One year implementing Intacct - Expert review

Sage Intacct is the newest addition to our Sage services here at Datel. But now that we’ve been implementing it for over a year, our experts have got to know the software rather intimately - and no longer see it as “the new kid on the block.”

So I recently caught up with Paolo Arcangelo and Lorna Timms (who have had their noses stuck in Intacct for the last 12 months), to hear their real opinions on the cloud finance software.. 

From our chat, I found out what Paolo, Lorna and their team of Intacct experts love about Intacct, what customers are saying about the product and why businesses are choosing us as a Sage Intacct partner.

Watch the interview or read on to see what else they divulged about Sage Intacct.

We’re about a year into working with Sage Intacct, how have we found it?

“It’s been amazing. When we first looked at Sage Intacct, we couldn’t believe how intuitive it was, how easy to set up and get running with it pretty much instantly. Our first implementation of Sage Intacct took only seven weeks, which I think for the first in anything is quite impressive, but the response and the feedback from the customer was immense. They absolutely love the software. They got to grips with it straight away and are now looking at a second phase of implementation. There really doesn’t seem to be any end to the depth of what we can achieve with the Sage Intacct software. That can be anything from the authorisation processes that it has in place, in terms of being able to control who can do what with journals, create purchase orders, who can process payments and have those authorised, all the way through to the integrations that Intacct has into the SalesForce platform and how easy it is to set up and configure that. It really has been quite an exciting journey.” - Lorna

“As Lorna said there really, Sage Intacct is a bit of software that does exactly what it says on the tin, to coin that phrase. It’s very, very quick to implement, it’s easy to use, the user interface is very, very intuitive. The reporting capabilities are incredibly powerful, and it delivers some very complex requirements in a  very simple and easy way. I’ve had many comments from customers, with them saying, “it’s taken us away from spreadsheets” or a lot of work they used to do in spreadsheets previously, they’re now able to do in Sage Intacct. Things that we’ve been talking about (which we’ve been talking about it for 20 years), about moving people away from spreadsheets and into systems, and now with Intacct that’s actually being achieved. We’ve got people who are actually using everything in Sage Intacct.” - Paolo

“And I think what you also find is it’s from the top level all the way down to the bottom. So, Finance Directors, CFOs, they love Sage Intacct because of the dashboard, the reporting capability. They can really see how the business is performing very quickly and very easily. And then you go right down to the bottom of the modules, and you start looking at the core, the transactional stuff, and Intacct’s such an easy to use intuitive software, that the finance teams themselves actually love using it, which is great.” - Lorna

“And all the approvals that are there in the product. The FD can have his payment approvals coming through on his phone, he can then navigate through, do all the authorisation of those. Intacct is putting the control back into the business again, isn’t it.” - Paolo

“It is. Intacct is any place, anywhere in the world as well, on any device. Sage promote it as the FDs at the top of a mountain top climbing Kilimanjaro and you can see on the phone how the company’s performing. And, you know, basically to be able to approve a journal if needs be, I'm not sure many CFOs would actually really want to do that, however, the capability is there, if you need it.” - Lorna

We've had some really great feedback from our customers, what is it that they're loving about Sage Intacct?

“We've noticed that there's been a massive move towards cloud delivered software solutions during that period of time, where one day we're all in the office, and the next day, we're all working from home. Businesses had a very, very big transition to make at that point in time. And what we're seeing now is businesses are massively embracing that. So Sage Intacct is a complete finance solution, all delivered in the cloud. So there's no server, there's no IT department, it's a product that can be managed by the finance team for the finance team.. We've got solutions that Crystal Reports, SQL Server Reporting Services, you almost need a PhD to write reports in these sorts of products. But now with Sage Intacct, you can write financial reports, really strong drillable financial reports, in a really nice, intuitive user interface. And all that's just delivered out of the box.” - Paolo

Tell me a bit about the Sage Intacct team at Datel.

“Well, that's been the most exciting part of the journey for me. Having been a consultant at Datel for a long time, I was given the opportunity to help lead and grow the Sage Intacct support team. We went out to the marketplace, we picked a wide variety of different consultants, bringing their different elements, different skill sets into the team, allowing us to really look at things in a different way than we have before. So our project methodology has been totally re-developed in terms of realigning the team and taking all of their skills, and really involving a really great mix of people, it's really been quite exciting.” - Lorna

“I think as well as having that said Intacct expertise, we've got some of the consultants from other solutions. We've got them from the Sage solutions, from some Non-Sage solutions as well. And it's really that mix and experience that's provided as that springboard to really push forward on Sage Intacct. When implementing business systems, 50% of it is the software, but the other 50% is really understanding the business processes and having the business knowledge to know how that software should be implemented.” - Paolo

Let's talk a bit about the customers that are adopting Sage Intacct, what are they like?

“We’ve got quite a mixed bag to be honest with you. We've got some smaller businesses, which are just a few users in the low millions in terms of turnover, right the way through to some customers with multiple hundreds of users, and in the multi-billions in terms of turnovers. Sage Intacct, has got that real wide breadth of covering lots and lots of different businesses of different shapes and sizes. In terms of market sectors, we're seeing some market sectors starting to emerge in our customer base. We have charities and not for profit, we have healthcare providers, we have financial services providers, we have software, so companies that deal with software and maintenance, and that sort of stuff. We've got travel companies, legal services companies, some distribution businesses, we've got customers who deliver transport and logistics, and then we've just got some general service providers. So like I say, it covers many different industries and many different businesses.” - Paolo

“And I think what we can bring to the table there, is that our consultants also have experience in all of those sectors. So myself, I have worked in everything from manufacturing right up to charities and not for profits. So when those businesses come to us, and they need our help, we can not just look at the software, but we can actually tailor it to the business processes they actually require.” - Lorna

Why would a business take Sage Intacct with Datel?

“I think it's the level of expertise that Datel will have in the business. We're a large business facility, Sage’s largest business partner here in the UK. We've got 30 years worth of experience in the business of implementing finance systems. We've got over 1000 customers in our base. What we're able to do now is take all of that experience that we've gathered over all those years, and apply it to Sage Intacct. And what we're trying to do is, we're trying to work within the modern architects that Sage Intacct gives us and then bring all that experience to blend, really the old and the new for want of a better way of putting it. We're getting the best of the experience with the best in class software to deliver really, really fantastic solutions to our customers.” - Paolo

What's next for Sage Intacct?

“We feel like we just started this adventure. We know that Sage Intacct is going a long way, in the future we’re looking forward to developing into other software, into other modules, growing the customer base, growing the team, and really helping lead the company forward with this particular piece of software.” - Lorna

“I think one of the things that Sage Intacct has, which is a really great feature of the platform, of the solution, is that it's regularly updated on a quarterly basis. Every quarter, new functionality is released. And it's not just little bits of functionality, there's some really, really big modules coming in the application. We're really expanding our Fusion product range into Sage Intacct, we're going to be looking at expanding our Excel Connect Solution, that's been really successful in Sage 200, Sage 1000 and Sage X3. We're going to expand that and put that into Sage Intacct. Then we're going to be delivering a couple of modules, one for a Sage Payroll integration and another one for a direct debits collection module for Sage Intacct. We've really got a lot to be looking forward to for the next few years.” - Paolo

If you would like a bit more information about us as a Sage Intacct partner, please get in touch with the team. They'll be more than happy to have a chat with you.