The recent R5 million investment in rewriting TurboCASH T3 Accounting is paying off for Pink Software. The latest version of TurboCASH comes integrated with e-mail and XML facilities and is now in use by over 3 000 users. Pink has been able to cut the entry price of the product to R300. This has raised the TurboCASH market share to 30%.
Philip Copeman, MD of Pink Software, said in Cape Town this week: "We are really pleased that our release of 18 June 2002 has finally laid to rest all major technical problems. This has been well received and we are now ready to go forward with feature enhancements.
"TurboCASH was a late starter in the Windows environment, but this has now turned to an advantage for us. We are the only major accounting package in the low-end market that has been completely rewritten post the arrival of the Internet. While other accounting packages `tack` the Internet onto the side of 10-year-old legacy systems, TurboCASH has been designed with the Internet as an intrinsic component."
Copeman added: "The world is a very different place today. While the Internet may have boomed and bust in other industries, it has left accounting changed forever. Almost all our users now use e-mail and online banking. The result is that accounting data is now far more easily distributed and the Internet is the carrier. TurboCASH users can already e-mail all reports, import and export XML data and interact with online banking. They already run with remote data entry and use peer to peer network models."
"TurboCASH T3 has been developed with the latest Delphi technology from Borland and the result is a far more stable and open product than traditional accounting products that have closed proprietary databases. The use of an XML aware design has meant that we have not changed out database since the start of development four years ago. Compared to our competitors who have one way data upgrades, we have a major advantage."
Copeman explained the company`s recent international expansion: "Support is much easier. We are able to supply our product at magnitudes cheaper than our competitors. We are launching our product in the UK this month with an entry price of 29 pounds. Equivalent products in SA cost thousands of rand.
"Entry into the international low end accounting market is difficult. There are no more than six players worldwide. We sell for 20% of the price of our nearest competitors. While the other players in the accounting market all look for angles based on software licensing, annuity revenues and support contracts, we have taken the approach of making the product as cheap as possible for the consumer.
"The cheap strategy gave us credibility problems at first, but we are now starting to get through the message that low price does not mean inferior. We are the only company operating in this price range because we are the only one that can. Our competitors are burdened with support-intensive products that require expensive professional assistance."
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