Internet technologies

Recently I was in Amsterdam.  No one appeared to believe me when I said it was work.  Why is that?  Amsterdam really does have the reputation of one hell of place to have a good time.

In truth, the hospitality of the Dutch and in particular André Kwakernaat and his team at Twinfield made the whole visit a pleasure.

Twinfield provide the No 1 Online Accounting System in Europe with over 18,000 users and growing fast.  As well as excellent English the Dutch do appear to excel when it comes to using internet technologies.  They must also be the only country in Europe that actually has TV adverts for online business systems.  Like a new Harry Potter novel they are flying off the shelves.  Now before I get carried away I must disclose I use Twinfield where I work.

I like Twinfield because, put bluntly, it can make peoples jobs easier and help them run their businesses better.   I think that message often gets lost.  I see too many systems where users are faced with the cockpit of Concorde or the system is only available on the accountant’s pc. 

Twinfield and the internet appear to be a winning combination to me because:

• IT management is handled by Twinfield; just log on through the internet via a web-browser
• The system is rented; no upfront capital cost
• Automated data entry and reduced manual input
• Integration with the other systems in use e.g. CRM, EPOS etc

In fact, I like Twinfield so much that we’ve rolled it out at work under the banner of GJ Online.  Go on tell me the downside I really want to know.

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Philip Woodgate

Comments

[Adrian Pearson]

Where's downside you ask? We are fairly new recruits to the Twinfield way of working and see tremendous upside, that's why we made the move. However, we have come up against a few problems since logging-in and "getting our hands dirty", such as:

1. Twinfield cannot cash-account for VAT (for an invoice based business)
2. The reporting is a little limited and users are expected to use Twinfield Analysis instead, which some of our small business customers would find rather daunting
3. The functions available to different user levels appear to have some anomalies - in particular, one needs to be a fairly high level user just to create a sales invoice. This is perhaps the only function that some small business clients will want to undertake themselves?
4. We find it a bit frustrating that TF do not seem to us (and perhaps our perception is wrong) to be fully committed to the UK market, such that their support materials and support structure remain very much Dutch in orientation.

I would be very interested in your views on the above Philip.

Adrian Pearson
Pearson & Associates
www.pearsonandassociates.co.uk

[Philip Woodgate]

Hi Adrian

Thanks for the comment. We're not the only ones who can see the tremendous upside as both SAP and CODA are spending quite staggering amounts developing their own online solutions for the mid-sized market. Neither are in general release where as Twinfield has over 5 years and is well proven.

I know the VAT issue you raised is currently in the pipeline for release, but obviously you can still produce the report in Excel with a little bit of work. The reporting cubes are astonishingly good at this level, but you do need to streamline the reports process for the clients. In terms of your sales invoice user I think you'll find it is there (checkout the credit management user profile). It is true that some of the materials are in Dutch, but the UK manuals are still very sizeable and we get fantastic support from Twinfield so it really has not been an issue for us.

Let's get together on an online meeting and I'll show you the above.