Over the years, I’ve seen often the battle in accounting software being won by the vendors that offer the most “completeness.”
It was the completeness of Dynamics GP that has helped it to gain such a dominant position here in the United States. Not only does Dynamics GP have a complete offering of financial modules, and distribution modules, the product also possesses the most impressive list of ISV’s (Independent Software Vendors) ever assembled for the mid-market accounting and ERP space.
To be specific with GP, modules such as Collections Management, National Accounts (parent/child invoicing and payment application), Grant Management, and Analytical Accounting, don’t exist on most competitors’ price lists in the mid-market.
Dynamics SL is more complete in the Project Accounting area with modules such as Project Allocator, Project Foundation, Flexible Billings, Time and Expense and Utilization.
In the cloud, I’m seeing the battle between NetSuite and SAP’s Business by Design shaking out in a similar way. NetSuite may have “gotten there” first, but their lack of modules and especially their lack of depth in modules continues to cause client churn.
The SAP cloud product seems to offer an endless array of modules with serious depth behind each module, sub-module and feature.
Acumatica still looks promising as well with their offering that is truly a .NET program on SQL and can run SaaS (Software as a Service) as well as on-premise.
Pricing on the Acumatica and the SAP Business by Design products are more straight-forward as well. There are fewer surprises and less price increases as you add users and/or functionality.
