MY RESPONSE TO KONSISE BLOG

As a rule we don’t take issue with anyone or a  competitor unless they take issue with us. Over the last 15 years we have never had an issue with anyone! So why do I have to waste my time writing an answer to a blog I came across on the Konsise website (who in fact are not competitive to Sky Tax) that I have to object to.
www.konsise.com/business-tax-software-south-africa-2023/

I came across a blog article written by Konsise called the 5 best tax management systems in RSA.
I wrote to the company and asked them to remove the article on their website as I consider it disparaging. In fact I find the whole article wrong and factually incorrect.
First of all we should not be viewed as a competitor with Konsise as our products are not competitive and are designed for totally different target markets with very different price strategies, Konsise being for the in house tax departments of large corporates and our product being for the tax practitioners accountants market.

I would like to state that I am in no way disparaging the product Konsise as I am not in a position to do so. However based on their website and marketing material there are many features they don’t have that the tax professional market products do have.

A simple question do they file individual tax returns and trusts or companies and do provisional tax filing?
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Dear Management of Konsise
I note with disdain that you have mentioned our product Sky Tax in an article on your website.
https://konsise.com/5-best-business-tax-software-in-south-africa-2022/#11-accfin-
If you are going to mention us please ensure that you get your facts right. Your facts are wrong and disparaging.
 I respectfully request that you remove our name from that article immediately, or better still the whole article as you are not qualified to put out that content.
Regards
Mark
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This is the response received from the MD
Dear Mark
Lovely to hear from you, I hope you are enjoying the December holiday period.
Our articles are written using a journalist who accesses publicly available information and customer feedback.  Having reconciled, it is nearly identical to information sky tax writes about is own products.
You have failed to specify any inaccuracies in the blog post, or what might be disparaging. In fact, the article is generally complimentary of sky tax, we omitted many of the negative customer comments as that isn’t the purpose of such an article.
We won’t remove the article but shall correct anything that meets the objective standard of highly inaccurate and/or defamatory statements. Unless you provide greater specificity, I cannot act on such generality. 
We shall publish many industry related articles and you are always welcome to point out any inaccuracies that may creep in. 
Warm regards
Philip
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My Response to  Philip Tilman to sentence listed below
“Our articles are written using a journalist who accesses publicly available information and customer feedback.  Having reconciled, it is nearly identical to information sky tax writes about is own products. “

My Response
If the above sentence is correct this Konsise response is nonsense!
If this was written by a journalist, surely a journalist would make sure they would  get their facts right and would be very happy to publish their name with what they have written. The article is full of generalised statements which I doubt a journalist would say. E.g  the basic user interface is lacking. We would like to take this up with the journalist concerned to query where they got their information from and which part of our writings they reconciled with. It should be noted that there are many features that are not on our website.

It is my view that this was written by a sales person and not a journalist who has no understanding of the market place comparing apples with oranges which is really not possible.

What makes this even worse is the fact that the management of Konsise who allowed this article to be published, clearly do not understand the market place. There is no way that Konsise and the products aimed at the professional tax product can be compared, so why compare? Also why include an accounting product like SAGE in a tax review as this is ridiculous.

So the reason is that they did this to show that they are the best in tax management where clearly they are not and are not in the market for tax professionals but want to be viewed as the best in this category.

“Having reconciled, it is nearly identical to information sky tax writes about is own products.”
Note the word “nearly”. So the assumption is that your journalist went through every webinar and marketing video and text to reconcile the article to what Accfin said, I think not!

Let me point out that if I did a review of anyone’s product I would have the good manners and ethics and send it to the company concerned first to insure that my facts are correct to make sure I would never get myself into the situation that Konsise has got into. Konsise did not bother to do that! However I would not review anyone’s product because I would never be able to get all the facts.

The Sky Software picture Published  in the Konsise blog
One of the most ridiculous aspects of this review is that Konsise published a picture of a debtors screen from 2014 for a tax product review in 2022. Surely a journalist would know better. Now come on how is this possible in a tax product review!

Mistake
To be clear Konsise is a product that is geared for corporate groups with a price that is far beyond the other products mentioned in the group and beyond what the professional tax practitioners can pay. Owing to this simple fact Konsise is not suitable at all for accounting firms that are tax practitioners.

Mistake
Sage is a fantastic accounting system and is not a tax management system at all so why include it in this so called review.

Mistake
The review fails to mention the fact that Accfin and Greatsoft not only supply Tax Management systems but supply full back-office systems for the whole accounting firm which makes them not comparable to Konsise. Why not mention this?

Mistake
The Konsise product is  not built for tax professionals as it does not have the features of Greatsoft and Accfin.

Sentence from MD Philip Tilman Email
“You have failed to specify any inaccuracies in the blog post, or what might be disparaging. In fact, the article is generally complimentary of sky tax, we omitted many of the negative customer comments as that isn’t the purpose of such an article.”
My Response
The article is not complimentary, it is disparaging because of the generalities and the lies and the fact that the mere comparison is wrong. Disclose the negative customer comments you received so that we can verify. Who got the negative customer compliments, your sales person or the journalist.

THE CONS IN KONSISE BLOG
·              Geared towards tax professionals, so Sky Tax is missing some features in-house finance teams would appreciate and expect such as peer reviews and deadline alerts
·              Basic user interface, lacking some essential features for corporates
No free trial

MY RESPONSE
How does the writer know that there is no peer reviews and alerts. This is factually incorrect. Where did they get this information from!
What does the writer mean by Basic User Interface and what are the features lacking.
In regard to No free trial our user base and our users speak for themselves and owing to the sophistication of our product unfortunately free trials are not possible.
Check out some of our positive user comments on the link below.
https://www.accfinsoftware.com/case-studies.html
 
BOTTOM LINE IN THE KONSISE ARTICLE
Provides some useful features but lacks some of the features a business needs to properly manage the complexities and volume of corporate tax.

MY RESPONSE
Rubbish

Philip I await your response!