Joe the accountant

Whatever you may have thought of Joe the Plumber, to me he highlighted the fact that backbone of the US economy (and indeed most economies around the world) is the millions of our small businesses.

Each one of them needs accounting software, and Intuit and Peachtree and others traditionally sold to them via various retail channels. In the new world of SaaS, the web becomes the store front.

So, I was intrigued with a conversation with Jerry Jalaba, VP of Channels at Intacct - he told me about the successful hybrid model they have evolved. They have relationships with a number of accounting firms like LarsonAllen, one of the largest CPA firms in the US (and others like SS&G and Haney)

These firms leverage Intacct's accounting SaaS to offer services to a wide range of SMEs without needing to install software at each client, fedex a bunch of papers to clients and back - traditional ways in which accountants did business. When I started my career with PW, we did not even have Fedex:)

I was intrigued because Jerry came to Intacct from Postini (now part of Google) - where his channel was obviously web-centric. And here he heavily leverages a more traditional go to market channel to sell a web service.

BTW - I have a feeling Joe the Plumber is going to come up over and over again as tax debates rage on in the new administration. The accounting firms don't mind that focus on taxes :)