Sage North America has announced the availability of Product Update 1 for Sage 300 ERP 2012, a substantial product update introducing new features and functionality to help businesses be smarter and more efficient. It is currently available for those businesses running Sage 300 ERP 2012. Sage 300 ERP is the most comprehensive financial suite by Sage for midsized and smaller businesses looking to connect all operations enterprise wide and access intelligent insight that drives global growth and profitability.
Read More >Although 92% of distribution organizations use Accounting or ERP software more and more these same organizations are upgrading to best in class ERP software to ensure they get the following benefits:
Read More >
Service Manager is a multi-award-winning software solution for Service, Job Cost, and Maintenance industries. Service Manager is fully-integrated to the Sage Accpac ERP accounting suite, providing true accountability from a central point to help you manage the resources, products, and services your business offers.
Read More >If we define the cloud in its simplest terms as access to files/data/programs via the Internet what are the criteria most organizations and individuals use to determine if the cloud is right for you or your business.
1) Capital Expenditures - The cloud pricing model is a subscription based pay as your go model which defers the large upfront initial payments, associated with traditional on premise models, over time.
2) Disaster recovery - Most cloud providers use Tier 1 or Tier 2 data centers to provide their software as service. The disaster recovery protection they typically provide is not comparable to what a typical organization could manage with its own hardware, network infrastructure. Even if they could the costs would likely be prohibitive.
3) Scalability - Again the data centers above are built with so much capacity there are rarely issues with the growth of your system. As your business or organization grows you are able to add users, functionality, or storage with ease. In the on premise environment we often run into capacity issues due to size of or some other restriction of our hardware or network. Again the comparable cost of the type of capacity a cloud service provider can deliver in the on premise world is likely more than the average business can manage.
4) Version upgrades - It is has become a huge concern of the on premise software industry. It is often quite costly to upgrade from one version to another. In the cloud upgrades are often occurring with complete transparency to the customer both in terms of technology and cost.
5) Hardware life cycle - In the on premise world your hardware has a life expectancy. In the cloud your cloud provider is responsible for your hardware. occasionally hardware will need to be upgraded and this may take your systems down but it does not change your predictable subscription pricing. You are provided with plenty of notice and the systems are down for a predictable amount of time with little impact to your business. The experience is much different than the hardware failure and hardware upgrade horror stories we often hear about in the on premise world.
6) Accessibility mobility - As cloud systems are available over the Internet there is rarely a place you can not access your data and there is rarely a device with which you can not access your data. On premise models often rely on remote communications software which have restrictions in terms of where or with what device you can access them. In the cloud as as long as you have a browser and Internet access you can typically connect.
The above would be criteria that typically favor a cloud scenario in my next article I will speak to some of the criteria that may favor a on premise scenario. Please stay tuned and feel free to comment on other criteria that you feel favor a cloud type implementation.
With all of the excitement over the release of Sage 300 ERP v2012 and its new features, it’s easy to forget how many amazing tools you already have at your fingertips. One of the handiest tools for those of us in administration is also one of the more under-utilized features in Sage CRM – Document and Email Templates.
It is likely that Financial Reporting has the ability to stress us out a little from time to time. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Sage 300 ERP had a solution to quickly & easily obtain the information we need for all of our operations & strategic planning? Oh wait….
Read More >
Companies today face multi-entity and global business management issues far earlier in their life cycle than ever before. It’s not uncommon for a small company to start their business in one city, then open an offshore development office, house customer service in a yet another location, and grow to have sales offices scattered across the country and internationally – all within the first few years of business. As exciting as that kind of growth sounds, it’s a nightmare to manage for a traditional financial system.
In a multi-entity environment, each office typically operates autonomously, subject to varying currency, tax, and reporting requirements – such as currency translation, exchange gain/loss accounting, local reporting, and an increased risk of non-compliance. But that’s not all they have to deal with. In addition to managing organic growth, mergers and acquisitions are common in many industry. And with each new business acquired comes more separate entities, their unique challenges, and often a second financial management system.
Presented with these challenges, finance team often struggle to perform critical tasks such as consolidation, reporting, and analyzing operational and financial information across the disparate sites. They are forced to use cumbersome spreadsheets and add-on reporting solutions along with their traditional financial systems to try to cobble together meaningful data to help management make informed decisions. Instead, the process is manual, slow and error ridden. Data from the multiple entities is collected and consolidated manually, currency conversions are calculated by hand, and the number of inter-entity adjustments and eliminations increases.
The use of multiple systems and the lack of automation lead to two critical problems for multi-entity or global businesses: diminished operational visibility and a dramatic increase in cost.
We are extremely fortunate at BAASS to have spent some quality time with both Ed Kless, Senior Director of Partner Development and Strategy for Sage and Ron Baker, author and founder of the Verasage Institute.
Read More >