The Road Ahead for Sage Accpac

Earlier this year, Sage shared its vision for your Sage Accpac system and revealed product development plans over the next couple of years.  In this article, we’ll take a peek at the future of Sage Accpac.

First, a Bit of History
Sage Accpac has a long history of technological innovation dating back to the 1970’s.  The long term success of Sage Accpac is built on fundamental business principles – create value for customers and continually innovate. It’s important to note that the drive for technological leadership is balanced by an intense focus on meeting customer needs … because innovation for the sake of innovation is pointless. That’s why the Sage Accpac design teams strive to understand how customers use the software to solve business challenges.

Sage Accpac 2010
The release of Sage Accpac 2010 marks the culmination of customer research that has lead Sage to adopt “simplicity” as a guiding principle for upcoming releases.  Customers want software that’s simple to learn, simple to use, simple to    implement and simple to upgrade. To deliver on this promise of simplicity, future releases of Sage Accpac will focus on:

Interconnectivity Between Applications – According to research, one of the biggest challenges with business management software today is lack of interoperability. While you may run several different software applications to meet the needs of your unique business, Sage Accpac is probably at the core.  That’s why Sage is introducing a common technology platform based on industry standards. This Sage Web Toolkit (SWT) will make it easy to build applications that integrate into Sage Accpac. Sage Accpac 2010 will be built around web portals that provide each user with a personalized page that contains functions based on his/her role. As a result, all applications you use are more easily accessible, able to seamlessly share data, and have a consistent look and feel. Initially, enhancements to interconnectivity will focus on areas of most immediate need including enhancing quote-to-order entry processes and making business intelligence reporting available to all employees.

Role-Based Portals – each user can design his/her own personalized portal by dragging and dropping tasks and applications anywhere on the screen. The workflow will reflect each users role even when it traverses multiple systems. You’ll virtually eliminate the time wasted opening and closing windows and waiting for various applications to launch.  You’ll feel as if you’re working in a single unified system even if data or functionality is located in separate applications.

Business Intelligence on Every Desktop – With the planned release of version 5.6 in late 2009, Sage will be introducing Sage Accpac Intelligence. This business intelligence and reporting suite is based on Microsoft® Excel® and will put powerful inquiry and analysis tools on the desktop of every Sage Accpac user.  Sage Accpac Intelligence also supports web-based distribution of reports and full multidimensional analysis. When you combine this new tool with Sage Accpac 2010’s role-based portals, each Accpac user will have access to relevant BI information. For instance, an accounting clerk would see a dashboard of aged receivables/payables and AR/AP balances. On the other hand, Senior Executives would have instant access to top ten customers, sales, returns, and other important metrics right on their desktop.

Sage Accpac Vision and Product Plan
Contact us for a copy of the 11-page product plan for more detail about Sage Accpac 2010.