Is the cloud failing the financial software industry? Cloudsis breaks the mould

In the past 3 years the cloud has enveloped almost every corner of the business world, not least in the finance and accounting sector with players popping up such as Xero and Quickbooks, offering quick cloud access to software at low monthly prices.

At a sales pitch level these products appear to offer everything – the complete package at a low price, but the overwhelming feedback from our user community is that once you peel back the first layer of the onion, things may not always be as fantastic as they first seem.

These products do have some immediate plus points such as ease of setup, but analytical reporting can often be cumbersome and functionality is generally at an entry accounting level rather than aimed at the mid market range. Getting to those fancy graphs or API add-ons that the salesman focused on at the demonstration, isn’t always straightforward for us “mere mortal” accounts users.

Cloud software offerings for the finance sector are still in their infancy and merger and acquisition is rife in the marketplace. Time will tell which houses establish themselves as leaders but in the interim users want to feel they have the confidence of a complete mature product that has had all the kinks worked out rather than a new player which hasn’t quite refined all of the core offerings yet.

We analysed that there was a glaring need for a one stop solution offering a secure, stable cloud platform, a proven mid-range accounting solution and award winning after sales and system support services, managed by one source and bundled into a clear monthly fee.

The above model would traditionally require three separate vendors working in harmony to achieve this and with IT software and hardware providers often focusing on different agendas, we have seen this relationship fall over, time and again leading to a blaming culture which frustrates the end users and lowers confidence in the cloud as a viable offering. Managed well the cloud is a great offering. Managed badly and it can be a disaster.

With the Cloudsis solution you have 3 very simple core offerings:

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