SMB Roll-up: Zoho, Sage Take SMB Finance Online, US SMBs Amongst Worst for Data Back-up

By David Roe (@druadh20) Jan 20, 2011 Comments

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This week Zoho and Sage launch new online packages for the SMB market, Microsoft’s online CRM release is priced to suit SMBs, while US SMB’s are not backing up their data. In other new, tablet sales — particularly iPad — are booming.

Zoho Books Takes Finance Online

The first of two financial packages for SMBs this week comes from Zoho (news, site). Earlier this week, it launched Zoho Books, its online accounting software targeting SMBs, that gives small companies complete visibility of their finances, as well as a powerful, straightforward tool for managing money.

Users can manage their customers and invoices as well as record, monitor and reconcile their bank accounts and transactions. Zoho Books also lets users easily give their accountants or financial advisers access to the system so they can collaborate in real time. Most importantly, Zoho Books helps users make better, more informed decisions and stay on top of their business.

Setting itself up as an alternative to Intuit’s Quick Books online, it is offering Zoho Books for US$ 24 per month for two users. For additional users, it is US$ 5 per user, per month. Yearly subscribers get a two-month discount. Zoho will also offer customized migration services for customers switching from a competitive offering. Find out more in the following video:

Sage Moves to Cloud

The second financial package to be launched this week is from Sage (news, site) which moves into the cloud for the first time with its online SMB accounting package.

Built on the Ruby-on-Rails open source web application framework, SageOne comes in three different editions. However, for the moment, Sage says this new package will only be available in the UK, but is part of a new web strategy. Whether Sage will offer it or not is still not clear.

MS CRM Online Offers SMB Prices

If you missed it earlier this week, after four months in beta, Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM 2011 has finally been released worldwide. The new online CRM is now available in 40 countries and 41 languages, while the on-premise edition is due to be released on February 28.

As part of the launch, it is offering those who take it up between now and June 30 a special price of US$ 33 per user/month as opposed to the full price of US$ 44 per user/month, putting it well within reach of most SMBs.

Compare that to the US$ 65 and US$ 125 per user/month for Salesforce.com's Professional and Enterprise editions, and US$ 75 per user/month for Oracle’s CRM On-Demand, and you have the makings of an interesting year in the CRM space as Microsoft tries to counter Salesforce’s dominance of the market.