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Interesting to read that ClearBooks , the UK based privately held online accounting application, has just secured a new financing deal for an undisclosed sum. Their press release announcing the deal is a marketing message – calling out Sage and Intuit, and specifically pitching itself as a “more UK focused service than online international competitors Xero Limited.”

No mention of the other UK players like Free Agent Central or KashFlow.

Further spin comes in the following:

Clear Books is a rapidly growing company with customer numbers increasing more than 20% per month. It is quickly establishing itself as a leader in the growing SaaS online accounting software market in the UK. Managing Director, Tim Fouracre, said, “Our cash flows continue to reflect impressive growth month on month, but this additional financing will help us accelerate our expansion plans. One of our key objectives is to add depth to our development team to ensure we continue to develop the very best application. Our aim is to make both maintaining company accounts and doing the bookkeeping as easy as possible for small businesses. We are already making great progress on this front with our online VAT filing direct to HMRC and our new payroll module”.

As I said, with no mention of the amount raised this is little more than a marketing release – that said it’s interesting to see ClearBooks so obviously throw some punches Xero’s way. Interesting also given the recent prediction of QuickBooks’ return to the UK

We’ve heard for years that SaaS applications will disintermediate traditional marketing channels with it’s direct to consumer and viral uptake – many were envisaging a future without traditional media usage. The truth however seems to be somewhat different – the number of SaaS vendors I’ve spoken to recently who are embarking on “traditional” approaches is legion.

Many are embracing channel partnerships with “old-school” services companies – witness NetSuite’s (see disclosure) new SP100 reseller model (I analyzed the move here). Witness also Intacct (see disclosure) partnering with the AICPA to sell/market/endorse their product through US CPAs.

I recently spoke with CEO of Acumatica (more on them here) Ezekiel Steiner about their channel strategy specifically, but more generally channel strategies for ERP vendors.

Accumatica is 100% committed to a channel strategy and sees a significant conflict with vendors who embrace both a channel and a direct sales approach. In fact Steiner went so far as to call the NetSuite moves a “gimmick” given previous comments they’ve made about the validity (or otherwise) of a channel model. Steiner believes that, for mid-market ERP products at least, a channel strategy is the only way to make money. This belief is gained from experience seeing just how much implementation help customers want – price points on mid-market ERP products are such that a direct sales and support channel isn’t viable for a vendor to establish and maintain.

My analysis isn’t quite as stark as that of Steiner – while I’d concur that the channel is important for existing customers looking to transition to new products, there is a large number of greenfield opportunities such as businesses growing out of a lower level accounting product, and they are still likely to be amenable to the direct approach.

I would say that a clear delineation is required between reseller prospects and direct sales prospects – resellers are feeling very fragile right now and any dual-channel approach is going to be approached with caution – it’s vitally important for vendors going down this route to have a clear demarcation in place so resellers can feel secure in the partnership.

SaaS sales strategy, and in particular channel approaches, is an intensely interesting topic (well, to me anyway) – I’m keen to hear other vendor’s thoughts about this – flick me an email at ben@diversity.net.nz

Today Box.net is at the NetSuite SuiteCloud conference (see disclosure re my attendance at SuiteCloud here) opening the box (bad pun intended) on their integration with NetSuite. It’s an integration that Box have built using NetSuite’s SuiteCloud development platform, and it allows NetSuite customers to access, manage, share, and collaborate on all their content online, within the NetSuite applications.

Recently Brian Sommer posted a really interesting discussion on who will win the SaaS wars – Best of Breeds or Integrated Suite. He took the perspective that the Suites will win due to their inherent ability to work together out of the box. It’s a similar discussion to that which I’ve talked about previously regarding The Small Business Web versus the approach taken by Intuit’s partner Platform (but see disclosure) – basically the thinking goes that integrations are hard, no matter how well they’re facilitated – out of the box apps that work together and feel like a seamless suite are the route best taken. It’s a perspective I agree with – while it’s easy to have a purist’s discussion about potential with well APId applications, I always look at the reality on the ground for businesses – and suite are incredibly attractive at that end of the technical spectrum.

Anyway, in terms of this particular integration, NetSuite customer using Box can:

• Make relevant content – such as sales collateral, demo videos, invoices, contracts, and purchase orders – visible and accessible when viewing a customer record
• Keep employees across departments in sync with what files have been shared with which customers by assigning Box folders to specific customer records. Users can also upload files directly into Box when viewing a customer record in NetSuite
• Incorporate collaboration and workflow into NetSuite with the ability to create shared folders outside of a customer record and invite colleagues, partners, and contractors to review, update, and add their own files
• Leverage Box’s integrated third-party services within NetSuite, including the ability to email or fax files, e-sign contracts, and edit documents online

Box.net for NetSuite will be available on www.suiteapp.com before the end of the month as part of the Box Enterprise edition. Yet another value proposition that sees the suite providers justify their somewhat myopic perspective….