Capsule

SaaS taking off in UK small businesses

Online accounting provider Xero announced yesterday they have signed up 1000 customers in the UK and 4000 globally, with much of this growth coming in the past 50 days.  UK based Kashflow also recently announced reaching their 2500 customer milestone and postings from Duane Jackson their CEO, reveals the last 6 months have been particularly busy.  Well done to both.

While the numbers are still relatively small compared with take-up of SaaS in the United States, they clearly demonstrate a change in attitude by UK small businesses.  No doubt the accountancy partners of both Xero and Kashflow have been instrumental in this growth.  After all, while a SaaS accounting package has many benefits to the customer such as reduced total cost of ownership, the accountant also benefits from easier access to the all important business data.

It looks like predictions that 2009 will see an explosion in SaaS are correct.  This all bodes well for Javelin, our own web CRM designed for small businesses and launching soon.

The Image is from Xero’s website.

Javelin features preview: Track your way to success

Javelin will be launching soon and in preparation we will be providing a preview of Javelin functions via our blog.  First up, we are previewing Tracks.

Tracks are a neat feature in Javelin that provides a simple way to manage repetitive processes.  In business we find often find processes that do, or perhaps should! follow the same steps each time.  For example:

• following through on a sales opportunity
• managing a customer support query
• issuing a monthly customer invoice
• end of period accounting procedures

Tracks establish a pre-defined series of steps.  It could be as simple as a pre-defined to-do list that you tick off when steps are completed:

Tracks become more powerful by including rules that control the sequence and timing of each step:

Once defined, a track is available to embed in a Javelin Opportunity or Case.  We’re confident businesses will find novel ways to use this function.  Do you have processes in your business that would benefit from a more structured approach?  We’d love to hear about it.

Register for our Beta now if you would like to see Tracks in action.