Product Management Update

The January 2009 payroll updates are ready for downloading. The update includes the tax updates and some changes to the program.

For our Quebec clients submitting RL-1s, you can now file Amended and Cancelled RL-1s electronically.

For those of you who are using Simply Accounting 2009, the project allocation report has been corrected to allow selection of asset, liability and equity accounts.

Simply Accounting 2009 now integrates with our online billing service. Simply email your invoice to your client using BillingBoss and enable your client to pay you online. Find out more at www.billingboss.com.

For additional changes be sure to read the product notification from the product update download page.

Hey everyone,

Simply Accounting 2009 hit the shelves end of October and we shipped out the last wave of updates this week. A lot of focus this year was on improving the product based on your feedback. We also added credit card integration and broadened the operating systems supported by Simply Accounting.

We used a different development process this year, and we feel that the product quality is much better than in previous years. The process is called Agile, and allows us to develop and test each change we do along the way, eliminating the overlooking of bugs that we may miss when doing all the development up front and trying to test every change after the development is completed. We also had a Controlled Release program. This program allows us to have a select group of partners and clients use the product on their actual day to day data, ensuring the product is ready to ship and helping address issues that do not occur in our office. As we all know, everyone's computer is set up differently and behaves differently. The Controlled Release allows us to have clients use the software on their systems and ensure the product is ready to ship. This is much different than a Beta version of the product, where bugs are expected to be found by clients. The Controlled Release is expected to run smoothly and hopefully have no or only minor issues arise.

We hope you will give Simply Accounting 2009 a whirl and be as happy with the results as we are.

I thought I would, in the good old Product Management fashion, try to gather feedback to what YOU want to read about on our blog.

Actually, before I ask that question, I would like to ask if anyone out there has ever read our blog.

So if you have read our blog before, feel free to just leave a simple message here. Suggestions to what you want to read are also very welcomed (Although I can't guarantee that we can write about everything!)

Have a good weekend everyone!

Jackie

Do you want to make a difference for Simply Accounting?  Are you ready to help our product management and development team to make Simply Accounting the MOST SUITABLE PRODUCT for our customers? 

The Simply Accounting product management team would like to invite you to be a member of our Product Advisory Board (PAB).  As a PAB member, you will provide feedback on new features from conception to delivery.  In particular, you will:

1.       Suggest and rank new features

2.       Help our product managers to define requirements for new features

3.       Provide feedback to our designers on new features design

4.       Provide feedback on new features as they are developed

The Simply Accounting team is a customer-focused team and we want you to tell us how to build a good product.  We want your voice in every step of the product development cycle.  We know you have a busy schedule and therefore our team will work around your schedule.  In the next 12 months, we would like to ask for 2 to 4 hours of your time each month to help us.  

We are looking for a customer who are using Simply Accounting 2008 and subscribed to our CARE service.  If you would like to be a member of our Product Advisory Board, please send an email to simply.product.management@sage.com

Due to the limited number of seats available in PAB, we apologize we cannot accomodate all applicants.

I look forward to hearing from you.  Meanwhile, if you have an idea, please submit it to us.

Christina

"My name is Jackie and I am one of the Product Managers for Simply Accounting."

Some of you might have already spoken to me on the phone or recieved an email from me (If you haven't, it's just the matter of time!). What you guys might not know is that I just joined the company around two months ago. Unlike Alistair and Christina (the other two Product Managers on the Simply Accounting PM team), I did not previously work in other departments at Sage. I did, however, product manage another software which is totally unrelated to accounting.

Prior to joining Sage, my perception of an accounting software is that it helps with managing A/R and A/P. The other big area I think it helps with is payroll (I used to say "I love you!" to my company's accountant whenever she comes around with our payslips). What I have since realized is that accountants and bookeepers do so much more than that. They keep track of inventory, projects, basically with running the whole company! Kudos to all of you who need to deal with this on a daily basis.

My job at Sage is to make your lives easier by improving the product. Although I can't guarantee that I can satisfy everyone's request all the time, I promise that our decisions will be guided by your opinions. In order to do that, however, I would need your help in continuing to provide us with feedback. Next time a survey is sent to you, consider taking the extra 10 minutes to fill it out (you have no idea how many Excel spreadsheets I have read through containing comments sent to us via surveys!). If you have an awesome idea for the product, comtemplate on submitting it via Your Voice. This is the most effective and direct way to tell us about your concerns and ideas, and as Hugo mentioned in his blog entry, "Your opinion really does count!"

By the way, I am a frequent blogger, so do expect more postings from me soon. I will also try to find a pretty picture of myself for my avatar. In the meantime keep coming back to check out the latest and greatest from Sage! 

~Jackie

As product managers, one of our roles is to take customer feedback and improve the product based on this feedback.
 
The Simply Accounting 2008 release was a huge technical undertaking for our development team and was entirely influenced by customer feedback. We introduced a new home window to help new users navigate the functionality, we modified the majority of the reports to allow on-screen customization, we also switched to the MySQL database, to help customers with larger databases scale better as well as allow more users to access the database concurrently
 
With the release of Simply Accounting 2008, we have heard from customers who have experienced issues related to performance and to the Connection Manager. We have gathered this feedback from the online forums, the in-product survey, the in-product feedback submissions, and through our accountant partner channel. In response to this feedback, Simply Accounting 2008 Release C has a new Connection Manager and improved performance.

The following is a bit technical, but bear with me: The Connection Manager has been improved to allow you to change the “buffer size” used for querying the database, to change the number of attempts when connecting to a database (before it times out), and allow the user to Stop/Start the service from the Connection Manager without having to go through the Windows Services. Those of you who experienced these issues will know how the above will help.

Performance was improved for companies with high numbers of inventory items, specifically when looking up inventory items. Performance has also been improived  when posting transactions for companies with several years of transaction history. (Tip: To take advantage of the posting improvements, be sure to turn off the “Automatically Refresh Record Balances” in the “Home Window Lists” option found under “User Preferences” in the Setup menu.

I want to thank you all for your feedback. I hope you will continue to let us know what’s working, what’s not, and what opportunities are we missing. By listening to our customers’ pain points about accounting, running a business and with our product, we can look into new ways to help make your lives easier.

I look forward to communicating to everyone the direction we move Simply Accounting in and providing some background information into why we are making any necessary course corrections along the way.

Now that the 2008 version of Simply Accounting is out, I'm sure many of you have noticed the new look of the home screen...if you didn't already know, you read correctly, the main screen of Simply Accounting has undergone its first major facelift in close to 15 years - oh sure, we've updated the icons, and the colour schemes in the past, but this time, it's a real overhaul...

Let me first reassure you, the "classic" view is still available...with that out of the way, let me share with you how we came to the decision to even think of changing the design of the Home Screen.

It's a very tricky proposition to change the way a mature product like Simply Accounting looks, mostly because of the potential impact to our existing user base. We wouldn't change the design just for the sake of change, that's for sure. The main driver of this change was our desire to balance new user satisfaction with making sure our upgrading customers' expectations were also met. We needed to understand what it was about our product that made new customers feel less satisfied about the experience than our upgrading customers - by reading the comments provided in the in-product survey responses, we identified common themes around ease of use, but also of an interface that looked dated...now this was something we just had to investigate, and investigate it, we did.

We invited small business owners who had never used Simply Accounting or any other accounting software to a research facility, and we asked them to perform a series of business tasks, such as creating a new customer, entering a sales invoice, looking up a report, etc. By observing where brand new users were stumbling, having difficulty, and even failing to accomplish the tasks, we were able to identify problem areas in our existing design. The next step was to design a working prototype, and again go out and test it with brand new users, performing the same tasks. This process is iterative, and it took a few rounds to get it right...when the design was close to final, we also included seasoned Simply Accounting users to the testing, to see how the new design would work for someone used to the classic way of interacting with our software...this helped us make some very important adjustments to ensure the new look would also include key functionality that would appeal to all our customers.

Essentially, what we observed was that people who are new to Simply Accounting aren't new to the world of computers, software and technology - many small business owners are extremely technology savvy, and they bring with them a baggage of knowledge and behaviours from other application and interfaces that they expect to be universal, and were missing from Simply Accounting...things like right-click functionality, access to all related information on one screen, and one click access to tasks related to what is currently being displayed on screen. This really opened our eyes - we went from a very simple-looking interface that had actually very limited functionality to a more complex looking screen that is extremely functional, and in the end, a lot more user-friendly.

The final test was to take this design on the road, and show it to our most experienced users - the Simply Accounting Business Partner community, and after the initial shock that is natural from such a major change, we were extremely pleased to see a near universal adoption of the new screen by all who have seen it. The screen looks like it has more on it than before...it does, but I know that as soon as you start using it, you'll agree that it is far more functional than our old design ever was.

If you haven't seen the new look of Simply Accounting yet, you can actually see a short tutorial video here. I look forward to your feedback on this important change!

Hugo

One of the most important changes with the release of Simply Accounting 2008 is (hopefully) invisible to most...those of you who are more technically inclined may have noticed that the database that makes up the "plumbing" of Simply Accounting changed from MS-JET (Access) to mySQL.

Here's a timeline that summarizes the Simply Accounting database history :

Early 90's: first Windows version - Simply Accounting was built on a database created in-house by our developers (this is also known as a "proprietary database").

• Late 90's: planning a multi-user version, this would render the existing database insufficient.
• Early 2000: After a lot of research, we settle on MS-JET (same as MS Access). It offered a lot of nice functionality, such as multi-user support, more stability, and improved ease of integration with third party application such as MS Office applications and Crystal Reports. This was rolled out with our release of version 8.0 - those of you who remember this, you'll also recall it wasn't our smoothest product upgrade...many customers had difficulty converting their data, some bugs surfaced...lessons were learned...
• Early 2005: The need for a new Database is seen - the goals were:
• Solve data corruption problems
• Future Proof Simply Accounting for the next generation of Operating Systems (64bit)
• Increase scalability and performance
• Early 2006: After a lot of research MySql is selected
• November 2007: Simply Accounting 2008 is released, on MySql.

As part of our commitment to responding to customer feedback, we also monitor "top call generators" - essentially, issues that are the most common reason for our customers to call our support technicians. In the past few years, the main issue (head and shoulders above any other issue) was related to data corruption - and after investigating further, we identified that 99% of the data corruption issues occurred in the following scenario: Simply Accounting is left running overnight (on a computer left running overnight) and a Windows update is downloaded and installed automatically. This is a flaw inherent with a MS-JET database. Since we can't control the frequency of these Windows updates, we decided to take action, and make Simply Accounting immune to database corruption in this specific scenario by changing the database.

MS-JET had other short-comings, one of which is scalability...whenever a database grows too large, whether this is due to a large number of records, or a large volume of transactions, the performance suffers a noticeable impact. Also, MS-JET was the reason we could only offer a maximum of 6 concurrent users in a network scenario - anything beyond that, and performance would have dropped below acceptable standards. MS-JET, like any technology, also started showing its age, and with the advent of a 64bit operating system (Windows Vista®) being announced, we knew we'd have to start looking for a replacement before too long..

This time around, we had an absolute rule that would be our guide in every decision we made in implementing the new database: The transition to the new database must be as invisible and seamless as possible to anyone who doesn't want to know there's a new Database behind Simply Accounting. In other words, if performance, scalability or stability was never an issue for you, hopefully, you haven't noticed that we changed the database. With lessons learned from our previous major database change, this time around, we enlisted the help of our Simply Accounting recommender channel, the accountants and bookkeepers who support the small business community on Simply Accounting, and asked them to send us "sanitized" (we created a utility that renders all identifiable data anonymous) databases from real-world customers. We received close to 500 databases, and we were able to identify and fix all problems, so the upgrade to 2008 will not cause your office to suffer disruptions (although, conversion may take a bit longer than a normal upgrade would, this is normal).

Of course, as much as we tried to minimize the visible impact, we recognize that the transition to MySQL changes how Simply Accounting is installed. Here are some issues to keep in mind as you plan your upgrade to Simply Accounting 2008 (in bracket, I also link to the Knowledge Base articles where you can find more details):

Installation

If you have more than one computer that uses Simply Accounting on a network, you need to read this Knowledge base article (kbase 21426)

Firewalls and anti-virus software

Ensure these are configured to allow Simply Accounting and the Connection Manager to run (kbase 21534 and kbase 21520)

Custom Crystal, Word and Excel Documents

If you have any specially created Crystal reports or custom Word or Excel documents, these may need to be configured to work with Simply Accounting 2008 (kbase 21743)

Upgrade at your own pace!

There will be tax updates for Simply Accounting version 2007 for both the December 2007 and June 2008, so you can plan your own upgrade schedule to the 2008 version.

Hugo

If you’re like me, you probably answer surveys from companies with whom you do business with mixed feelings…on the one hand; I’m always happy when a company asks for my input about the experience of doing business with them, and I always hope their interest is genuine, but on the other, I can’t help but wonder if anybody even reads the open ended answers I so carefully compose…

As you know, since the release of the Simply Accounting 2005, we have included a short survey that is launched from Simply Accounting after 30 uses. First of all, let me reassure you, our interests are 100% aligned with yours – what you tell us becomes our marching orders, and we do read every single comment. This is no joke, once a week, I personally produce reports that are circulated to all key members of our organization, from the call centre to the product development and quality assurance teams, all the way to our General Manager; we all see the results, as well as the individual comments, so keep them coming!

We also call every single respondent who tell us that they would absolutely never recommend us to a friend or colleague…it’s very important that we learn why they feel this way.

The data we received over the last few years has been a really valuable tool to make sure we focused our efforts on the things that matter most to you, and it’s not always about the software itself – from the 2006 survey, we learned that our call centre, and the help available with the product needed urgent attention, so we fixed those issues. We doubled the number of agents in our Customer Support department, and set a very aggressive target (which we now hit very consistently) of 80% of all incoming calls answered in less than 120 seconds. We also invested in new technology for the in-product Help to make the searches for topics more accurate (what good is the help if you can’t find it?) as well as rationalizing the number of manuals we created, to ensure that all the information was in one central location. From the 2007 survey, ease of use, and reporting were the biggest issues, so again, this is what we’re focusing on for our next release.

We are very lucky to have customers who care enough to take time to let us know how we can fix what’s not working, and I feel equally lucky to be part of an organization that truly believes in being driven by the voice of our customer, in everything we do – if this behaviour wasn’t supported (and rewarded) as policy, we wouldn’t be able to respond this quickly to the feedback you give us. The best proof for me that we’re working on the right initiatives is that year after year, the priorities change, because the ones we fix are no longer top scoring “Pain Points”.

So, the next time you see the survey prompt in Simply Accounting, please please say yes!

Hugo

One of the most important personality requirements for any Product Manager who truly wants to represent the voice of the customer in the development process is to be able to approach the problem like a three-year-old from time to time. This may sound strange, but it’s true - it's our responsibility to make sure we get to the core of problems identified in  feature requests

For example, a common request is to have customer numbers in Simply Accounting’s customer ledger (in fact, it came up in the comments of a previous Blog post) While it would be very easy for me to just turn around and relate this request verbatim to our development team, and for them to implement it, I would be doing my customers a disservice if I didn’t try to really understand how customer numbers are being used – are they needed to quickly locate customers and customer-related documents? Are they used to segment customers in any way? (Geographically? by loyalty status? etc.) Even in the case of such a seemingly simple request, I need to know exactly which areas of the software will be impacted. It wouldn’t be very useful to just have a field in the customer ledger; depending on how it’s used, we might want to make it available in reports, search tools, various forms, etc. We might even want to plan for future uses of this information in the product. So hopefully, you’ll indulge me and my barrage of “why?” questions when we talk about improvements to Simply Accounting…

There’s a story I really like about solving for the wrong problem…I am going to relate it exactly as I have heard it: In the late 50’s and early 60’s, the United States were in a race with the (then) Soviet Union to send a human being into space. When success started to become a realistic outcome, teams broke out to think about experiments that could be conducted in zero gravity, to really make the most out of this first time ever opportunity. Of course, every experiment needs to be observed, and notes made of those observations - the American scientists quickly realized that a pen wouldn’t work in zero gravity – ink needs gravity to flow downwards onto the paper. Engineers worked tirelessly to solve this problem, and the fruit of this research is the now famous (thank you Seinfeld!) Astronaut Pen. It has a pressurized ink cartridge, and will work upside down. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union sent their man in space equipped with a pencil…

The above story illustrates the importance of asking “why?” until there is no doubt left that the true problem has been identified – solving the wrong problem often means over-engineered solutions that aren’t really needed, or used. In the case of the American engineers, they solved the problem of a pen that had to work in zero gravity; the real problem was that astronauts (or cosmonauts) needed something to write with.

In product management, there’s an acronym we like use - NIHITO, which stands for "Nothing Important Happens In The Office". While this is an over-simplification (some important things do happen here) it's nonetheless true that we have a responsibility to always keep our eyes and minds on what our customers want, and the only way for us to do this is by looking outside of our own four walls.

One of the coolest part of our job is going out on site visits - 2-3 times a month, we'll set up a meeting with a business that uses Simply Accounting, and spend about 2 hours in that business observing how things operate, what the work area looks like, when/how Simply Accounting is used, and what other tools and applications are part of the business process – applications like Microsoft Excel, or even custom solutions designed to solve a specific need for that business...the goal for us is to identify areas where Simply Accounting can be improved to better solve business problems.

Of course, we see a lot of unique situations in our customer visits, but the biggest opportunities for us aren’t so much in the differences, but in the similarities. Sometimes, similarities are industry specific, and sometimes, they can apply to all industries. The bottom line is for us to make sure that all our efforts solve real problems, and solve them in a way that will be beneficial to our customers. By observing how things work in the “real world”, we can make sure we design for how a business operates, rather than forcing a business to adapt its processes to our design.

To a lot of people, software development is a bit of a mystery – how are new features decided? Who picks which feature is more important than another? Well, in our company, our customers decide.

The role of a Product Manager is simply to act as the voice of the customer to our development team. At Simply Accounting, we’re pretty lucky, we have a lot of users, and because what we do affects people’s businesses, feedback is very easy to come by. We get tons of emails, faxes, letters – not to mention detailed suggestion from our in-product survey (yes, we do read every single comment, so keep’em coming!). We also go out and visit customers, and get even more feedback that way.

What do we do with all this information? We track it in a centralized location; we assign rankings, categories, etc. Then, we prioritize it based on a few factors (such as popularity, changing regulations, strategic direction, and many more).

The biggest challenge is distilling all the information we receive into clear and concise problems – once we have correctly identified the problem, we always validate with the customers who first suggested the idea to make sure we’ve identified the right problem. Once we have a clear problem statement, and clear customer requirements, our engineers take over and design a solution – before we start even writing a single line of code, we then go back to our customers, and show them the proposed solution to make sure we’re still on track. After a few iterations, once we’re 100% on the mark, we implement the feature, and voila!