From the Sage Team

Missed recently released Sage 100 ERP Hot Fixes? We summarize them here.

We are endeavoring to transition our development process to be more upfront User Centered Design and to introduce much more creativity into our processes. To some degree having creativity and processes in the same sentence sounds contradictory; however, we do need to have organized creativity that results ultimately in shipping software. The goal is still shipping software and not producing PowerPoint’s. What we want to do is ship software that aligns very closely with what customers require and which delights users in how appealing, friendly and easy to use it is.

There were quite a few announcements this week about forthcoming operating systems from Apple and Microsoft. iOS 5 and Windows 8 have quite a few interesting aspects that show how the computing landscape is changing. This blog posting will talk about the various announcements and then provide a fair bit of personal speculation on what this means for ERP, CRM and business computing.

One of the key goals of Agile Software Development is keeping software in a releasable state. There are quite a few reasons that this is a good thing which we are going to explore in this blog posting. This is very much related to test driven development which I blogged about here.

The ERP space has been innovating at quite a fast pace recently. Although double entry accounting has remained the same for hundreds of years, ERP has been incorporating new technologies like mad including social media, mobility, web based, CRM and many others. This blog posting is to try to paint a picture of what the system might look like to a Corporate ERP user in the year 2020. At this point all these technologies should be incorporated and become completely seamless. Of course many new technologies will be developed between now and 2020 that we won’t have imagined, this is more looking at the mature versions of what we have today, but perhaps in a bit of a raw state.

Last week I blogged on the Sage Developer training at Sage Summit. I’ve since received a few inquiries about what skills are needed in this area. So I thought I’d blog this week on desirable skills in this area along with a number of references where you can learn online.

Sage Summit is being held on July 10-15 at the Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center in Washington DC. During the conference we will be holding developer training for Sage ERP MAS 90/200, Sage ERP MAS 500 and Sage ERP Accpac. Most of this training will take place on the Monday and Tuesday during the partner half of the conference.

As the Sage ERP development teams continue their journey into Agile Development, we are looking to even more fundamentally change the way we do things. We have adopted the Scrum methodology and are now operating in two week sprints. Within those sprints we take user stories and complete them to very exacting “doneness” criteria. The goal is to have a releasable product at the end of each sprint (releasable in a quality context, but not necessarily functionally complete). So how do we perform all the development, QA, UCD and documentation within small two week sprints? What we are looking to do is to truly use a Test Driven Development Process. This blog post is intended to outline what some of our Agile Teams are already doing and what the rest are looking to adopt soon.

Sage ERP Labs is an initiative of the Sage North America Mid-Market ERP (MME) group to provide framework for investigating disruptive technologies. We are providing a forum for gathering and sharing ideas, and then a framework for developing Proof of Concept (POC) demos that can be used to evangelize and showcase new technologies in an Enterprise framework.

Here at Sage we want to try to bridge the gap between SaaS and on-premise software. We will provide products that are the best of both worlds. Most people think that you need to choose the advantages of SaaS OR choose the advantages of on-premise. We want to change that OR into an AND, providing the advantages of both combined. Doing this will be difficult, but technologies and processes are evolving and advancing to a state where we can start to do this in many areas.

Our approach is to manage our products as a portfolio. As we look to fill gaps in our market coverage, we are looking to extend our portfolio to cover any missing elements, rather than all the individual products. So rather than each product trying to fill every gap, we will choose the product that is the best solution and then develop that product to serve the need. This gives us far greater market coverage since each product can be extended in a different direction and then benefit Sage, its partners and customer by providing the broadest solution possible by leveraging the entire portfolio. Again building on our strengths, including the strength of our product diversity.

Connected services are a rather generic term that is used in many contexts. Often a connected service is a Web Site that offers a Web Services based API to access. Many times connected services are promoted as add-on services to some core application or service.

In our case we are going to consider the core application service as ERP (such as Sage ERP Accpac, Sage ERP MAS 90/200, Sage ERP MAS 500, etc.). Then we are going to consider various types of add-on services that received over the Internet, making them connected.

Some 90 days ago we changed the ProvideX business, in that we licensed support of our non-Sage ERP customers to a third party. What I want to accomplish in this entry is describe to you how that has benefited Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200.

We hear it all the time, “the customer is always right”.  It’s a time honored adage and for a good reason. Customers are the life blood of any business and meeting customer requests is important for maintaining relationships and growth.  But there are times when it is not possible to do what the customer wants.  Recently, I have had two separate customer service interactions, in both instances my request was turned down but the way it was handled was completely different.

In one case, my request was basically ignored and I was shuffled between several different people. None of the people I spoke to could address my issue or even offer an explanation as to what had happened.  This interaction left me a bit frustrated and I have actually changed businesses as a result.

In the second case, I was given an explanation of what had happened and why by the first person I spoke to and while the issue could not be resolved the way I wanted, I was left with a much more favorable impression of the company I was dealing with.

These interactions got me thinking about how the process of saying no to a customer should be handled.  Before saying no to a customer, it is important to make sure that the customer is confident that the request and the reasons for it are understood.  If a customer thinks that you don’t understand the issue then they may become more upset.  Next, you should try to offer alternatives.  If what the customer is asking for is not possible, is there another option that would satisfy.  Tell the customer what you can do and let them decide if that is acceptable.

Customers understand that you can’t always meet every demand and if there isn't an alternative solution, be sure to explain clearly why you can’t meet the customer’s request.  By providing clear reasons for denying the request you can mitigate the customer’s frustrations.

So, how do you say no?

I am excited to be the new Sr. Director of Development for Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200, let me tell you why.

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I want to shed some light on the key differences between the 3.7x SQL product and the new Sage ERP MAS 200 SQL version 4.45, releasing to market in November 2010. Read more...

What is the CAB and PAC and what do they do? Hint: we're talking about the Customer Advisory Board and the Product Advisory Council Read more...

Hi, as the new Director of MAS 500 R&D, albeit a long time member of the team, I’d like to reflect on a few of the recent accomplishments we’ve achieved, give a quick status of where we are with the next version of MAS 500, and touch briefly on some of the ongoing activities the team is doing.

We all make mistakes from time to time, but what we learn along the way and how we apply that learning is what matters most. Read more...

As a senior product manager at Sage, I have a variety of responsibilities which define my role. But of all the varied tasks that are required of me, by far my most favorite one is getting out on the road and visiting customers in their offices and at partner-sponsored customer meetings. In the past few months I have been to Portland, OR, Phoenix, AZ, San Diego, CA, Tulsa, OK, and Plainville, CT. Along the way I have met some pretty terrific customers who use Sage ERP MAS 90, 200 or 500. During my visits I always ask what our customers like best about their current ERP product and also ask for areas in which we can improve. Read more...

One of our goals is to deliver enhancements that meet the needs of our customers. We are currently in the process of conducting a survey to better define who our customers are and we want your help. Read more...

In my previous post on Customizing your ERP System, I mentioned how one of the driving architectural goals of the Business Framework was to support a better implementation of SQL Server as the back end database for Sage ERP MAS 200. As we wrap up our Beta release and prepare for the controlled release of version 4.45, I thought I’d share the process we went through and how the framework effort has helped us to deliver on this goal. Read more...

Sage has just published a few YouTube videos that shows the enhancements in the Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200 Product Updates. Read more...

Could the design of business software benefit from lessons learned from the world of gaming? Read more...

A list of links to blogs and newsletter with Sage MAS product information Read more...

That next great idea may come from the one person you have stopped listening to -- here are some thoughts about keeping the lines of communication open. Read more...