Been quoted for Sage 200 but cannot quite believe the price?

Trying to find out the pricing of Sage 200 to confirm if it really is that much?

Yes its bad value for money. If you need mid market functionality then Sage 200 is the least expensive option compared to other products like SAP B1, Navision etc.

The gap between Sage 50 and other entry level products and Sage 200 et al is big and usually a jump too far for a lot of customers. Well we have the answer Interprise Suite. Better functionality than these mid market products for just above entry level pricing.

Your business can take advantage of mid market functionality for just above entry level pricing. Don’t hold back the efficiency and growth of your business because of outgrown procedures and back office systems.

Want Mid Market Functionality but think Sage 200 and other Mid Market applications are bad value for money? We have the answer.

Interprise Suite provides Accounts, CRM, Stock Management, SOP and POP, fax/email, credit control, Intrastat, etc., as well as optional eCommerce integration, in one truly integrated, feature-rich, real-time system.

Functionality in Interprise is similar to, and in some areas greater than, that offered by Sage 200 and other mid-market products (like Pegasus, SAP B1, Navision etc.) but at a significantly lower cost, with pricing just above Sage 50. You may have already looked at some of these products.

Interprise is aimed at the ‘inbetweener’ market – businesses that currently have Sage 50 (perhaps also QuickBooks, TAS, etc, and similar products at that level) where –

Properly Integrated CRM

– You may use ACT or similar separate CRM, but are fed up with the synchronization and new version update issues that happen from time to time, as well as being frustrated by a variety of things that they can’t do when accounts and CRM are dealt with by different software. Sage has effectively given up on ACT selling it to Swiftpage.

Accounts systems like Sage 50, or QuickBooks, or TAS Books, etc. linked to some CRM product like ACT or Goldmine, etc. – are two separate pieces of software with a different look and feel, different databases that have synchronisation issues, then if you upgrade the accounts system you find the CRM links don’t work anymore. Interprise does not have any of these issues.

CRM is an integral part of Interprise, Leads, Prospects and Customers are all in the same database. This gives so much more functionality like –

a) being able to do quotes for Prospects and Customers from the same product file and special pricing (whereas usually Prospects are in CRM and the quote routine is in the accounts software).

b) see all opportunities in one place, convert quotes to orders with one click.

c) create target lists based on lots of different criteria – EG: for Leads in a particular area, or quotes sent to Prospects and Customers for some product where there’s an impending price increase, or maybe you have stock you want to get rid of so need to send a marketing message to Prospects or Customers who have been quoted and or bought similar items.

d) see and do everything in one place when talking to a customer or prospect. Contacts, notes, opportunities, emails, to dos, meetings, calls, call backs, cases, documents, orders, quotes, invoices/credits, buying history etc. etc. all in one form.

Sage 200, which claims to have integrated CRM, actually uses what was Accpac CRM a separate product – so there are actually two separate databases, one for CRM and the other for everything else, meaning of course that look-and-feel isn’t wholly consistent across the product. You also have the integration issues.

Hosted, LAN Server Options – Access in and out the office

– You would like to be able to access the system from outside the office, at home, reps on the road, from different branches. Maybe even your accountant may want to access the system from their office. At the moment this would involve expensive terminal services or Citrix. With Interprise this functionality is out the box.

Interprise incorporates Smart Client technology or uses web services – providing the ability to access your system from anywhere, anytime with a normal Internet connection (your home broadband, wi-fi at a hotel or on the train, a broadband USB connection on the move etc) – but without using a browser – so you see exactly the same application presented in the same user interface as if in the office – there’s no VPN, no Terminal Server, no Citrix. This is a simple (and cost-free) way to run Interprise on your own in-house LAN and provide access to remote workers and salespeople, as well as your accountant. The Smart Client also gives you the option to run Interprise as a completely hosted server solution if preferred with any hosting provider you want to deal with.

Need More Users

– You need to add more users but Sage 50 is creaking a bit at 5+. Sage 50 has record locking which means more users get waiting messages as they cannot access a customer account or item etc. you can hear a shout of “can you get out of the sale ledger” as an example by users. Interprise has field level concurrency and can handle many more users.

Too Much Data

– You have the issue of having to regularly archive data because of the file limitations of Sage 50. Interprise uses MS SQL as its database and is 1 – 100s of users, so you don’t have to change software again as you grow.

Need More Features

– You want to have some extra functionality, maybe you need to manage a second warehouse/locations or lots of other things Sage 50 doesn’t do – whereas Interprise has similar (and in some areas greater) functionality to Sage 200 and other mid-market software. Sage 50 lacks proper Foreign currency for sales and purchases, better stock control, real time allocation of stock to orders, order processing, drop ship, Intratsat, Batch/Serial traceability etc.

• Just switching away from preprinted stationery, emailing documents like invoices, credits, statements, purchase orders at the click of a button saves a lot of time and money.
• Being able to promise stock to customers on the phone using proper allocations saves losing the order or having to go check stock levels and then calling a customer back.
• Seeing what you need to purchase order based on Potential stock (In stock – SO + already on PO) with sales trends, lead times, min/max and reorder levels saves so much time and then automatically creating the orders.
• Drop shipping items direct from supplier to a customer is straight forward and no more a couple of clicks.
• There are many functionality / feature improvements over entry level software to justify the expense.

Need Something Specific for You

– You want to have some amendments or tweeks to the system to help work how you want to work or be more efficient.

Interprise has Plugin Architecture. Most customers over time may change how they do things or need some plugin written to help them manage their business better. Interprise has what is called plugin architecture. What this means to you is that we can make changes or create plugins and these will work with new versions of the software and not break the existing version. A lot of Sage customers would get stuck on the version they were on as upgrading them meant rewriting amendments which was not cost effective to do. It is also more cost effective to actually do the amendment with Interprise.

Integrated ECommerce / Magento

– or maybe you are now looking to sell online. We have tight integration to Magento out the box. (We also have a standard XML order importer for other web sites and an API for those that want tighter integration).

If you sell some items on the web shop that you don’t stock, you just merchandise, Interprise automatically creates the drop-ship orders on the Suppliers for these items.

Our Magento integration covers things like existing Customers logging in to get their specific pricing rather than normal pricing. It will also allow a customer to see their order history, outstanding quotes, place orders based on these, reprint a statement, see their transaction history and reprint invoices/credit notes, log a support case, see RMAs etc. So a user can use Magento as a B2B type web shop or full on retail type shop. Stock Items, sell price, stock qty can also be synchronised between systems. We can also recommend a Magento developer if you don’t have one already.

Value for Money

– You think Mid market products like Sage 200 are too expensive and offer bad value for money. Mid Market systems cost 2-5 times the cost of Interprise and more for ongoing support. The license cost and yearly costs are significantly less than Sage 200. It should be noted that Navision, SAP B1 etc. are even more expensive.