Sage

Sage Group distributes its products and services to more than 100 countries across the world, both directly and through business partners. Sage ERP X3 has some 3,300 customers spread across 55 countries. The customers cover the whole spectrum of verticals.

• Sage ERP X3 Process is aimed at process manufacturers from food & beverage, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and petrochemicals through to more diverse sub-verticals such as dairies and bakeries. It provides support for formula and recipe management, quality control, shelf life management with expiration date control, by-product management and full lot traceability.
• Sage ERP X3 Discrete is aimed at mid-sized discrete manufacturers. It supports a variety of manufacturing modes including make-to-order, configure-to-order, assemble-to-order, make-to-stock and mixed-mode environments.
• Sage ERP X3 Distribution is designed for wholesale distributors and the distribution arms of manufacturers and provides support for order fulfilment, purchasing, inventory management, customer relationship management and accounting. There is support for automated RFID data collection, which results in easier collection and utilisation of data from operational areas.

Sage Software can be purchased either from Sage directly in the counties in which it has offices or through some 200+ partners worldwide. One of the keys to Sage's strategy for Sage ERP X3 is the way it has worked with a series of partners so that the partner offerings provide additional support for certain verticals or specialised areas.

Sage ERP X3 is built on the Sage Application Framework for the Enterprise X3 technology (SAFE X3), the common development platform shared by all of Sage's applications (see Figure 1). 

Figure 1: Sage Application Framework (Sage ERP X3) (Source: Sage)

Its multi-tier service-oriented architecture (SOA)/web-native design offers tremendous savings and benefits to businesses, particularly for reducing IT infrastructure costs and expanding business opportunities. Among other features, the SAFE X3 platform provides users with best-in-class collaboration capabilities (web services, second-generation workflow engine) powerful business intelligence (BI) tools, and a unified and highly collaborative user interface. Its support for functional modules is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Sage ERP X3 Functional Architecture

Technology innovations include pre-configured role-based visual processes; support for multicurrency, multi-locations, multi-enterprise, multi-units, multi-country and country-specific legislations;  support for partner extensions [Link Sage Software ERP-X3 InDetail].

The  table below shows the environments supported by ERP X3

Sage provides support for its customers at various levels:

• Membership of the Accountants' Club;
• Membership of the Sage Developers' Programme;
• SageCover - aimed at smaller sized customers.

Sage has at present some 220 Business Partners and has been investing heavily in building its partner network. It has set up a Global Channel Program, which includes:

• Training;
• Certification;
• Central team support 24/5;
• www.oursageplace.com platform: wikis, forum, blogs;
• Local marketing initiatives;
• Local lead generation;
• Global dedicated events - global sales convention, Summit NA, Insights SA & Asia;
• Global business development support;
• Locally assigned account managers.