MYOB dives into mid-market cloud
The SaaS product is based on a platform developed by Acumatica, and has been built over the past 18 months by MYOB's development team in Auckland, New Zealand. MYOB purchased a minority stake in Acumatica in late 2014.
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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been selected as the local hosting provider with the service being delivered from its Sydney Region.
MYOB Advanced is an addition to the company's existing MYOB EXO on-premise solution for the mid-market. More than 7,000 clients in the mid to large business market segment in Australia and New Zealand using MYOB EXO.
Andrew Birch, MYOB's general manager for industry solutions, said each year the demand for cloud-based ERP solutions in this segment keeps growing but he couldn't confirm how many customers were expected to purchase the cloud offering in the future.
Birch said 63 per cent of all MYOB small business customers had a chosen a cloud-based accounting system as of June 2014. This was up from 36 per cent in 2013 and 13 per cent in 2012.
The company has been offering a cloud option to smaller businesses since 2010.
"That's a good take up rate and we think that's an analogy of what's going to happen in the enterprise market as time goes by," he said.
Birch said that there were not many SaaS competitors to MYOB apart from NetSuite at the higher end of the market. Netsuite has a strong foothold in the SaaS-based ERP market in Australia and New Zealand.
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New-Zealand based SaaS provider Xero targeted its wares at the SME marketplace and was not in the ERP market at all, Birch said. Xero listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2012 with 32,500 paying customers.
MYOB Advanced is offered under a subscription pricing plan which starts at $99 per user, per month for the standard product to $179 per user, per month for the enterprise offering with more functionality. The system can be configured based on the customer's requirements.
MYOB EXO currently costs around $1400 to $1500 per user for an upfront licence plus an annual 20 per cent maintenance fee.
MYOB Advanced provides a universal database search of the business, a distribution suite that allows users to search inventory and make and track orders, as well as streamlining activities like pricing, MYOB said.
Productivity tools enable staff to enter expenses on the fly - including in foreign currencies - and access the business CRM suite with synchronisation of contacts, tasks, appointments, and emails.
The cloud software will soon include an iPhone app, enabling users to access the software from their smartphones.
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