As you might imagine, being in software development means I am constantly looking at ways that products can be improved to work faster and better suit customer needs. In my job this commonly means working with existing software, making changes, and then releasing the product on schedule – but this is changing.
One of the most exciting projects that my team and I’ve ever been part of has been developing Reckon One, a new cloud accounting solution.
Do you remember the feeling as a kid when you build something brand new and want to tell everyone about it? Reckon One feels like that for my team.
Over the years we’ve had a lot of feedback from clients about mobility. This product is built for web and mobile which provides the added flexibility of being able to transact and operate no matter where I am and no matter what web technology I have. The benefits to clients that are constantly on road, is a no brainer. No longer are they required to track their transactions separately to the head office, and staff within a business can operate collectively.
To a business there are other added benefits.
There is no need for a business to have expensive servers just to run the application, or to worry about complex installations and updates of the accounting software. When you look at the desktop accounting industry in Australia there are generally two updates a year, a major software release and a tax update – with Reckon One updates will occur automatically as required. This means businesses get access to new features faster than before, and they don’t ever have to worry about installing software.
From a development perspective we’re saving time too.
We won’t be producing CD’s or printed collateral to go with Reckon One. When the online product is updated we’ll update the application on our server and customers receive the update instantly.
The stand-out characteristic that I think will be of the most benefit to business users will be being able to select from different features that are available and only paying for those they require. How many businesses are the same? How often do businesses change? Reckon One is flexible so as the business changes the product can change. Why pay for what you don’t need?
We’ve also made a big effort to get ‘ease of use’ just right and our usability experts help us reach that goal, so far I think they’ve done an excellent job (for users of our other products this same effort will go across our range).
Last week I was part of a Reckon One demonstration at our partner conference in New Zealand and it was really well received, especially the new ‘designed by you’ concept. Over the next month we’ll be showing the new cloud accounting solution to a whole lot more people at the Reckon Roadshows, over 2000 have registered to attend. I look forward to hearing the feedback before the product is widely release in the new financial year.
