I criticized TABS3 in public

When I am not in class, I'm also a father, husband and from 8-5, the manager for a law firm.  I read Technolawyer and enjoy it. Recently they published a review I had sent in af a great SaaS app for lawfirms call AdvologixPM. I've gotten mostly positive comments about the article, but a consultant for TABS3 which happens to be the software my firm uses commented to warn about the dangers of SaaS, which do exist and must be planned for. She disclosed that she was a consultant who made her living installing and optimizing TABS3 and PracticeMaster for law firms. She went on to say what great programs TABS3 and it's sibling PracticeMaster are. I personally do not think that this is the case, and replied to her comments generally. Her reply went into the usual consultants spiel of "if only you were fully trained on the product, then you'd know how great it was". I responded more specifically about TABS3 shortcomings and what I really thought about it. The next morning, I recieved a call from the president of TABS3, offering us a free hour of training and asked what I disliked about TABS3. I talked it over with him and am hoping that the training will really help our bookkeeper better use poor software.

There is somthing fundamentally wrong with software if it can support an industry of consultants who install, optimize and train users on the software. TimeMatters, Amicus, and especially TABS3 all have this problem. To be fair, so do non-specific programs like many of the offerings from Microsoft. I have nothing against training and learning how to use software and think that it is usually a great investment, but if it takes outside support not provided by the publishing software company, then it has a problem. Most people will not take the time to learn to use a difficult program well. They also do not want to pay for learning to overcome what they perceive as flaws of the software. How hard is free training to understand? They especially do not want to pay for additional staff training anytime someone is replaced. I know I don't.

This is one of the best recomendations for SaaS in my opinion. All the products I've tried have been easy to use, have good help files, and great support. The support is also included in the monthly subscription. There are no software or installation issues either. They also do not, nor will they have years of legacy code dragging behind them like an anchor. In many ways, legacy code and compatibility with previous versions has been the ruin of many new versions. If Vista did not have to support all the software written for XP, 2000, ME, Windows 97 and Windows 3.1 how much smaller and faster could it have been? It may not have gone back that far, but it's dragging an anchor of old code to the bottom of the OS heap.