Business software vendor Sage North America told partners and customers at its Summit partner conference in August that it would continue supporting Sage 500 ERP for five years, and it followed-through on that commitment this week with the launch of Sage 500 ERP 2013.
The platform was formerly known as MAS 500 before Sage commenced a portfolio-wide rebranding to focus on the Sage brand rather than individual product brands. Although soon it will go away all together.
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Sage is reorienting its product portfolio around its cloud computing vision, Connected Services, which is a hybrid of on premise and cloud-based services it launched last year. At Summit, Himanshu Palsule, who was recently promoted to become Sage’s CTO and head of product strategy, said customers want a common experience across platforms, and are getting tired of feature fatigue. It’s why Sage is working to scale-back complex platforms and replace them with Connected Services, where customers can pick for and pay for the features they want.
As part of this transition, while Sage 500 ERP (formerly MAS 500) will continue to be supported for at least five years, the vendor will be working with partners to provide clear migration paths to products such as Sage ERP X3. Other products are also being sun-setted.
Until then though, Sage promises the 2013 edition of Sage 500 ERP 2013 will give users a better user experiences with mobile and cloud services. Among the new features, business can use Visual Process Flows to demonstrate process steps visually, and improved Cash Flow Management features allow cash receipts to be processed and tracked more accurately. Also, cloud services such as credit card management with Sage Exchange are integrated into the platform.
Other connected services include a multicarrier shipping solution, a portal to view payments information on the web through a tablet or desktop, and a secure, cloud-based vault to store sensitive cardholder data.
“(This) release illustrates our focus on offering a better user experience to small and medium-sized companies,” said Joe Langner, executive vice-president of mid-market solutions for Sage North America, in a statement. “With this release, we have improved integrations between Sage 500 ERP 2013 and Sage Payment Solutions through Sage Exchange as well as full support for the latest release of Sage Intelligence. Also, customers can now bring payroll processing in-house through Sage HRMS Payroll, which is now available as an add-on module, saving companies time and money when managing their payroll processes and payments.”
