July 7th, 2009 by admin
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Dennis Howlett has made an interesting post regarding the rapid release and the subsequent silent demise of Sage’s own Software as a Service (Saas) offering which you can read about in full here Why Sage may never get saas
Obviously Sage have a large legacy in the Line 50 market with some users having been happy users for years so what do you do to embrace the Internet and provide a SaaS solution? Of course the SaaS players will say the web is the future and all software will go this way. Ardent fans of Line 50 and those concerned about potential security issues still favour the traditional windows approach. The above article mentions lack of R&D funding but my thinking is whilst a product still sells commercially its hard to plough money into a new offering. No more is this evident than in the Sage Line 500/Sage 1000 products. Architecturally and user interface wise it is a disaster. Functionality wise it offers much. Bottom line is both those products still sell into the high end market-space making a radical re-write low down on the list and commercially expensive!
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July 2nd, 2009 by admin
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OK, so I don’t want this blog to become a soap-box for me to rant from, and I try and provide information which is useful and specific to the industry. However this has really angered me where Amazon UK’s so called ‘buyer guarantee’ isn’t what it appears. Three weeks ago I purchased some Adobe software from an Amazon UK marketplace seller. I strongly suspect due to the poor quality of the packagaing that the item is in fact counterfeit. Long story short rather than Amazon ‘protecting’ me and allowing me to return the item for a refund, I have to prove its counterfeit before any further action can be taken? Mind boggling! And there was me thinking that their buyer guarantee (along with the sale of goods act and the distance selling act) would enable a swift and painless refund!
Buyer beware!
June 5th, 2009 by admin
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Well it seems that the SaaS offering from Sage has met a premature end. Even given the amount of time to develop this and get it right (and perhaps test it?) before launch it seems to have flopped and quietly disappeared. I commented some time ago that my initial experiences of it were poor which were echoed by other users as well. But it seems a big opportunity to miss with the SaaS bandwagon rolling on and now we have SaaS providers all looking to erode the Sage 50 user-base. I have already done one data migration tool for Kashflow and now I am in discussions with another SaaS provider to do the same for them. Suits me, this is a commercial venture after all and not a Sage fan club! They may have massive market share in that sector but unless action is taken there are lots of hungry wolves snapping at their heels.
June 1st, 2009 by admin
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I have just finished reading a whitepaper from a Sage mid market reseller extolling the virtues of the ‘integrated’ nature of Sage 200 suite. Essentially this product is marketed as an all in one financials and CRM package. However the truth is somewhat different.
What you have here are two completely different products that have been developed and operate on two different platforms. On the one hand you have Sage 200 financials, this is a windows application written in .Net which talks to a SQL Server database. With it you have Sage CRM MME which is a web application (for the technically minded written in a mixture of an ISAPI DLL and some classic ASP) also talking to SQL Server (but a different database to the financials).
So what you essentially end up with are two loosely (and I do mean loosely) coupled applications that only share a basic amount of information which is of limited use! What if you wanted to write to all your customers who had bought, lets say an iPhone and you had a really desirable iPhone add-on you wanted to market to them, you could then create a campaign around that, build your offer and communicate it couldnt you? Wrong! not possible as you have no financials information you can view (apart from screen popping orders and quotes from CRM) from CRM, so there you go, don’t believe the hype!
May 28th, 2009 by admin
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Many organisations I work with are looking for a CRM implementation but are not always sure why. I am very bullish about CRM because I have never seen it used properly (and there are specific reasons for this) nor does it generate a measured return on investment. Simple fact is most CRMs end up being nothing more than glorified contact manager. Or in the case of Sage 1000 just a over-complicated and long winded way of maintain customers and suppliers. If you want to generate money from your CRM then you need to be doing the following;
a) Creating customer ’segments’ based on demographics/purchase history
b) Create relevant and compelling offers to a specific segment
c) Communicate the offer via email/mail merge
d) Track response rate
I would bet money you are missing a crucial link/data you need to be able to perform this, please drop an email and I’ll tell you why!
January 26th, 2009 by admin
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One of my users pointed out to me that the free dashboard available for download from this site currently only works with versions of Line 50 up to 2008. I have now recompiled the install package so that it will now work with all versions of Sage 50 and Sage Instant up to 2009 (Version 15). The download is available here.
If you are an existing user and you do not want to download it you can simply look for the file Sage50Dashboard.ini (located in the same directory as the dashboard application) and set the line that says ‘Version=’ to read ‘Version=15′ and it will work fine!
January 26th, 2009 by admin
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I often get asked if there are add-ons for a specific piece of functionality. Your first port of call should be the Sage additions catalogue. This lists a large number of add-ons in different market sectors and there could be just what you need already available. However finding the catalogue on the Sage website isn’t that straight-forward so here is the link to the PDF.
Sage Additions Catalogue
However there may be products which are not listed in additions so it is always worth googling your requirements!
January 23rd, 2009 by admin
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I got approached by Kashflow to write a tool to help prospects using Sage 50 easily transfer all their customer, supplier, nominal ledger details along with transactions ready for moving to Kashflow. Kashflow is one of the market leaders in the Software as a Service (Saas) market offering a web based accounting solution ideal for the SME. The tool is a simple wizard which works with all versions of Sage (Line) 50 and Sage Instant and guides users through the export process. Once done it automatically uploads this information to the Kashflow servers ready for use. The kashflow site is here.
You may think it strange that I would get involved in something like this but the answer is simple. I should really rename this blog domorewithsage for the benefit of your business. It is simply about helping businesses acheive the most productivity gains from whatever accounting solution they just, I choose Sage from a purely commercial point of view because it has the biggest user base.
If you want to move data in/out/across/up/down/to/from Sage then why not contact me! I spend alot of time doing work with Sage Line 500/1000 data migration and have recently developed a tool to aid with migrating data into 500/1000. More details are on my other blog here.
January 22nd, 2009 by admin
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My friend Duane over at Kashflow has posted an article on his blog regarding some security issues over the SageLive online accounting software that has been released. Granted this software is still a beta but it seems the concerns that he, and others commenting on his blog, are not unfounded and should at least be considered when choosing the SageLive offering. As for me, I couldnt get it working properly at all so wont review it until it makes a final release. If the security holes don’t get addressed it harms not only the SageLive product but confirms the fears of those who are unsure of dipping their toe (and their companies’ accounts) in the water of online accounting solutions. Full article is here.
January 7th, 2009 by admin
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Well hot on the heels of SageLive (which I still cant get to work at the moment) comes another offering aimed squarely at the start-up/SME. Sage have released a free invoicing application I guess to compete with offerings from rival vendors. At 161MB for the application (which seems enormously bloated) its quite a big download but probably worth a look if you are looking for a simple invoicing application. I have always thought that Sage Instant is great value for money at £99 and maybe this package maybe just what the startup market needs. You can download it here
