88921922 ebook for saas company

8/19/2019 88921922 eBook for SaaS Company

1/13

The Sage

SwitchGuideEight warning signs that youraccounting software is stiflingyour business

http://www.netsuite.co.uk/http://www.sagesurvivor.co.uk/


2/13

Over 500 businesses have alreadyswitched from Sage to the NetSuiteBusiness Cloud. They’re already realisingthe benefits freedom offers. Freedomfrom aging business systems. Freedomfrom fragmented reporting. Freedomfrom never-ending management costs.

Of course, the examples shown in thisguide are just a fraction of the total –but their stories illustrate just what’spossible when you leave behind the oldto embrace something new, somethingbetter. And more are joining themevery day.

These organisations have discoveredwhat it means to use a truly integratedsystem – no more redundant data entry,no more wasted time, the ability tostart anywhere. They’ve found that it’spossible to get a complete picture ofwhat’s happening in their companiesboth quickly and easily. And they’vedone it all without the IT complexitythey’ve come to hate.

It doesn’t end there. Far from simplybeing freed from the limitations thathave held them back, they’ve alsodiscovered capabilities they didn’t

know were possible (or at least wereimpossible with Sage). And they’vedone it all while reducing their totalcost of ownership by up to 59% (these

aren’t our figures by the way, they comefrom independent analysts, the YankeeGroup).

There has never been a better time tomove to a better solution. One that cannot only help you manage your companymore effectively but actually transformyour business.

This guide highlights the eight warningsigns we see in so many Sage customers.You’ll see how companies just like yourshave faced the same problems you’refacing right now and not just survived,

but thrived in a post-Sage world.

Join the revolution at netsuite.co.uk/sage

https://www.sagesurvivor.co.uk/https://www.sagesurvivor.co.uk/


3/13

Sage Customers: Release yourpotential. Join us in the cloud.Remain calm. Assess your situation.

We’re going to make an assumption:If you’ve come this far, you suspect thatyour Sage system won’t support the wayyou want your business to grow.

Know that you’re not alone. Over 500companies have switched from Sage toa cloud-powered solution from NetSuite.And IDC reports that demand for cloud

computing solutions will grow four timesfaster than the worldwide IT market asa whole over the next four years.

In fact, escaping from Sage is a much-travelled path that looks somethinglike this:

The Honeymoon: Probably at somepoint a decade or two ago, you investedin Sage. It may have been your firstaccounting software. You were eagerto automate how your books weremanaged. Sage fitted the bill.You were happy.

The Hangover: Things start to go souras you seek to grow your business. Youadd CRM and e-commerce applicationsthat don’t easily sync with Sage.You struggle. You’re not happy anymore.

The Cure: You recognise that Sageisn’t going to work for you anymore,and start looking around for alternatives.

Peers recommend a leading cloud-basedsystem, and soon you can enjoy thebenefits of an integrated solutionfrom NetSuite.

Going from hangover to cure If you’re in the midst of the hangoverphase, you want to distinguish betweenthe kinds of pains that are just part ofdoing business, and the kinds of painsthat stem from outdated software andbusiness systems like Sage.

That’s what this guide is all about.We’ve combed through the stories ofcountless Sage Switchers to identify thekinds of pains that companies have shedby going for a cloud-based solution.

So here’s a checklist of eight experiencesfrom former Sage users. For eachexperience, we provide some examples

and statements from other businessesthat have made the switch.

We invite you to consider whetherthese situations apply to you, and –if they do – hope you’ll make theswitch too.

There is an answer, and you’reclose to the cure. You will survive. Read on…

http://www.sagesurvivor.co.uk/


4/13

Too many applicationsdoing different thingswith the same information

Liberate yourself from allthose applications!

Does this sound familiar? You need toraise an invoice. What should take fiveminutes takes half an hour because youneed to query three different applications– one to determine if the delivery you’reinvoicing has been fulfilled, anotherto see if the customer has made anyadditional orders and a third to createand send the invoice.

For countless Sage users, this is theeveryday situation. Two former Sagecustomers share their experiences:

“With Sage/SBT we spent a lot oftime and money customising andintegrating different modules. It wasa nightmare! It took three systems

just to make one sale happenand there was no way we could

systematically track each laptopthat we shipped.”Owner, LaptopSchools.com

“We were using three different products – Sage Line 50 foraccounting, ACT! for CRM, andExcel for stock control and the rest.With so many systems, things weredisjointed and all over the place.”Agam Jain, Managing Director, JayexTechnology, UK

It shouldn’t be like this.

Ironically, many businesses endedup at this juncture as a result ofgrowth. Offices that have automatedtheir accounting often want to get afirmer grip on the customer lifecycle,which may mean CRM systems,opportunity management ore-commerce applications.

Because their Sage system didn’t supportor integrate well with these kinds offunctions, they had to bolt on separate

applications. What emerges is an ad-hocarchitecture that won’t scale, inhibitsgrowth and introduces errors; we’velikened it to an application “hairball” .

Sage users that have switched toNetSuite have managed to jettisonthis hairball in favour of a single,integrated system. The quickest

benefit: Deal with data once,in one place. Then move on.

Sound quicker? Our customerswill tell you: It is.



5/13

Errors proliferate as datatravels on and off ouraccounting island

Healthy data = healthy bottom line

Former Sage customers described theirexperience with Sage as ‘like living onan accounting island’. We’ve alreadycovered the issue of dealing with multipleapplications; another problem is simplythe frequency of errors an islandapproach creates.

Errors enter your business by three

basic paths:

1. Data entered in another system ismis-keyed when entered in Sage

2. Data entered in Sage gets corruptedwhen it leaves the island fore-commerce land (for example)

3. Data is updated in one place only.Thereafter, no one can reconcilewhich data is correct

According to PriceWaterhouseCoopersand KPMG, more than 90% of businessspreadsheets have material errors in

them. This is how they get there.

Business owners know the acute pain oferror-filled data: “We were duplicating,triplicating and in some cases evenquadruplicating data entry! Worsethan that, the data wasn’t alwaysconsistent,” said the CFO of i-nexus,a Sage Switcher.

i-nexus and others like them that have

moved to NetSuite’s cloud-driven solutionnote considerably less trouble and expenserelated to errors.

Because data entered once online isautomatically synced across theirbusiness processes, the issue ofreconciling inconsistent data vanishesovernight. Errors no longer lead tofaulty decisions. And less time is spenton case-handling and customer serviceafter errors hit their clients.

Sage Switchers would say: Don’t letyour accounting system sit on an isl and.A unified, cloud-based system will

reduce errors, and the hangovers thaterrors create.



6/13

Our systems can’t keep upwith the pace of our lifeUpdating software versions

shouldn’t be your problem

Users are impervious to software updates.

Even with countless reminders poppingup on the screen (“A new update isavailable!”), the average user just clicksright past it and proceeds to what he orshe was aiming to do in the first place.

And that’s how it ought to be. You

open your ERP application to producea report, not to update your software.

The facts back this up: An Aberdeenreport stated that only 28% ofbusinesses are on the latest ERPrelease of their software.

The version upgrade gamewould be comical, if it didn’tcarry real penalties:

• Regulations change. Outdated Sageversions don’t

• Some applications don’t get updated,leading to costly, painful upgrades

• Outmoded versions of one applicationstop talking to updated versions ofother applications

Former Sage customers spent muchof their life on i ncreasingly outdatedversions. It’s understandable; updating istime-consuming and introduces errors asdata moves over to the new version.

Some of the most profound andimmediate rejoicing heard from userswho adopt a cloud-based, software-as-a-service platform concerns just this:

“…from an IT point of view, thehosted software-as-a-service deliverymodel meant there was very littleto do and the costs would be muchlower. We were excited,” said oneformer Sage customer.

Another cited easier Internet networking,a lighter hardware investment and no

hidden costs for upgrading. You don’tneed to hire an IT specialist, buy kit ormanage data backup.

You don’t want to play softwarecatch-up for eternity, and youshouldn’t have to.



7/13

We pay too many people torekey data, and nothing elseHow you handle data shouldn’t

have anything to do with hands

Business owners and finance managersknow, perhaps better than anyone,that time is priceless, which is why thisexperience is so important.

There are three fundamental ways timeand energy is lost working with Sage:

1. People whose only function in the

company is to re-enter data

2. People who spend far too long tofind the right information, and

3. People who have to get other peopleto help them (because they can’t getsomething themselves - self-service)

We’re not just talking about someonespending too much time during theday entering data. For some formerSage customers, it was a questionof employing people – one, two,many – only to transfer data fromone silo to another.

2Pure UK Ltd. estimated that staffwon 25% more time to focus on salesafter dropping Sage and the need tomanually transfer data from applicationto application.

If you’re a Sage user, no matter howmuch time you spend entering data,it’s probably more than it should be,and more than necessary. Add to thisthe amount of time other peoplespend looking for “lost” data.

Customers that have made the switchwould unanimously argue that thecloud increases productivity. A reportfrom Nucleus Research summed uptheir experiences:

“Businesses that run NetSuite areable to dramatically reduce manual

processes by integrating order-to-

cash and procure-to-pay processes,eliminating time spent rekeying dataacross these processes by 90-100%.”

Emarket.com can corroborate. CEOSuraj Sharma said: “NetSuite not onlyreplaced Sage, it has revolutionisedthe way we do business, resulting inefficiency gains of 20%.”

More reasons to cloud up.



8/13

Four examples of the samecustomer live in our IT systemsEnter that customer once,

and only once!

For each of your customers, there is onetrue state of the relationship. But manyformer Sage users knew a time whenthere were three or more versions ofthe business truth.

One used a bespoke customer databaseon a server in its head office inWarwick. None of its information could

be shared. “This caused massive problems. Things tended to drop offthe radar and we had no idea whowe were reaching from a customer perspective,” said the Client ServicesDirector at AbilityNet.

Typically, customers are multi-dimensionalthings, with many different processesgoing on at the same time, and multipleroles involved on both sides.

This means the window for errorand miscommunication is large.With everyone updating disparatesystems simultaneously, oversight is lost.

The outcomes aren’t pretty. FormerSage customers report a number ofissues arising from multiple instancesof customers on in-house systems:

• Billing, fullment and customerservice errors

• Delays in resolving issues andquestions, and

• Decaying customer satisfaction and,ultimately, retention

Warmup Plc was one UK company thatfelt these kinds of Sage pains.

“Now I can produce much morecomprehensive sales analysis byarea, by customer, by product, withrelevant YOY comparisons for

presentation to the board; previously,I had to ask accounts for information

from Sage” . Tony Barry, UK SalesDirector, Warmup Plc.

With a CRM system that ties in tothe full accounting back-end andtransactional history, one customerremains… one customer. That’s arevelation for many Sage customersthat have made the switch.



9/13

We know less than competitorsbecause our reporting is slowCreate reports yourself – don’t rely on IT

Knowledge is power – that’s a given.But for many Sage users, reporting(the route to knowledge) can be apainful experience.

Listen to this former Sage customer:“We used ACT! for contactmanagement, Gemini for problemmanagement, Excel for customer

quotations and Sage Line 50 for theaccounts. We really struggled to produce any accurate and relevantbusiness analysis information, andin many cases we stopped botheringto ask for it.”

Another company explained how, in anaverage month, 1.5 percent of turnoverwas overdue. Yet, without fast andreliable reporting, they struggled toaccount for the shortcomings andchase them down accordingly.

Again, the culprit for most of theseproblems is growth. The ad-hoc, finger-

on-the-pulse kind of reporting thatworked when Sage was installed, nolonger works in a rapidly growing firm.

Customers that have switched saythat moving to a cloud-based systemimproves reporting in a few key ways:

• Reporting is self-service; you can buildcustom reports without calling in theIT artillery

• Reports are in real-time; you don’t need

to build in a cushion of error

• Reporting spans the entire business;you don’t have to look at the pictureone application silo at a time

Lightspeed sped up after makingthe switch.

“NetSuite gives us a single view ofthe customer, rather than havingcustomer data all over the place.We have strengthened customer support and customer relations, andwe’ve been able to speed up order processing while improving system

availability at the same time,” saidCarl Cox, VP of Operations and CFO.

There it is: speed, and power.Thanks to the cloud.



10/13

Our systems, and expenses, weregrowing as fast as our businessWith the cloud, you can serve more,

with less

Suffering from growing pains? Manycompanies that have made the switchcan empathise with you.

Rococo Chocolates is one. After earninga great reputation at its flagship Londonstore, Rococo was rapidly growingthrough prestigious retail chains, but at acost: “I was getting tired of the [SageLine 50] constant support thing, withadd-ons and upgrades that didn’tdeliver what we needed,” said Financial Controller Gerry Kerins.

“Since we implemented NetSuite, sales have shot up 25%.”

Basically all Sage software requires youto manage the hardware, servers anddatabases, in addition to upgrading,troubleshooting and maintaining theapplications. These things carry ahidden cost.

A study by the Yankee Group directlycompared the total cost of ownershipof NetSuite and a combination of Sageproducts. The study concluded thatthe NetSuite cloud-based serviceprovided cost savings compared toSage of 24 – 59%.

At the sharp end of a small- tomedium-sized business, losingmoney while you grow feelsparticularly painful. You want tobe able to direct that hard-won profitback into the business and expand,instead of patching IT systems thataren’t keeping up.

Businesses across industries havereduced their IT spend from 3% ofrevenue to 0.1% of revenue, savedover £150,000 annually and slashedERP costs by 80+%, by moving fromtraditional on-premise systems to moderncloud-based business management.

Growth shouldn’t have to hurt. FormerSage customers used to spend time andmoney on IT system work-arounds whengrowth came along. Now they don’t.



11/13

Everything had to go throughone guy, slowing it all downEveryone should be able to do what

they need to do, anywhere!

You and whoever else runs yourbusiness’s books shouldn’t feel likea bottleneck. Yet, that’s how manySage users end up feeling.

“Outside my office, there werequeues of people wanting accessto business critical data. It was mymachine that accessed the data soeverything from buying a bottle ofmilk with petty cash to customerqueries and order managementcaused constant interruptions to myday – it seemed like everything camethrough me,” said the finance managerof one former Sage customer.

There are two interrelated issues here:

1. Access: The ability to get at neededbusiness data, wherever and wheneverit’s needed, and

2. Permissions: The authority to accessinformation crucial to your role

Former Sage customers found that,even if Sage gave other users permissionto access data, they were accessing aversion of data that they suspected to beold or incorrect. That’s the same as notgiving them permission. They needed toask someone else for information.

One of the key advantages of a cloud-based solution like NetSuite is persistentself-service. Anyone can see what they’resupposed to see, anywhere,at any time.

“Being completely online and withinthe cloud allows staff to work just aseffectively from home - enabling aflexibility and work ethic that manybusinesses can’t afford,” said anotherSage customer that made the switch.

In this day and age, business shouldn’tbe limited by access to one specificcomputer or database. That’s the coreidea behind the cloud.



12/13


13/13

Switch from Sageto Cloud NetSuite.You’ll never look back.

If this guide has shown you anything,it’s that there is life beyond Sage.

Over 500 companies have alreadysuccessfully made the switch to theNetSuite Business Cloud. Not only havethey found a better way to managetheir companies, they have seen theirbusinesses thrive.

Let’s take a moment to revisitsome of them:

Rococo Chocolates has seen salesrise by 25% (in a down market).

2Pure has increased its turnover30% year-on-year.

i-nexus grew its revenue by 800%.

Emarket.com increased the efficiency ofits operations, logistics and finance teamsby 20%.

And that’s just the beginning. Isn’t it timeyou switched too?

netsuite.co.uk/sage

NetSuite has been recognised by Gartneras the UK’s fastest growing top 10financial management solution vendorfor three consecutive years, and wasalso recently named the winner of theprestigious 2011 CODiE Award for BestFinancial Management Solution.

TAKE YOUR FIRST STEPS TO FREEDO

Switching from Sage to NetSuite i

Learn more at netsuite.co.uk/sag

Call us now on 01628 774400 to

can break free.

Download one of our white pa

NetSuite can do for your busine

The Benefits of Running Your Busi

Strategies for Success >Why Cloud Computing Matters to

The TCO of Cloud Computing in t
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88921922 ebook for saas company

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