Tail wagging the dog
I was stunned (then delighted) to read the following article from MYOB in New Zealand.
MYOB Calls For Next Government To Mind The Pace Of Legislation.
“The research confirms what our clients from around the country have been telling us for quite some time - constant changes in legislation make it just so much harder to do business.”
“With that in mind, we’re calling on any future Government to be mindful of that impact on New Zealand business - not just in terms of specific pieces of legislation, but the number and scope of changes business owners and managers have to be aware of to remain compliant.”
This is the problem with desktop installed software. Government is inhibited in it’s ability to make improvements because it can take 1-3 years for changes in desktop software to be rippled through to small businesses.
Online software can be changed as much as you like with no effort required from the small business owner. So the Government can continuously and rapidly reduce compliance activities and other costs on small businesses.
It’s the role of software providers to make things easier and more responsive so our companies to be globally competitive, not slow things down.
As small businesses contribute over 38% of GDP (over $50b) a small increase in productivity and survivability can make a huge difference to New Zealand as a whole. Therefore desktop software and it’s slow update cycle is unnecessarily holding New Zealand back.
8 Responses to “Tail wagging the dog”
[...] just read the most unlikely justification for why software-as a-service (business IT functionality delivered via the internet) is a better [...]
Aaarrrggghhh!!! Come back SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. All is forgiven! Rod Drury, you are in big trouble! Don’t encourage the b******s!
Just to be clear: My tongue-in-cheek comment meant to highlight that if it’s easy to cut out legislation, it’s also easy to add it; and politicians on average add more red tape than they cut. So Saas inadvertently adds to their power to do so.
Things must be pretty uncomfortable inside MYOB these days.
they are, I used to work for them!
I recall a similar justification being used to sell SaaS payroll software a few years back. It was argued that employment policies are one of the most-tweaked areas of law.
“This is the problem with desktop installed software” - I respectfully disagree
For any software provider, constantly changing requirements is a headache. The distribution model isn’t the problem.
This isn’t just a problem for software providers like MYOB and Xero, but also for larger organisations like IRD and Telecom, which also have to react to legislation changes.
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