The Sage Group plc today unveiled a major release of its Sage ERP X3 suite for mid-sized businesses that uses Web 2.0 and other new technology to give users real-time access to global data and collaborative tools in user-configurable dashboards.
At a press conference in Paris and in prepared statements, company executives and Sage business partners referred to the v6 release as “a new generation of integrated, user-centric business solutions, allowing all users in the extended enterprise to be active stakeholders in accelerated and collaborative business processes, either via the desktop or over the web.”
The v6 release contains hundreds of enhancements and new features and is designed to address the mid-market’s need for full interoperability among dispersed operations at an affordable price, the company said in a statement.
Paul Walker, chief executive of The Sage Group, said, “Many business either don’t want or can’t afford the complexity of traditional enterprise software.”
Sage worked with a number of technology partners to design the X3 release. For example, the suite can be operated on Microsoft SQL Server 2008, and integrates with Microsoft Office to increase ease of use and accelerate user adoption. The system can also run on Oracle Database 11g R2. According to Sage, the X3 software can support several thousand concurrent users, process several hundred thousand transactions per hour, and synchronize data across customers’ sites.
Sage focused heavily on improving the customer experience in this release. Among the enhancements is new, multi-language Sage VisualProcesses software, which provides templates so that users can create their own customized interfaces. Users also can link to external applications and the web to access information and create financial and other reports quickly.
Another innovation scheduled to be available in a point release in the second half of 2010 is Sage Enterprise Webtop, developed in partnership with Netvibes. The tool will enable companies to build web applications that monitor their products and reputations in the outside world. Netvibes’ partnership with Sage serves to tie that information to “the inside world” of the enterprise, according to Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini.
The latest version of X3 maintains the product’s core modules for finance, sales, CRM, purchasing, inventory, and manufacturing. Manufacturing-centered capabilities include parts-list management, work scheduling management, MRP functions, quality assurance, and capacity planning, among other capabilities.
In redesigning the product, the company recognized that ERP products already do a good job of automating processes, said Emmanuel Obadia, senior vice president, Sage ERP X3, at today’s press conference. However, a more “user-centric ERP” offering was needed to “re-engage” the younger managers coming up the ranks. The company decided to “rethink the design from the user out,” and to incorporate technologies that are becoming mainstream, such as SOA, SaaS, and Web 2.0 tools. The company built the latest iteration of X3 on the Sage Application Framework for the Enterprise, an SOA platform with a multitude of web-based capabilities, including features such as the forthcoming Enterprise Webtop offering.
X3 v6 will be available in a smattering of European countries this quarter, and in the United States and Canada in Q2.