Microsoft Small Business Applications

So long !

Rajat Taneja — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 02:09:00 GMT

As I hit the two year anniversary of this blog, I want to thank all our customers and partners who provided feedback and comments about our product line to me via this forum. The blog turned out to be super valuable to get (near) real time feedback on all our efforts, be it a new product release, a marketing campaign or even my attempts at publishing KB articles J. Time really flies when one is having fun !. It’s been over 7 years since we kicked off our engineering efforts to create a fully integrated software plus web service suite to meet the needs of small businesses. Today, OA is well into its 3^rd release and is available both in USA and UK, BCM is also in its V3.0 and now available in over 30 language offerings, RMS and POS are both approaching V3.0 and all our integrated web services from payroll to emarketing to ecommerce are demonstrating the power of deep and ubiquitous connectivity to features served from the internet. Several million customers are benefiting from the product line and continue to inspire and motivate us at Microsoft. One of the finest teams in the industry comes to work every day to evolve, enhance and innovate for our customers and partners.

It has truly been a privilege leading this effort for the last 7years at MS. One of the most gratifying of my career. I want to take this opportunity to bid farewell as I move on to new adventures and new challenges in my career. All the learning’s and experiences in leading this effort for Microsoft will be invaluable as I continue to dedicate my career to developing the best software for our customers. And it goes without saying the small business application suite will always have a very special place in my heart no matter what I am doing.

Best Wishes

Rajat

PS : BCM hit a great milestone today becoming a standalone offering and in a way punctuating the effort we began back in 2001.

PC World review of Office Accounting 2008

Rajat Taneja — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 03:26:00 GMT

PC world just published its review of the new Office Accounting 2008. Here is a link to the article by Richard Morochove:

http://s.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/139786/microsoft_office_accounting_gets_more_versatile.html

Office for Small Business

Rajat Taneja — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 02:28:00 GMT

There are some very detailed and thoughtful reviews just getting published covering the use of Office Accounting, Business Contact Manager and the rest of the Office suite for small businesses. Here is a sampling of these write ups:

http://www.crn.com/software/203103087

http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/news/article.php/3711386

http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/avantgo/2007/11/are-software-software-as-service-power.shtml

http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=175535&d=1025&h=1023&f=1026&dateformat=%25o%20%25B%20%25Y

http://www.laopinion.com/negocios/?rkey=00000000000002662210

Friendly numbers !

Rajat Taneja — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 04:52:00 GMT

Office Accounting download sites are :

USA : www.ideawins.com

UK : www.msofficeaccounting.co.uk

Office Accounting 2008 is now available !

Rajat Taneja — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 04:36:00 GMT

Office Accounting 2008 has shipped and is available for immediate download.

It's a fantastic release and is now available in the UK as well as the US. For the US market, Office Accounting is now available both in English and in Spanish languages.

The 2008 release is the third version of the software and has a number of new features that will help users get more out of their day to day business operations. Some of these are :

New budgeting capabilities
Excel pivot tables
Easy import from excel (including transactions)
Ability to create purchase order from a sales order
More capabilities to email documents including pdf, xps and word attachment capabilities
Batch processing
Pre-payments
Bulk email
Simplified account creation
Improved online banking
Ability to add Line of Credit account
Enhanced recurring transaction support
Ability to add status watermarks
Inventory Reorder
QuickBooks 2007 Import

And the feature that is my absolute favorite is a central resource center where users will be able to ask each other questions via our news groups, find accountants, access our knowledge base and video tutorials, download updates and get syndicated feeds from blogs and other web sites (via an RSS feed). And all of this in one location and just a mouse click or two away.

We have also enabled CPAs and other key advisors to our users to add their own content, web site and tools into the Office Accounting 2008 product via menu and tool bar options making OA the single destination to run a business in the most easy and intuitive manner.

A tremendous amount of engineering work has gone into the Office Accounting product and I hope it is a super valuable tool for our users to gain competitive advantage in the business world !!

Detailed information about Office Accounting can be found at :

US English product: http://www.ideawins.com/

US Spanish product: http://www.ideawins.com/espanol

UK English product: http://www.msofficeaccounting.co.uk/

Congratulations Given Campbell

Rajat Taneja — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:20:00 GMT

Given Cambell who won the runner up award in our ideawins contest last year has just launched her new web site. Check it out at www.givencampbell.com. Given's business idea and passion for her craft is very inspiring and I am so delighted to see her new site which is really cool.

Good luck Given. We are all rooting for your business !

Thank you Oprah !

Rajat Taneja — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:30:00 GMT

Our retail management software (RMS) has been doing extremely well in market and I am delighted that our most recent installations include marquee names like :

Harpo Production (Oprah Winfrey's production company)
Seattle Seahawks
Dallas Cowboys
Texas Rangers
Woodland Park Zoo
NASCAR
Portland Trail Blazers
Eastern National (includes Lincoln Memorial and other national parks)
Tommy Hilfiger (Latin America)
Vancouver Canucks (Canada)
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Australia)
Cadburys (Europe)
Royal Albert Hall (UK)
Real Madrid (Europe)

Between our POS software and the RMS family we now have complete solution from Microsoft for retailers who are just starting out to those who have large deployments in a multi store / multi lane environment.

www.ideawins.com updated

Rajat Taneja — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:00:00 GMT

We just released a refresh to our ideawins site for Office Accounting. Its really cool and worth checking out.

www.ideawins.com is the custom site off www.microsoft.com and is focused 100% on Office Accounting. The first version was launched on 10/30/06 to coincide with the release of Office Accounting 2007. The new version builds on the stellar success of the original and adds new focus on the key product features. The ideawins concept has resonated very deeply with our customers and we remain committed to continuously enhancing it with new and added features.

Quiet Summer

Rajat Taneja — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:35:00 GMT

Its been a quiet summer when it comes to blogging but an intense period as we get ready to launch the new versions of Office Accounting, Business Contact Manager and Point of Sale. We have also updated and added several new enhancements to our web services functionality and are super excited as the code now goes into final glide path to public availability. I am super excited at the new features and added power in each of the products. The early response from our alpha and beta testers has been incredibly positive. Last week we pre-viewed some of the new product benefits to a few of our MPAN members and my inbox has since filled up with the excitement that our accounting professional partners anticipate.

The countdown to the 2008 product launch is now in full swing.

Office Accounting Express 2007 wins innovation award

Rajat Taneja — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 23:46:00 GMT

I am pleased to share the news that Office Accounting Express 2007 has won the CPA technology advisor's most innovative award for 2007. This marks the second consecutive year that the Office accounting product has won the prestigious award that is voted on by industry experts and CPAs from across the US. We are thrilled to accept this honor and reiterate our commitment to driving leading innovation in the smal business applications space.