Part 1 of this series talked about my long-standing coverage of Exact Holding, and in particular about my recent update briefing with the Exact Americas division. My post concluded with the vendor’s intent to go back to its local roots and push its well respected North American manufacturing and distribution enterprise resource planning (ERP) products, especially Exact Macola ERP.

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In the early and mid-2000s, I had a fairly close relationship with Exact Americas (at that time called Exact North America). As a result, there were two in-depth TEC article series on the vendor from 2004 and 2006. At the time of the first series, the avant-garde collaborative Exact e-Synergy platform was introduced to the local market (meanwhile, the product has been renamed Exact Synergy). At the time of the second series, the Exact Software parent launched its global ERP offering Exact Globe, while its American division acquired Vanguard Business Analytics, which is now the Exact Business Analytics (EBA) offering.

In 2007, Exact Holding N.V. reorganized its regional structure, and Middleton, Massachusetts (US) is now the headquarters for the Americas (North, South, and Central) region. The other regional divisions within Exact are now Exact Benelux (as Exact has a great number of customers to manage within these countries, where it owns a significant market share) and Exact EMEA (the rest of Europe) and Asia-Pacific. In 2007 Exact also finalized its purchase of Longview Solutions in Canada, which is the corporate performance management (CPM) division.

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Editor’s note, December 19, 2012: According to the vendor, the product discussed below did not become available.

Exact Software has recently released a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) offering in the cloud. Headquartered in the Netherlands and with offices in North America serving 100,000 customers worldwide, Exact offers two global ERP products (Globe and Synergy), as well as other local products (Macola, MAX and JobBOSS for the Americas, Exact Financials for the Netherlands, etc.). The company exclusively markets its products for small to medium businesses (SMBs) spanning many industry segments, with a focus on manufacturing, wholesale and distribution, and professional services.

Having just had the opportunity to discuss the new offering with the product manager for the Macola line, Michael McPherson, I recap that conversation below. Read the rest of this entry »

I often wonder how well-known is the fact that the Newcastle upon Tyne (UK)-based Sage Group, Plc (LSE: SGE) is a leading global provider of business management software and services to over 6.3 million small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) worldwide. After over 25 years in existence and with 13,400 employees worldwide, Sage reported US$2.24 billion in revenue in 2010, and the vendor touts its 28,000 business partners and 40,000 accountants’ club members.

For its part, the Sage North America subsidiary (formerly also known as Best Software in the early 2000s) has 4,000 employees and supports more than 3.2 million customers in the United States (US) and Canada (with customers in every state and province) with enterprise applications and services that cover accounting, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), payment processing, human resources (HR) and payroll. In addition to providing horizontal products, Sage North America caters to the specialized needs of the healthcare, nonprofit, manufacturing, and construction & real estate industries.

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