Sage Group plc is a leading global provider of business management software to small and medium-sized companies, with over 6 million customers and more than 13,500 employees in 24 countries covering the UK and Ireland, mainland Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia, Asia, and Brazil. After recently streamlining and rebranding its ERP and CRM offering in North America, Sage recently announced the formation of a new organization to drive its growth across the European mid-market. The organization, which is in place from January 2013 and is led by Christophe Letellier, will be aligned behind Sage’s flagship solution, Sage ERP X3, and other local mid-market offerings.

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On December 13, 2012, Sage North America announced the availability of Sage 500 ERP 2013 (formerly Sage ERP MAS 500). The product’s new features and enhancements, and new mobile and cloud services, aim to help midsize customers increase productivity, simplify processes, and reduce costs across their business.

Enterprises can now save time navigating processes with Visual Process Flows, which demonstrate the steps of a process in visual terms, while also including links to the various tasks along the way. Visual Process Flows were originally developed for the top of the range Sage ERP X3 product, but are now a common component in all Sage’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions.

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As follows from its name, Bearings International is a distributor of a wide range of imported bearings and power transmission equipment. The company is located in South Africa and has more than 50 branches and other subsidiaries. The company has been using a number of UNIX-based legacy software applications that have been modified several times but eventually have come to the end of their tether. Thus, a modern, flexible, and technologically advanced system was required to support the growing business and help to explore new opportunities. Read the rest of this entry »

SOFTWARE SELECTIONS

Swiss investment bank UBS selects cloud-based Oracle’s Fusion Human Capital Management
Industry tags: Finance and Banking
“With extensive worldwide operations, UBS provides its clients with wealth management, asset management, and investment and (in Switzerland) retail banking. A cloud-based HCM solution indeed can be a good option, technically. Traditionally there have been concerns revolving around security and data ownership, which is especially the case for a Swiss financial institution. But as a long-term Oracle customer, USB has elected to deploy cloud-based application across all its operations in over 50 countries to cover about 65,000 employees. I believe the vendor’s reputation was another significant factor in this decision.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Research Analyst

City of Hayward, California selects Tyler’s Munis ERP
Industry tags: Public Administration and Defense
“Hayward’s 25-year-old ERP system was overdue for replacement. The old system cannot meet today’s requirements and lacks much functionality. After scrupulous research and comparison, Hayward settled on the Munis ERP system from Tyler Technologies. The city will deploy multiple modules: financials, HR management, utility billing, content management, and self-service for vendors, clients, and employees. The software vendor will also provide the city with improved everyday business processes in order to increase overall service levels for Hayward residents.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Research Analyst

Kimberly-Clark Professional selects PROS Pricing to support sales
Industry tags: manufacturer of tissues, personal care, and health care products
“Apparently, PROS’ SAP integration capabilities were very important to the manufacturer (a SAP ERP user), as was the vendor’s pricing data science. To increase revenue via optimized pricing was the driving factor here. In addition, PROS has a lot of experience in the paper industry, and it understood the client’s business. The parties were reportedly quite sincere while talking about the project team too. In general, PROS very much promotes a partnership approach, as evidenced by its over 96% renewal rates.”—P.J. Jakovljevic, Principal TEC Analyst

• TEC article (Jan 2012): Two Vendor Execs Discuss the Current B2B Pricing Market (and Its Future)

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SOFTWARE SELECTIONS

Accuride Corporation selects cloud-based Plex Online ERP
Industry tags: Manufacturing
“This Indiana-based automotive components manufacturer and supplier has performed a significant multi-year ERP software evaluation and selection project, resulting in the selection of the cloud-based ERP system from Plex Systems. A single application is to replace seven separate ERP systems, or over different 200 applications, that are running in the head office as well as its subsidiary manufacturing facilities. This implementation is important for Accuride, as it simplifies its IT structure.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Analyst

• See the Plex Online profile
• Compare ERP software now!

Jordan’s Furniture retailer selects Coda Financials as its financial management solution
Industry tags: Wholesale and retail trade
“This famous and venerable (over 80 years old) furniture retailer with multiple locations across New England uses a 20-year-old ERP system, and realized that its financial module does not meet the needs of the current business, and costs too much, as well as being operable in constant patching mode only. Therefore they decided to have a look at the market in order to choose another application with a focus on budgeting, planning, real-time tracking, and flexible reporting. Coda Financials was the choice of this thorough selection, and besides the functional capability of the software, ease of collaboration with the Coda team was also an important factor.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC  Analyst

• See the Coda Financials profile
• Compare financial packages now!

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SOFTWARE SELECTIONS

Ventura Manufacturing selects IQMS
Industry tags: Manufacturing, Assembly
“Ventura Manufacturing, Inc. has adopted IQMS’s manufacturing ERP software after reviewing multiple top-tier ERP vendors. Venture Manufacturing is headquartered in Zeeland, Michigan, and provides component assembly for furniture and automotive customers. Ventura will also run IQMS’ EDI module and customer/vendor portals, and plan to implement the IQMS quality modules. The ERP system will replace Ventura’s previous in-house developed system, which reportedly lacked data integration and was missing tools to support the growing complexities of its business.”—Ted Rohm, TEC ERP Analyst

• IQMS profile
• Compare ERP systems now!

Six London boroughs select Oracle ERP
Industry tags: Public administration and defense
“Application sharing is an ongoing trend for European governmental structures, and particularly in the UK. Six boroughs of London have agreed to pool their resources and benefit from lower costs and economies of scale. The latest version (version 12) of Oracle’s E-Business Suite won the deal. But in contrast with several cases involving UNIT4 wins, separate boroughs are expecting to use the same ERP system technically, but each in its own way, so the winning system needed to support this requirement. At the same time, boroughs will be able to easily exchange or share certain data if required.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Analyst

• Oracle E-Business Suite profile
• Compare ERP systems now!

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MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Oracle buys Skire
Industry tags: capital management
“Oracle is buying to acquire all the assets of Skire, a provider of capital program management and facilities management applications both in the cloud and on-premise. With this acquisition, Oracle expects to complete a set of management tools for all phases of project management, having a complete enterprise project portfolio management platform. Finally software vendors are tying together all the different aspects of the project lifecycle into a single platform to provide extensive coverage.” — Jorge García, TEC BI Analyst

SOFTWARE SELECTIONS AND IMPLEMENTATIONS

Kinnerton Confectionery selects Aras Enterprise PLM
Industry tags: PLM, CPG, food & beverage
“Reportedly, this customer had been kicking the PLM tires for several years. Aras was selected over Siemens Teamcenter after the prospect was able to validate that the malleable open source system was going to work for its users.” — P.J. Jakovljevic, Principal TEC Analyst

• Profile: Aras Corporation

Nautech Electronics selects Epicor ERP after 6-month selection project
Industry tags: manufacturing
“Nautech Electronics is a New Zealand company that operates in the market of electric and electronic equipment design, manufacturing, and installation. Because the legacy ERP software it uses is limited in many areas, the decision was made to switch to a new ERP application. The company picked Epicor’s solution for its capabilities in bill-of-materials (BOM) management, SCM, and extensive and comprehensive reporting and data intelligence. In addition, there was an ‘extra something,’ according to Richard Scott, IT manager. That ’something’ includes both additional features and user interface usability.” — Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Research Analyst

• Overview: Epicor ERP
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Part 1 of this series analyzed the transformative events during the last few years at Sage Group, Plc (LSE: SGE) and its Sage North America subsidiary. These changes have led to the company’s analyst day held in Boston in February 2011, where Sage took a giant leap towards clarifying its position in the market.

The analyst day started with Sage Group’s CEO Guy Berruyer’s and outgoing Sage North America’s CEO Sue Swenson’s reports on their respective company’s current state of affairs. As the summary of both leaders’ presentations, Sage remains passionate about its customers and has been expanding connected (cloud-based software) services and online solutions to provide choices. 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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We recently got a sneak peek of the new version of Sage ERP X3 that is scheduled to be released in October 2009. We were given a detailed demonstration of some of its core functional changes and advancements and we have summarized our findings differently.

Gabriel Gheorghiu’s Take on Version 6

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