SAGE 500 PRODUCT ROADMAP

Sage 500 Product Roadmap SAGE 500 PRODUCT ROADMAP Sage Summit 2014 was a success! For those of you who were unable to join us in July, Sage announced continued development and enhancements to future releases of Sage 500 ERP to enhance the user experience, focusing on additional functionality and mobility over the next three years. Upcoming releases will see the following developments: ACH receivables via SPS Reverse Memo/Payment Application Improved search capabilities Sales order number on invoices Color-Coded Company Inter-Company Cash Management Combined Posting Reports Plus many more customer-requested enhancements Several Mobility Applications 1

SAGE DATA CLOUD Sage realizes that competing in a mobile environment is becoming more important for your business today. Because of this need, Sage has developed the. The connects: Sage s ERP and accounting systems with mobile applications Sage s services and applications across devices Sage s ISV applications to the ERPs Data from Sage s ERP products to the cloud In conjunction with the, Sage has released Sage Inventory Advisor which will assist you with correctly managing your inventory levels to gain efficiencies relative to inventory control. 2

SAGE MOBILITY Sage will also be releasing the following three mobile applications to integrate with Sage 500 ERP: Sage Mobile Sales Sage Mobile Services Sage Billing and Payments All three apps will enable your business to compete in an increasingly mobile business environment. With these applications, you ll have the tools to meet the needs of your customers while growing your business. Sage Mobile Sales With Sage Mobile Sales, your sales team can access the following, anytime and anywhere even while in the field: View and edit customer information on their ipad Review your company catalog with customers and show related items Create and email quotes Check product availability and confidently commit to fulfilling orders Enter orders and accept immediate payment Sage Mobile Service Empower service technicians to deliver an exceptional customer service experience and watch your revenues soar. With the Sage Mobile Service application, field technicians are linked to the dispatcher via their iphone to access work orders, review customer service history, obtain customer signoff for completed work, and process immediate payment all while onsite. Exceed customer expectations and provide the type of service that generates repeat business and creates those all-important referrals. Sage Billing and Payment Sage Billing and Payment will enable you to choose either traditional paper delivery of invoices or send via e-mail. Additionally, the ability to receive electronic payments will reduce costs, save time, decrease your days-to-pay, and improve customer satisfaction. With the application, your organization will be able to: E-mail invoices and receipts sent to customers based on individual preferences Accept electronic payments from credit cards and ACH Integrate and automate data updates with the latest Sage ERP solutions Access online dashboards for visibility into invoice delivery and usage with the ability to quickly re-send invoices 3

SAGE 500 TIPS & TRICKS Michelle Bennion, Business Application Manager Goal Seek (Goal Seek is located on the Data tab in Microsoft Excel, under the What-if-Analysis drop down) When you create a formula or function in Excel, you are combining various, known values to calculate an outcome. Goal Seek, on the other hand, works reversely; it allows you to start with the end in mind and calculate the input value needed to generate a desired result. Take, for example, obtaining a loan. You know the loan amount, the duration of the loan, and the maximum monthly payment you can afford. With the Goal Seek tool, you can leverage the aforementioned values to determine the highest acceptable interest rate you must secure from the borrower in order to stay within your budget. As visually represented in the screenshot below, our example s maximum monthly payment amount is $900 on a $100,000 loan over 180 months; $555.56 would be the monthly payment if there was a 0% interest rate. Article continues click to view next page. 4

continued from previous page. SAGE 500 TIPS & TRICKS To recreate this scenario, enter the data as seen above and complete the following: In the Date Tools group under the Data tab in Excel, click What-If Analysis and then select Goal Seek from the drop-down. In the Set cell box, enter the cell containing the formula that you want to resolve. In our example, this is cell B4 the value for Payment In the To value box, type the end result. In our example, this value is -900, representing our maximum monthly payment amount of $900. Note: This number is negative because it signifies a payment. In the By cell box, enter the cell value that you want to adjust to achieve your desired result In our example, this is cell B3 the value for Interest Rate Select the OK button to generate the Goal Seek result. The below screenshot of the results indicates that our example s interest rate should be around 7% for a $900 monthly payment. Article continues click to view next page. 5

continued from previous page. SAGE 500 TIPS & TRICKS Bonus Tip: Split Panes in Excel Another very useful feature in Microsoft Excel is the ability to view more than one copy of your worksheet, enabling you to scroll through each pane independently. This feature is called Split Panes, and you can split your worksheet both horizontally and vertically. To achieve this, simply click the vertical bar on the bottom right-hand corner of your current worksheet and drag it to create a vertical split pane. Reversely, you can do the same horizontally by clicking and dragging from the upper right-hand bar. 6

OPTIMIZE YOUR ENVIRONMENT TO BETTER SUPPORT SAGE 500 Orrian Rich, Senior Systems Engineer Optimizing performance and efficiencies is a key area of concern for any organization, and often, it begins by examining your current infrastructure environment. This is especially true when optimizing your ERP application. When examining your ERP environment, consider the following your 101 course for optimization: Create a performance baseline of your system (client and servers) when it is running well. Don t wait until you think you have a performance problem to analyze the expected performance level. Gather performance information at both high-usage times and slow times, during different times of the day, week and month to accurately depict performance variances depending on the demands of users. Be aware of the timing for network and system processes, including: Backups, Antivirus scans, Payroll processing Business related process, such as order processing, reporting and shipping Examine the time it takes to run specific reports during high-usage and low-usage times. How long does it take to print a Sage report versus a print job of a similar page count and size? Utilize Windows (or your OS ) performance monitoring tool to gather server performance baselines. Know the size of your databases (Mas500, tempdb, master and transaction logs). Verify that your performance level matches or exceeds your baseline after any upgrades, patches and system customizations. This will aid you in pinpointing when / if a performance decrease occurs. Set up SQL and Sage system alerts. Set up server alerts within your manufacture tools to notify you of any hardware issues. Test all customizations and system changes for performance problems before they go into production. Moreover, there are a number of factors that play specifically into the performance of your Sage 500 ERP system. A Sage 500 environment is client server-based with a database server residing remotely, and most processes are performed on the server running SQL. As such, client performance is extremely important, especially when utilizing SAP Crystal Report generation which expends a lot of resources. The following are areas of optimization specifically for a Sage 500 environment: Trusted Hardware: Your organization should be utilizing PC s, servers, and networking hardware from trusted vendors like IBM, HP and Dell, which can increase performance and reliability. Article continues click to view next page. 7

continued from previous page. OPTIMIZE YOUR ENVIRONMENT TO BETTER SUPPORT SAGE 500 Workstation Performance: More memory, faster processor, and disk speed are important factors to consider upgrading over a standard workstation. It is important to be aware of Windows compatibility when purchasing new hardware. As mentioned previously, SQL performance in a Sage 500 environment is crucial. As a starting point, use the below specs and modify as your organization s users and database grow: Plan for Growth: Disk, memory and central processing unit (CPU) 2 to 8 CPU 8 GB+ Memory Reference the Sage 500 Compatibility Guide for the most updated information as the spec recommendations change regularly. Note: The operating system you are running can limit max memory used. Storage Performance: Sage recommends the use of a storage area network (SAN) with high-speed network through a Fibre Channel or Internet Small Computer System Interface (iscsi) for storage performance in larger environments. If that is not possible within your current environment, look to local solid-state drive (SSD) arrays to add performance. 8 GB Fibre Channel or 10 GB iscsi connectivity to your SAN 1 GB iscsi networking can be a bottle neck for your storage performance if it contains caching, SSD, or multiple SAS drives. Isolate your iscsi storage networking traffic from your LAN traffic by using separate network interfaces when possible. Don t assume Fibre Channel is more costly; finding the storage networking solution that is right for your environment will require some research and cost-benefit analysis. Disk speed is important. Do not use SATA disks as 7200 and 10K SATA drives can cause performance issues with Sage 500. Rather, 15K SAS disk drives are a good starting point to build a system that will allow you to increase performance as needed for your organization. You can add additional disks to your array to increase disk performance. Deploy a minimum of 3 disk arrays, configured with RAID 1 or RAID 10 for database support. Note: RAID 5 is not supported and affects Sage 500 performance. Database array Transaction logs Tempdb Your SQL server should have a gigabit network interface or better for LAN connectivity. Depending on the number of users or growth of your environment, it may become necessary to add second SQL server to offload CPU intensive activities, such as reporting. There is often a level of confusion that arises when examining your infrastructure network, and assigning the right resources to enable your systems and environment is vital. Your Eide Bailly Technology Consulting team is here to answer any questions and point your organization in the right direction on your path to full optimization. 8