Sage Strident

A little advanced notification on the new and improved Sage 200 offerings within v2011. Worth noting.

The 2011 release builds on the key themes of:

Accessibility

Market research tells us that customers want quick, easy access to business critical information anywhere, anytime to enable them to make smarter, faster decisions. This release builds on the 2010 release and now enables customers to access information on the move from their Blackberry or iPhone.

Information Management

Building on the 2010 release, we are continuing to improve the information management capabilities of the suite with the extension of Business Intelligence to include the Project Accounting module. This means customers will be able to access information to determine project costs, revenues and profitability, compare budgets against actuals and better analyse resource utilisation, providing them with additional insight into key business metrics to improve efficiency.

Improved Usability

We want systems that are easy for our customers to use and require little or no training, so we have really focused on improving usability within this release, particularly for Web, Time and Expenses (WTE) and the new Migration Tool. So far we have conducted over 30 usability tests with end users, partners and internal candidates who had never used the system before. These hands-on tests helped us spot design flaws early on and makes us confident that users will find it easy – or even delightful – to use.

Will post more on here once we know more!

Exciting news in that we’ve just signed the lease on our new Central Norwich office!

We’re extremely pleased that we’ve finally taken this step and are now looking to furnish the good people of Norfolk with our Sage expertise & customary exemplary customer service. The other great news is that  Polly Christmas, who we took on in an intern capacity, is heading up our Norfolk operation and will be responsible for our Marketing & Sales push – expect to see her at networking events near you in Norwich shortly.

More details will be published once the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed.

Exciting times ahead! Keep an eye out for our opening offers & say hello to Polly should you see here out & about in Norwich.

With all the gloom that we started 2010 with, it’s clear to see that both customers & prospects alike are keen to properly evaluate their financial position  to enable them to make justified and informed decisions – either good or bad – on the direction of their respective businesses.

It’s been an interesting 11 months where we’ve picked up Sage consultancy from a multitude of businesses to include charities & larger Sage users with both sectors feeling the pinch. The tools within Sage systems now, particularly Sage Business Intelligence, means that we’re able to provide our customer base with up-to-the-minute, this-is-where-we-are-at information and the more time we spend with these fantastic features, the more information we can coax out of Sage. When you couple this with the ability to set up auto reports to FD, MD, purchasing & sales, the information provided becomes truly relevant & time driven!

Us? Well, we’ve hit a brick wall in terms of our own internal resources and customer requirements, so we are currently looking to fill a business analyst position – please let me know if you want details on this. Whilst we haven’t turned work down, we have been extremely mindful of our booked commitments and we are also glad of some understanding customers who have had to wait for longer than we would like for our services.

In summary, tough trading conditions out there but the right tools are certainly assisting our customers.

A bit of a trek down to the other side of the country, but well worth it.

Not merely for a customer visit, simply to prove to the customer that they are not so far away from us that we’ll never visit site on an account management/project sign-off  basis. They’re really nice people too!!

Good to hear that they’ve been suitably impressed with the Sage 200 implementation project – again, we’ve kept to timescales, proposal pricing & have been punctual and approachable throughout. Great news! Good also to hear that they’ll happily reference our skills to other potential Strident Sage customers!

Wow! what a refreshing change this event was!!

Paul Stobert (Head Honcho, UK) standing in front of 550+ Business Partners and admitting that Sage simply haven’t performed as they should and that they are going to fix this.

 A really, really interesting hour with Lior Arussy on the subject of Excellent Customer Experience – Lior’s surveying of Sage’s customer base and recommendations were the catalyst for Pauls’ admission – he has written a couple of books plus regularly present on the subject. If you get a chance, I’d thoroughly recommend attending one of his sessions.

I’ll keep you posted on how Sage are performing and changes being made – interesting times ahead, I reckon!