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Who knows what goes through corporate management brains sometimes?
Last week I had two conversations with two contacts using QLF, the Aareon home-grown finance ledger offering. Folks like me long in the tooth in the Social Housing sector, will be familiar with Aareon’s classic offering of QLX Housing and QLF financials, all living in a single SQL Server database. Indeed, going back over nearly 30 years in my sector working life, often packaging both like this was a big draw, particularly for housing associations forming after the 1990’s LSVT boom. Councils however would have been more likely to still have a corporate FMS.
Back in the day, the first products I worked with were on the Pick Universe platform, character based and named HAMIS & MISAC (MIS Accounting natch!). On re-writing products for the Microsoft product stack, full SQL Server, Windows UI etc, finance was dropped quite early. Back in 2002 or thereabouts, there were just too many proven established COTS finance options available.
Simdel which became Aareon in the UK, was an outlier solution for the medium to larger landlord, in having a combined HMS/FMS. Indeed, in the heyday of Aareon winning over 60% of new deals in 2010-2018, many new adopters took housing & finance together. Three of my procurements went that way on the bounce, rightly due to cost savings and reduction of integration challenges. It was such a bargain that one 24k+ RSL took it almost as ‘a punt’, with the strategy that it could easily be swapped out after a few years if needed.
In those days it was Paul Gregory and Neil Ward steering the ship (or the helpdesk at least!), I remember seeing most of and often then their time seemed very stretched across the many sites (over 60 at one point I recall).
The rise of full Cloud and true responsive browser developed solutions and the Covid19 helping to emphasis why the sector can no longer see a future in the old Client-Server solutions going forward, clearly put paid to the QLX goldrush. It looked to me though that Yuneo (“Its all about you”!) would have been the QLX/QLF saviour, Cheryl Welbourn pitched it well at CIH2022 anyway.
Unfortunately via a short letter to customers, this was pulled dramatically in April 2023, as you might have read first here . Following that, its had a recent sellout too
The latest bit of news for the sector is that for financial solutions, Aareon will now be partnering with OneAdvanced where from its stable, in addition to DRS scheduling, OpenAccounts will now be offered in partnership. Anyone up to speed in the sector will be very familiar with a longstanding partnership selling OA into socialhousing for sometime, which is Orchard, now part of MRI. It will be interesting to see how this move affects the latter.
Back to the original convo with contacts, they asked, “What might this mean then”? Might QLF financial support be winding down, will we be sold migrations to OpenAccounts, or should we look to more modern products out there? Of which there are a few I see increasingly in housing, such as Xledger. Written for Cloud, with rich APIs and an open attitude to integration. ‘Advanced Financials’ is the Cloud offering to replace OpenAccounts, strange that is not in Aareon’s new sales bag?
Strangely too, the combined HMS/FMS is not dead, with some proven written for Cloud/Responsive Browser options open to smaller (under 4,000 homes) and small-medium (2,000-20,000 homes) sites. Namely Designer Software Homemaster and Rubixx (maybe one for a future post?). As both of these have an FMS in theory of being sold standalone, I would be war-gaming the option of providing the module at rock-bottom pricing, as the Trojan Horse to replace both HMS & FMS.
Indeed, both these true Cloud/Responsive Browser products have been very successful in picking off Aareon sites, particularly in Scotland. They do very well in procurements, where strangely many of the usual suspects do not engage or do not have a suitable product currently.
Read about the big Aareon/OneAdvance tie up here
Needless to say, if you would like a chat over a brew about possible product options in the marketplace, please reach out. I will bring the biscuits.
Related Post: Are you getting the best from your self-service?
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I would be pleased to connect with you on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy Message me with any issues or queries, you would like to be explored in this blog. We generally receive a couple of suggestions each month.
Doll by Doll – Sleeping Partners.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009
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