Exact CEO Martijn Janmaat said last week that the company was adjusting strategy, not adopting a new strategy. But in wide ranging meeting with analysts Janmaat, who became CEO on August 23, gave a frank analysis of his company’s many shortcomings and ways to fix them, much of this stemming from a study by the Boston Consulting Group.

While we are waiting for the wonderful world of SaaS to emerge in the financial software world, there’s going to be a period in which hybrid business environments dominate. That’s not an earthshaking conclusion. But the fact that vendors are increasingly describing that world shows a growing consensus about the short-term product path. At Barclays Capital Global Technology Conference this week, Epicor’s CFO Michael Pietrini told investors that the adoption rate of SaaS remains slow in the ERP industry. Read more...

QuickBooks has been overwhelmingly an American product line. But that is going to change a bit as Intuit has introduced the small business accounting application in the United Kingdom and intends to debut it in Singapore during the fiscal year ending July 31. QuickBooks will probably make it into another eight to 10 countries over the next three years, Ken Wach, VP of marketing for Intuit’s small business group, told analysts at this week’s Barclay conference. Q Read more...

The U.S. market is going to get increased emphasis from Exact as it moves the country into a list of five countries, which it defines as “headquarters rich.” Exact CEO Martijn Janmaat noted in a presentation last week that his company is primarily selling “old products - Macola, Max, JobBoss” in this country and that it needs “to come up with succession planning there." Janmaat said the U.S. effort would get a revised go-to-market effort with manufacturing remaining at the heart of the American strategy. O Read more...