Should I change software? Part 1 of many....
Occasionally at Enzumo our customers tell us “We are looking at moving to solution X, they recently presented to us, and it looks very slick”.
Considering change is understandable, never before has there been more competition in the global advice software market. Access to capital, and reducing barriers to entry have meant that new players are continually joining the race to challenge the established incumbents.
The Australian financial advice software market is unique. For over a decade it has been dominated by IRESS. A number of factors have lead to this unique oligopoly. Investment Trends - Planner Technology Report has reported that for the past 5 years, IRESS has continued to grow to its market share to approximately 70%. The runner-up places have changed between COIN, Adviser Logic and Midwinter.
Interestingly, the place getters have been making only incremental changes to their market share.
We are not in an educated position to give any insight on the other players. Our business has been primarily focused on IRESS’s XPLAN software.
We apply the following filters when assessing who we partner with:
Is the solution fully developed?
Does it meet the core needs of the use case? eg. Can you write an SOA?
Does it provide comprehensive research & modelling tools?
Is the technology stack scalable & industrial strength?
Is their corporate structure stable and well-financed?
We believe these apply just as much to an advice firm, as a mico-SaaS business such as ours.
The vexed issue of software choice will be the focus of further articles.. stay tuned.