Another Sage Summit has come and gone, full of new product announcements and groundbreaking research — not to mention a closing keynote from The Champ himself, George Foreman.
Here’s a quick look at the big news to emerge from Atlanta:
Sage releases major update to flagship business management tool for enterprises
The upgrade is to Sage’s popular business management solution, Sage X3. New features include:
- End-to-end supply chain management, integrating e-commerce management, as well as a standard connector to a popular CRM application in the cloud.
- Flexible production management, with new graphical production scheduling and a new project management module.
- Faster global financial management, enabling inter-company consolidation process in real-time and more flexible currency conversion at the transaction or balance sheet levels.
- Easy financial reporting, embedding popular Sage Intelligence Reporting capabilities as part of the solution.
- New cross-platform data management and analytics solution.
- New mobile interface, making the most of the native capabilities of iOS, Windows mobile and Android devices to interact with the enterprise data.
Research shows tech-savvy businesses grow, differentiate, compete better when they commit to technology
New Sage research shows almost a third of small businesses who commit to technology show demonstrable growth. Nevertheless, more than half (56 percent) of all small business owners interviewed have yet to adopt digital technologies, preferring to maintain their business with traditional methods, signaling a massive opportunity for the cloud accounting and business management software market in coming years. Read more here.
Sage unveils Sage 50c – more freedom, control and automation for business builders
Sage announced a major update to Sage 50c, the cloud-enabled transformation of Sage’s most popular accounting solution, Sage 50. This marks the next step in Sage’s continuing mission to help small and medium-sized businesses access the best technology and innovation as their enterprise counterparts. Read more here.
Sage unveils next-generation cloud accounting and business management solutions
The Sage team announced a new wave of cloud accounting and ERP solutions designed to support and champion businesses of all sizes. These products bring Sage one step closer to delivering on its vision of a world powered by “invisible admin” by 2020. The products include:
- Sage One with Pegg: The world’s first accounting chatbot accessed by 20,000 users around the globe is now linked directly to Sage One. Pegg acts as a smart assistant, enabling users to track expenses and manage finances through popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and Slack.
- Sage 50c: Sage’s trusted accounting solution now gives customers greater flexibility and power with the integration with Microsoft Office 365. This new version is designed to give Sage 50 customers complete control over their accounts. Following the launch in the UK, this product is now available in U.S., Canada, France, Spain and Germany.
- Sage Live: A customizable and cost-effective cloud accounting solution, built on the Salesforce Lightning user interface, enables customers to manage multiple locations and currencies all in the palm of their hand. Available now on both iOS and Android operating systems in US, Canada, France, UK, Spain, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.
- Sage X3: A business management solution tailored to the needs of demanding, growing businesses. The latest iteration of this cost effective ERP solution which changes how midsize businesses and enterprises compete and grow is now available in U.S., Canada, France, UK, Spain, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.
- Sage Accountant Cloud: A brand new connected platform that brings together a portfolio of cloud applications to provide an overall view of their firm. This allows accountants to manage their practice and their clients more efficiently than before and provide additional enhanced services, from one central point. Available in the UK in the summer and in the U.S. in the fall of 2017.
Sage partners: The cloud is awesome … once you’re there
There’s some good news and not-so-good news on the cloud-accounting front.
First, the not-so-good news: According to Sage, its “channel partners” — the firms and organizations that are resellers and integrators of Sage products, software, and services — say barely half of their existing operations are cloud-ready. That’s after years of evidence that points to the economic and operational benefits of working in the cloud.
Now, the good news: Those benefits are eye-popping, and the argument for going to the cloud has never been clearer.