The rise of cloud computing is leading to levels of collaboration previously unseen within the software industry. That's according to online accounting provider E-economic which provides a SaaS accounting solution to both organisations and accountancy practices.
"We have seen the benefits of working together with other software developers in order to offer customers a broader and deeper solution", says UK Managing Director Anders Bjornsbo. "It allows customers to mix solutions together to create a tailored system for their own specific needs and for software houses, it means that they are able to focus further on developing high quality products that can be openly integrated with other systems."
Paul Smalley, Managing Director of Paper Mountain Solutions, an organisation that provides virtual administration support to companies and a user of the E-conomic system agrees: "I find that the API feature is the best feature for larger clients, because the data can be exchanged between E-conomic and other systems or programs efficiently so it can save a great deal of time."
An interesting example of this new trend of collaboration between organisations which may have historically been seen as competitors is E-conomic's integration with CaseWare, one of the leading accounts production software systems, which provides a combination of data entry and statutory reporting. The CaseWare-export feature enables data entries and trial balances to be automatically transferred from E-conomic into CaseWare so that a full audit trail and account history is available.
Bjornsbo says that cloud solutions which do not offer and open API are really missing a trick. "Around 200 integration solutions which have been built with our product and as more users of SaaS systems discover the benefits of open software systems the market will continue to open up to partnership strategies - collaboration is the real key to a competitive edge."
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