Mind Your Own Business or MYOB is a financial software package which provides accounting, tax and other services to medium and small businesses. It is a multinational corporation based in Australia and is a public company. There are two different versions of MYOB accounting software – MYOB LiveAccounts, which is a cloud application, and MYOB Basics, the desktop-only software. Its products are used by 1,000,000 business users and 10,000 accounting practitioners. It is well known New Zealand and Australia.
This literature review discusses the two versions of MYOB software stating its history with the help of Christopher Lee, adoption, and growth of the company mentioning the Lean Startup concept model and anchor cord for overseeing its production and quality. In-depth explanations include the current size of the financial market globally, other competitors in the market, which offers almost similar features and performance of MYOB software packages. Analyzed the different advantages MYOB provides over other competitors including less hassle of hardware, cost savings, real-time update of reports, and automation of entries. This review also mentions the current limitations MYOB is facing and the gaps the company wants to address.
Christopher Lee and Team Teleware, Inc. used the name MYOB in their accounting software in the 1980s in the United States. Christopher Lee provided the equity to Data-Tech Software, the Australian publisher and in 1996 it purchased the intellectual property rights. The company changed the name to MYOB and was registered on Australian Stock Board Exchange or ASX on 9th July 1999 (Myobecommerce.com.au, 2016). MYOB extended its practices in Australia and New Zealand, after it merged with Solution 6 Holdings in 2004, after finding success in the business and expanded it products and services for the same. In May 2008 MYOB released online services such as email hosting, web hosting, and domain registration. Tim Reed replaced former CEO Craig Wrinkler as the new CEO in June 2008. In the same year, the company pulled off operations from Ireland, UK, USA, and Asia to focus only on Australia and New Zealand. After the equity consortium led by Archer Capital and purchased MYOB was sold to on 21 August 2011 for an unknown amount, and the company retained its private ownership (Myob.com, 2016).
To minimize waste and to follow the concept of stocking inventory as followed by Toyota, MYOB adopted the lean startup concept model for its software development cycle. Lean Startup concept focuses on creating products which are in demand and prevent unnecessary stocking of inventory by taking feedback inputs from the users system (Rathje Andersen, 2016). Another concept called Andon Cord had been adopted by the company to improve the production quality. Andon Cord is a literal cord which the employees can pull anytime if they notice any anomaly in the production, which can pose a threat to the safety or quality (Zealand345.rssing.com, 2016). The entire team then focuses solely on the problem until it is resolved and that nothing unnecessary goes out in public. For three years MYOB invested in a cloud platform, and in 2012 the company released the cloud version of its financial software called AccountRight Live (Myob.com, 2016). The cloud application failed to meet expectations, and the primary complaint of the users was its speed since they were migrating from the desktop-only version which offered good speeds. The company had many features lined up in its roadmap, but it took the feedbacks seriously and changed its roadmap to focus only on speed and performance. The company also decided to focus on power users, those who can work efficiently by memorizing keyboard shortcuts in reduced number of steps (Curtis, 2015). In 2014 the company started to welcome feedback and complaints from its users in the form of blogs or forums from all types of clients (Fletcher-Brown, 2015).
The market for global financial services is expected to grow from $ 103.66 billion from $ 66.92 million in 2014 at a CAGR of 9.1%. The financial market is divided globally into the following regions – North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. According to the regions the software categorized are – Audit, Risk and Compliance Management, Analytics and BI applications, Business Transaction Processing, and Enterprise IT and Customer Experience (Zhang et al., 2016).
There is several others competitive financial software in Australia offering similar performance and features. Financial cloud applications include Xero, Saasu and Intuit QuickBooks Online Simple Start. Desktop only financial applications are Reckon Accounts EasyStart and MoneyWorks Express (Symons, 2014).
Migrating to Cloud gave users a lot of freedom in accessing the files from any place such as from clients home, onsite or own home. It helps in collaboration with customers, suppliers, and partners. It reduces the stress on the employees and strengthens the overall organization, which increases productivity and efficiency of the organization (Mohabbattalab, von der Heidt, and Mohabbattalab, 2014.
Manual entries take up a lot of time, and human error can creep in if the workload becomes too high-inducing stress. MYOB automates them by removing duplicate entries and issues with redundancy. This software package sync information was thereby reducing the time consumed in making credit notes, purchase orders and more. Updates are reflected in real time, so the clients view the report instantly. It helps the organization in achieving financial stability by preventing the need for implementing multiple teams working on generating reports like payroll and account updates (Hol and Ginige, 2012) .
According to Hossack (2015), operating systems, hardware, its maintenance and accounting fees take up a significant share of the company’s revenue. Adopting to cloud application saves up a lot of costs and requiring a monthly subscription-based fee instead. The cloud application also takes care of the backups, updates, and maintenance on its requiring no human intervention.
The underlining issue of data security persists when it comes to using cloud applications and according to Software Advice’s survey, 46% of respondents who took part expressed this problem. Any data stored on the cloud is susceptible to hacking, theft, and frauds. MYOB is not novice-friendly, and the software company, therefore, trains their employees separately to use this program in workshops and seminars (Slocombe, 2013).
Merging with Solution 6 may benefit the company achieve its recognition globally, and the merger can be beneficial in creating the company’s branding, strong market presence. Other advantages include the ability to resolve issues between business users and accountancy, and closing the gap between them. However, Craig Winkler, the CEO of Solution 6 believes the merger will not bring the company any global recognition (ARN, 2016).
The company made a significant step by adopting Lean Startup Concept to minimize inventory stocking and Andon Cord, to prioritize problems related to production issues at hand by involving all the available employees. MYOB listened to its user feedback seriously and migrated to a cloud for its financial software package and on repeated complaints, the company focused on speed and performance instead of adding new features. MYOB’s competitors include Reckon Accounts EasyStart Competitive cloud, MoneyWorks Express in desktop software, and for cloud applications, there are Xero, Saasu and Intuit QuickBooks Online Simple Start. MYOB is ahead of its competition by automating daily tasks, sync information, removes duplicate entries, and makes investment quite cheap. MYOB is not novice-friendly, for which the company organizes sessions as workshops and seminars to train employees. The concern with online data security remains. MYOB merged with Solution 6 to create brand value and recognition. However the CEO of Solution 6 thinks otherwise.
The biggest hurdle to MYOB is its user-friendliness and the fact that it has to organize seminars and workshops to train employees and clients separately can be its weak point. It has to redesign the interface with online tutorials and documentation so that anyone can learn it on his own with self-pace. It has to do research and make case studies on its competitors in implementing new features and services, and not solely rely on user feedbacks which can be limiting. It can look for expanding its business besides New Zealand and Australia for its revenue generation and also needs to include diversity to its workplace, and understand foreign market culture for setting up its business.
ARN. (2016). MYOB and Solution 6 to merge. [online] Available at: https://www.arnnet.com.au/article/116270/myob_solution_6_merge/ [Accessed 24 Aug. 2016].
Curtis, V., 2015. MYOB Software for Dummies-Australia. John Wiley & Sons.
Fletcher-Brown, R., 2015. ‘Mind Your Own Business’–how can we best support employers to improve the mental health of their employees?.Perspectives in public health, 135(1), pp.18-20.
Hol, A. and Ginige, A., 2012. eT Guide-Assisting The eTransformation Journey: A Case Study Approach. International Journal on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions (ICTer), 4(3).
Hossack, S., 2015. Cloud-based accounting and productivity tools for practitioners and taxpayers. Taxation in Australia, 50(5), p.265.
Mohabbattalab, E., von der Heidt, T. and Mohabbattalab, B., 2014. The perceived advantages of cloud computing for SMEs. GSTF Journal on Computing (JoC), 4(1), p.61.
Myob.com. (2016). The MYOB Story. [online] Available at: https://www.myob.com/nz/about/group/story [Accessed 24 Aug. 2016].
Myobecommerce.com.au. (2016). History & General Information. [online] Available at: https://www.myobecommerce.com.au/history [Accessed 24 Aug. 2016].
Rathje Andersen, M., 2016. New approaches to early stage entrepreneurship.
Slocombe, G., 2013. Cyber security–A vital part of national security. Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter (2002), 39(2), p.31.
Symons, M.J., Single Funnel Pty Ltd, 2014. Customer relationship management (crm) systems. U.S. Patent Application 14/192,692.
Zealand345.rssing.com. (2016). The Pulse NZ » From MYOB. [online] Available at: https://zealand345.rssing.com/chan-11352612/all_p2.html [Accessed 24 Aug. 2016].
Zhang, Z., Nan, G., Li, M. and Tan, Y., 2016. To Lead or to Follow? Market Entry and Pricing Strategies for Saas Provider. Market Entry and Pricing Strategies for Saas Provider (June 7, 2016).
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