Donna Garverick wrote:
>
> [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> > This is an honest question: What is it about an accounting package that needs
> > to be special for a "large" company, as compared to a small or medium one?
>
> not being an accountant (:-) i'll blushingly say i'm not really sure.  i'm
> repeating what i've heard diverse parties (accounting types) say -- and i respect
> their opinions.  it would seem, however (from what i've been told), that the
> current offerings do not scale well.

There can be any number of things, from the ability to reduce down to good
summaries or the ability to search for entries with particular
combinations of characteristics online (both important in avoiding wading
through tons of paper). There is also simply the the speed of and style of
processing. Of course, there is also the way the sales pitch is aimed
(maybe HP 3000 vendors don't talk like they support larger corporations).

May I suggest that in situations like this it is good to be open to
discussion about the details with the users.   They may not understand the
whole story.  Also, it would provide good feedback to the 3000 vendor
community.  While I'm not suggesting this about Donna, many technical
types are too willing to not learn about the business and so they aren't
engaged by the business types in discussions about these kinds of things.

>
> > It's been my experience that small companies are capable of tolerating
> > complexity and exceptions better than large ones are -- and that the use of
> > applications software actually tends to become simpler (more direct, less
> > options) as the organization grows larger and larger.
>
> my experience would indicate the opposite :-)                - d

my experience has been both.:-)  I think large companies can have needs
that go beyond the common, both in simple scale and the impact of lots of
small things.  A few small "manually done" things can be tolerated by
smaller businesses but not when multiplied by tens of thousands at the
larger ones.  At the same time, small companies are often more able to use
and derive more values from some kinds of features and flexibility.  It is
a matter of the feature set aligning with the set of needs - and feature
sets are simply a linear kind of thing.

Of course, these things can also just be the reflection of the knowledge
and understanding, or the creative persuasive ability, of vendors sales
reps!

>
> --
> Donna Garverick     Sr. System Programmer
> 925-210-6631        [log in to unmask]
>
> >>>MY opinions, not Longs Drug Stores'<<<


--
Richard L Gambrell
Database Administrator and
Consultant to Computing Services at UTC

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