multi-channel sales across resellers, e-commerce stores and wholesaling to retail outlets. That type of client should be on Saasu rather than Banklink. Likewise a client who doesn’t want their data online and only has some basic expenses each month probably could just use BankLink rather than Saasu. The right product for the right client is the right approach. This is what adds value to your practice long term.

 

Some advisors have an approach to advise based on their comfort zone or out of an evangelised view. Essentially what you have done here is monetised your customer’s trust upfront and dramatically increased the risk and cost of maintaining it now that they aren’t in the right system for their business. A few weeks into the change they call you and aren’t happy because the Tier 3 accounting solution as it is a little lightweight. Your internal processing costs might have gone down a little but their costs have gone up a lot, and your brand (reputation) as an advisor is now damaged. You get churn and thus your real position isn’t a good as you first thought.

 

I recommend you don’t listen to any one software company, but instead be a researcher and an analyst. You and your industry nearly own the phrase “due diligence” so live that behaviour and don’t trust everything you read.

 

Get real about it. The software industry sees and uses you as a free sales channel (an off-balance sheet sales team selling and evangelising their products), and they make you pay for the privilege of doing that! Make the decisions for your clients in a scientific way rather than an emotional one based on the hype and FUD the software companies have fed you. Do this because you too are a small business owner, an entrepreneur – just like the people you want to help be successful – for their families and in their lives.

This post was first drafted as a response to  a conversation  in the Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia group on LinkedIn. It was also posted on the WhatProduct Accounting Resources and Software blog.

On Friday I had the privilege of presenting at the Designing for Mobility conference on the topic of responsive design and how it relates to web applications.

The conference had a great line-up of speakers, and as with previous UX Australia events I’ve attended, there was nothing on the day that I didn’t get a lot out of. On that basis, I hate to single any talk out, but two standouts were Hendrick’s talk on mobile research at Google, and Rod Farmer’s talk on pattern-driven design (I think they stood out mainly because of their relation to my own talk, so I was keenly interested in what they had to say.) But all provided useful insights…

My presentation started by looking at the key reason for our decision to adopt responsive design as an approach to our application. I then covered 7 things that we’ve learnt along our journey (so far) towards implementing responsive design for our application. While the nature of the conference, and its attendees, is that the talk is a little on the technical side (that is, more relevant to other user experience folks), it may still hold broader interest to our customers in outlining a little of our approach, and what can be expected in the coming months as we start to roll out this approach.

The key points that I think might be of interest to our customers are:

• Responsive design is our preferred approach to supporting mobile devices (over native apps), including for Android and Windows 8 devices
• We’ll be rolling out responsive re-treatments of our key screens over time, with a view to cover the core features currently provided in our iPhone app as a priority (with an eventual goal to not have separate, native apps)
• We’ll be designing new functionality for the application with an emphasis on touch- and mobile-friendly features
• We’ll continue to improve our processes to stay lean (so we can continue to provide high-value for our efforts)

I’ve posted the presentation on Slideshare (as well as embedding it below). The deck, plus my speaker notes which includes links to various sources and further reading, is also available for download (PDF 12.4MB).

If you have any questions or would like to share your thoughts on the outlined approach, please feel free to do so in the comments here.

One of the benefits of having an extended train ride these days is the opportunity to catch up on some good videos that I wouldn’t usually get the chance to watch. The other day I had the chance to watch this one from Basset & Partners that:

…is an exploration of the future of Interaction Design and User Experience from some of the industry’s thought leaders. As the role of software is catapulting forward, Interaction Design is seen to be not only increasing in importance dramatically, but also expected to play a leading role in shaping the coming “Internet of things.” Ultimately, when the digital and physical worlds become one, humans along with technology are potentially on the path to becoming a “super organism” capable of influencing and enabling a broad spectrum of new behaviors in the world.

Connecting (Full Film) from Bassett & Partners on Vimeo.

While that blurb is perhaps a little hyperbolic, a lot of the themes presented in the video are also coming up for us in our work and reading of trends etc. It is well worth a watch if you have a few spare minutes on the bus or train and you are interested in getting up-to-speed on some of the technological approaches that will be shaping business in the coming years…

We’ve got a close-knit team here at Saasu, but as we continue to grow, we felt it important to formalise a few things—systemising (the things we can’t automate) where necessary.

Our aim has been to create reference documents and frameworks/guides that empower staff (as opposed to being restricting), as well as providing a way for new staff to get up to speed quickly.

As a company (and individuals), we’re big fans of social media, and we enjoy watching the way people interact online evolve. Many of us are active in a variety of communities. We wanted to find a way to harness that enthusiasm and passion for social engagement.

To support this, we’ve put together some ‘Netiquette’ guidelines, based on our Team Values, and centered around a few key principles. You can check out the full document if you want, but the main elements are:

Social as a service
We’re in it for you (our customers and partners).

Authenticity vs. spin
We’re up-front and honest.

Open & honest vs. private & confidential
Sadly, we can’t share everything with you.

Turn the other cheek
Beware the trolls.

Don’t get personal
Be personable.

Choose when a conversation is in the public domain
Sometimes social channels aren’t the most effective ways of communication.

Going on the record
Watch what you say.

Forward-looking statements
Make sure we can deliver what we promise.

Image/media sourcing & crediting
It goes without saying, give credit where credit’s due.

We hope you find it helpful in thinking about your own social media approach. And, as always, we look forward to your feedback. Also, we’re always looking for ways to improve the way we do things here, so if you’ve got resources or references you think the community may benefit from, feel free to share them in the comments below.

This post is part of a series discussing the process we’re undertaking to redesign our user interface and branding. We’re sharing in the spirit of “designing in the open” with the hope that it might be of value to our customers and others in our community.

Photo Credit: Daniel Sammut

Previously in this series, I outlined a number of preliminary steps we took to better understand our customers’ worlds in order to refresh the Saasu brand. One of the most prominent ways that a brand is communicated is through a visual identity¹.

In my experience, a critical step in developing a visual identity is to have a really solid, well thought through design brief. We decided that we wanted to work with a visual design partner to translate the brand vision that had emerged from our user research and staff engagement sessions into a new visual identity system that we could apply to all aspects of our business. (I have written about the distinction between a logo and a visual identity system in a previous post.)

In the briefing, we outlined some core goals for the new brand:

• Better represent the vision, values and personality of Saasu and the people within it.
• Reflect longer-term design trends e.g. a shift towards more “structural” approach to visual design and multiple-resolution devices (and to avoid current design fads).
• Create an identity system that can be applied in a variety of contexts.
• Have a character that translates into new markets.

Being an online business, our emphasis was on creating a great online experience. But we wanted to ensure that the identity system also translated into other contexts (e.g. printed materials, conference stands, signage). Our brief also included:

• Our brand values
• The different ways that we expected to use the visual identity system to (e.g. our web application, marketing website, print materials, presentations etc.).
• An outline of our key audience groups, in more general terms (e.g. basic demographic information on our customer based based on usage statistics).
• A collection of prioritised personas outlining the people we aim to serve, based on our customer research and the many conversations we’ve had with customers over the years. These personas are a critical tool for helping the team to design empathically (I talked about this concept in my talk for the 2012 Saasu Conference).
• A “moodboard”, collaboratively developed with the Saasu team, outlining our thinking/perspective on the broad visual style and approach.
• Examples of other sites, applications, brands and other artefacts (e.g. architectural examples etc.) that reflected the aesthetic interests of the team.
• References to our peers in both the accounting software/online accounting market, but also examples we found inspiring from other markets.
• General notes on the design direction from our own experience and analysis of the other materials provided (For example, the importance of performance in relation to our web application and how this needed to be considered in the system).
• Our budget, timeline and key contacts.

Our aim was to provide enough information for our design collaborators to get up-to-speed with our market space, to understand our wants and needs and to set reasonable boundaries without being overly prescriptive. This latter point is very important (and a difficult balance to achieve); our experience shows that good design starts with the definition of clear boundaries, but tying things down too much or providing too much direction can limit creativity.

We then approached a number of design firms that we felt did inspiring work—some that we’d worked with before, some we knew by reputation, others that we discovered via Pinterest and Dribbble—and sought a response to brief. We were relieved to receive positive feedback about our brief from a number of the designers that we approached for this project; we feel the effort that we put in up front was reflected in the quality of the designers’ responses.

We were keen to engage a collaborative partner that complemented and extended our own skills and experience. After evaluating the responses to the brief (which was no easy task—did I mention we received a number of stand-out responses?), we decided to work with the team at Studio Sammut and have been really happy with the results to date. We hope you are too when we start rolling out these new visual identity elements in the coming months.

1. There are a couple of different camps as to what “brand” means and who determines a brand’s meaning. I’m in the camp that a brand is the sum total of a person’s experience with an organisation—using the product and services, support, marketing and advertising communications, social channels etc. In this view, visual identity is just one part of this overall experience.

This post is part of a series discussing the process we’re undertaking to redesign our user interface and branding. We’re sharing in the spirit of “designing in the open” with the hope that it might be of value to our customers and others in our community.

In my previous post I hinted that we were looking to develop a visual identity system, rather than just a logotype, set of fonts and colours, and how much whitespace to leave around the logo.

While these elements are important, we were more interested in ensuring the branding elements would translate into a variety of different contexts, and that it was flexible enough to accommodate new treatments into the future. (For example, 5 years ago, tablet computers were predominantly represented by eye-candy design concepts from the likes of frog design and IDEO.)

This was especially important for our web application. We wanted a branding system that could enable the Labs team (our internal development and testing team) to make decisions without necessarily having to consult with the design team on every detail. That is, that there were a set of guidelines that could be applied and would make sense whether we were designing for on-screen or off.

Internally, we’ve been referring to this as developing a “design language”. I first heard this term being used in the context of automotive design, in reference to Mazda’s Kodo design language. Mazda have been leaders, I think, in applying this principle across their fleet. You can see the familial resemblance across all their vehicles, from their micro-cars to their SUVs. Each has a distinct personality and character, but is clearly a Mazda. Contrast this with manufacturers like Subaru or Nissan, where each vehicle looks like it could be from a different manufacturer.

Such a system requires a clear set of values and an underlying “story” that enables this kind of translation. In Mazda’s case, it is “soul of motion”, which Mazda’s chief designer Akira Tamatani describes: “The essence of the Kodo design is to capture the beauty and strength of the instantaneous motion of animal and athlete.” He explains (and expands) in this short video interview:

The folks at Studio Sammut really ‘got’ this concept (and demonstrated this in their portfolio) and we think they’ve done a great job of translating this into the brand guidelines we are now using internally to develop the new marketing website and refresh the product design. The underlying story comes from our brand values, and our key value that managing your business financials should be rewarding, and that Saasu is a place where lots of elements of running your business come together.

The visual translation places an emphasis on our customers and their world. It also draws upon the Bauhaus and functionalist design traditions (from which the adage “form follows function” is drawn). This is the same tradition from which Microsoft’s highly regarded “Metro” design language draws upon, and which steps away from the ornamental design style popularised by Apple with their iOS (which runs on iPhone and iPad). Music software maker Ableton is another example of this approach at work.

While the specific design details of each of the products we’ve applied our own design system to are quite distinct (and we are still evolving and refining this language as we gain more experience using it), they retain that familial connection. As a sneak peek of what we mean, here’s a quick shot of a few example treatments. It’s important to note that these are just exploratory examples and don’t necessarily represent the final products.

I feel it important to note that, in keeping with our ‘Engineered’ brand value, this design language is not just about aesthetic look and feel. We’ve also considered performance, device independence and other factors in its development. But that’s a whole different topic… (for another blog post, perhaps.)

This post is part of a series discussing the process we’re undertaking to redesign our user interface and branding. We’re sharing in the spirit of “designing in the open” with the hope that it might be of value to our customers and others in our community.

In my previous post, I mentioned how we have utilised research methods to inform our practice (my talk on service design at last year’s Saasu conference, presented before I joined the Saasu team, expands on this somewhat). One of the challenges with using such research, whether it be qualitative or quantitative, is how to communicate and represent the data in a way that’s meaningful to the design team. While we can’t map every single one of our users’ requirements, our aim is to “package” our research findings in way that we can keep our customers front and centre in our design process.

Imagine that you’ve done some surveys (quantitative research) and you have some good information on your customers. Typically this information is presented in summary, for example:

• Age: 28–42 years of age
• Gender: 32% male/68% female
• Income: $50k–85k

As a designer, it’s very hard to design to that. What does it all mean?

Qualitative data can be added to the picture to help provide further insights. For example, through interviews or a mobile diaries study we might find that our participants really enjoy the outdoors and hold family to be very important.

This “richer” data can be very helpful, but we don’t want to design specifically for interviews. Plus, it can be very hard to connect the data-sets (qual and quant) together in ways that the design team, business stakeholders and other interested parties can use. This is one place where a tool known as personas can really help.

In my previous design practice I put together a short guide to personas (available under a Creative Commons license) that explains a little bit about what personas are and how they work. From the guide:

Personas are discussion documents that we use to help us see our work through the eyes of the people we aim to serve—our internal and external stakeholders: customers, suppliers, donors, staff, constituents, citizens etc.  They represent archetypical (but importantly not stereotypical) users of the products, systems, and other business processes we are considering in our work.

There are a couple of key points in there. The first is that personas are only as valuable as the discussions they enable. The actual document/artefact is a small part of the value that they provide. The second thing is that we should not fall into overly simplistic caricature when we develop personas. For this reason, they are best based on research¹.

I find the value of personas is difficult to get across in words alone, unfortunately. It is not until you experience them in the context of a project that their value becomes fully apparent. I had one client who worked with qualitative and quantitive research findings on a regular basis comment on how effective personas were at representing learnings in a way that’s meaningful and actionable, moreso than the reports and traditional communications they’d used in the past. This is the key value of personas, in my view.

I could write a whole series on personas—workshop and other methods to create them, dos and don’ts etc.—but I’ll skip that for the moment. (Please do drop us a comment if you’d like to learn more about this method, as I’d happily expand if there is interest.)

In brief, we find personas help us to:

• Keep the people we aim to serve at the centre of our attention.
• Imagine walking in the shoes of the people we aim to serve—to empathise and to see what we are working on from their perspective. Will it make sense based on their mental models and perspectives? (i.e. the way they approach problem solving and how they frame obstacles etc.)
• Discover new opportunities to service our customers—by thinking of our offering from their perspective we can find new ways of meeting those needs that we might have otherwise done considering things from an internal perspective.
• Focus our work—whether that be determining what features to build or where marketing and advertising would be best placed.

I find in practice that a “working set” of about 4 well-constructed personas works well for any given project. We have about 10 personas in total, which we re-organise/prioritise depending on the project we are working on. Our personas were based on the interviews with our customers and partners I’ve mentioned earlier, and no doubt will continue to evolve as our research practice expands. We combined these learnings with staff knowledge of our customers (e.g. from service calls, meetings with customers, conference conversations etc.) to develop a number of personas related to our business. We’ve found them to be particularly effective as a tool to focus the team and to communicate the needs of our customers.

Have you used personas in your business? What was your experience like?

Notes

1. Some experienced practitioners take a harder line than I do, arguing that personas should only ever be based on research data, and should not include any creative license or information garnered from staff domain expertise. I’ve personally found that even semi-fictional personas based on the experience of staff can be very helpful at illuminating assumptions and perspectives. And sometimes they be surprisingly accurate (i.e. that further research supports the original assumptions), especially when they are based on interactions with the stakeholders we are seeking to represent. However, it is important to recognise what personas are based on and to treat them accordingly, and to verify/inform with research at every opportunity.

Photo Credit: Natasha Hurley-Walker/Wikipedia

I can feel the speed-of-everything accelerating. The vibration of human activity is rising.

In setting Saasu’s group strategy we have to observe what’s going on around us—but not just in our software industry. That’s too narrow, so we look broadly to avoid limiting our creativity which is required for step-out results.

So what are the themes in 2013, and what do they mean for Saasu?

1. Micro-fication

There is a trend away from big devices to smaller devices or multi-device systems. e.g. Saasu recently changed to 12 cores per server in our private cloud. Chip makers stack cores to make immensely powerful multi-core servers, making lots of small devices that mimic the power and effect of a single large device. In astronomy, array telescopes are replacing the dishes (see, for example, the Murchison Widefield Array above). Retail is seeing smartphones and tablets replacing point of sale terminals. You can see a trend in the home also, moving to many small devices away from a single shared PC.

2. Software applications continue to eat the world

The “Why” cloud question of 2012 is becoming “How”. Adoption is at 5% for online accounting and I predict this will quickly accelerate to 10–15% this year. Marc Andressen was spot on with his comment that “software is eating the world“:

• CD’s → Downloads
• 1 million Foxconn employees → 300,000 Foxbot robots. (Foxconn make iPhones)
• Navman → Google Maps
• Books → eBooks
• Sales staff → Sales Automation Systems
• In person conversations → Social networks
• Retail → eTail
• Paper → Paperless
• Filing paper → Searching Data
• Motorola → Google
• Shoe shops → Zappos
• People driving → Software driving
• Fitness coach → Fitness apps and devices (like Fitbit and Runkeeper)

3. Devices take-over desktops

2013 will likely be the crossover year where devices exceed desktops. Saasu left the desktop as the primary design focus some time ago and shifted to tablets and mobile. Customers will expect all the features supported across all the platforms. Old accounting software companies currently building and supporting online accounting for desktops are building the very thing we see consumers starting to abandon.

4. Attention economy

Socialising applications and content portals are re-wiring many of us into habitually checking for updates, info and insights. Designers of the systems have learned to tap into at least a dozen intrinsic motivators which turns seemingly harmless apps into ego feeding, attention sucking machines. Note it’s not just gamification, this is just one piece.

Humans are responive to guilt and the fear of missing out (aka FOMO). We need to ask: is this forming a type of mental slavery via guilt and missed experience in a social sense?

Getting the attention of your customers amongst all of this emotional warfare for minds is tough. Having a website that ignores most intrinsic motivators doesn’t cut it any more. It has limited usefulness in the attention economy. To keep customers interested you must give them value in every interaction. Buy the right to get their attention next time. Information is a near-free commodity now, so that won’t work. You need to give them what they really want—simplification and automation. That’s about more time which is an essential ingredient for happiness.

Curation is rising to address the information firehose phenomena. The rise of niche social networks is almost certain to cause problems for Facebook this year. You can see the panic already through their acquisitions. Users attention will shift to the networks that best align with their personal and business interests. Standing in front of Facebook’s firehose isn’t as much fun as it used to be.

5. Corporatocracy

Sadly, capitalism is changing. ‘Too big to fail’ are for me the most important words acted on in the last decade. Capitalism is now very impure. We are now more than ever exist in a Corporatocracy run by governments and banks. Unfortunately for small businesses, service companies, retailers and manufacturers you aren’t in that club. If you think this is USA only, it’s not. The EU, UK, Australia are all actively heading in this direction. You need tools that cut costs, create efficiency and save time for your business. You directly or indirectly fund Payroll Tax, Company Tax, PAYE, Capital Gains, Super/Pensions, Fringe Benefits, Workers comp/insurances and now Carbon Tax. Expect more tax and expect more compliance. That’s the nature of the system we live in.

One of the big unspoken risks this year is inflation. Unfortunately you can’t keep printing money to save the financial system without a price to pay. Quantitative easing will come home to roost in 2013. The potential for civil unrest is ongoing. Governments will do everything they can to stop that eventuating but the contagion risk is something we have in our risk waterfall. We don’t know what this means for internet and power continuity of service. Outlier “black swan” events are by nature hard to allow for.

In any case we think your data needs to be in two or more locations. A single country, data centre or supplier isn’t acceptable mitigation by our standards. We also think you also need to be able to download your data to your local devices. This may sound contrarian for the CEO of a cloud company to be talking this way, but my career has been about understanding risk. All business models have risks and the cloud’s biggest risk is a dependency on the internet. I know our customers will enjoy keeping a copy of their Saasu file for backup purposes on their own systems.

These are risks I’m describing, not expectations, so read them as precaution rather than paranoia. You should expect all your service providers to openly disclose, assess and deal with risk.

What is Saasu doing in 2013?

Saasu runs strategic and risk models which look at changes occurring inside and outside our industry. We use these to facilitate good decisions. We know that decision making is the single most important activity a business engages in. For competitive reasons I can’t elaborate on all our decisions for 2013, but here are some that give you some insights into our thinking:

• Your data is stored in at least two different geographic locations and with at least two different cloud infrastructure suppliers [Completed]
• Building the ability to get all your financial data out in a single download, plus the ability to load that data back up into the Saasu application.
• Tablets, phone and laptop centric design instead of desktop centric design.
• Design that moves more toward searching instead of listing data.
• Focus on building a clean, clear, engineered Saasu MKII that’s great value.

Saasu MKII is in build, and it’s a business application that is a step out beyond other online accounting systems. We recognize that the business owners are the risk takers, they’re the ones with huge emotional and capital investments in their dream. We aren’t shy in saying we exist to solve accounting, operational and compliance problems for business owners. We partner with accounting and bookkeeping firms who have that same vision for their clients as we do.

We will support more devices in a clean, clear and engineered way that scales with business growth. We’ll do this by keeping to our values and listening to you.

Thanks for your business in 2012 and we wish you well for 2013.

This post is part of a series discussing the process we’re undertaking to redesign our user interface and branding. We’re sharing in the spirit of “designing in the open” with the hope that it might be of value to our customers and others in our community.

Our customers have always been at the front and centre in our approach to doing business. Since the early days a key part of our ethos is to listen to our customers and develop features that support their business needs.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we turned to our customers to help inform our the development of our brand values, new visual direction and user interface. We undertook interviews with a variety of customers—both small business owners and advisor partners—who we’d noticed doing some great things with Saasu. We asked them about what they valued about our service, how it helped them in their business, and what they valued in their relationship with our company.

Interviews are just one method that can be helpful in engaging the people we aim to serve in our design process. (If you’re interested in learning more about this method, the folks at Google Ventures have posted some great tips.) Feedback through our service desk and social media are another. We aim to expand our more formal engagement process over time, extending our user testing program, for example. And to run workshops at future Saasu events (such as our conference).

I recently had occasion to review my notes from some of the interviews I mentioned earlier, and a number of themes emerged from the anecdotes and stories that participants shared with us that I thought would be valuable in sharing. What we found was that our customers and partners:

• Are excited by being involved in small business
• Love a good challenge
• Want to see their own clients and customers succeed
• Seek opportunities to learn and grow
• Have limited time to learn new things
• Focus and rely on relationships
• Value flexibility
• Highlight how “live data” makes the accounts more valuable
• Are focused on integration and automation to improve their own, and their staff’s, productivity
• See Saasu and cloud-based tools as something that gives them back time.

While some of these insights were new, others were a reinforcement of hunches we had already developed. In the latter case, the interviews provided greater confidence and a deeper understanding of these themes, which is just as valuable.

I hope that you will see some of your own priorities and values reflected there—please let us know if so (or if not) as we’re always keen to learn more!).

We feel very privileged to have partners and customers that are so generous in sharing their thoughts, aspirations and passion for their work with us. And we will continue to do our best to honour that in how we develop the product into the future…