As a business owner, member of the board, or part of the senior leadership team, there might be more to worry about in the day to day than your financial software. However, your current solution whether its Xero, Quickbooks or even Sage 50 might actually be slowing the growth you’re all trying to achieve. When that’s the case, where do you look next?
How do you know your ERP, BMS or financial software is no longer fit for purpose?
Like with most things, we sometimes ‘make do’ with software even when it is causing issues for our employees. The issues can creep up so slowly that your team isn’t aware that your current ERP is slowing you down. But if you’re a decision-maker and are starting to hear things such as:
- I’m struggling to generate reports quickly.
- This is the only data I can provide you with
- I need to collate multiple reports to give you that information
- I can’t get Quickbooks/Xero/Sage 50 to talk to our new software
It might be time to consider switching, and upgrading, to a new ERP. We realise that making that decision isn’t easy but planning for it, whether the time is right now or in the future, is not only free but aids strategic decisions.
Not sure if you’ve outgrown your ERP?
Listen to Simon, our Software Director, and Simon, our Business Development Manager outline the key signs your ERP might need changing
What options could you consider?
EBS has been developing products for growing SMEs and as part of that work, we’ve compared Xero, Quickbooks, Sage 50, Sage 200 Standard and Sage 200 Professional.
| Feature | Xero | Quickbooks | Sage 50 | Sage 200 Standard | Sage 200 Professional |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
User capacity |
✗ 10 |
✗ 25 |
✗ 10 |
✓ Up to 50 |
✓ unlimited* |
|
Deployment |
✓ |
✓ |
✗ |
✓ Cloud-connected |
✗ On-premise |
|
Advanced Financials |
✗ Add-ons |
✗ Limited |
– Basic |
✓ |
✓ |
|
Stock and inventory management |
✗ |
✗ Limited |
– Basic |
✓ Advanced |
✓ Advanced |
|
Multi-entity / Department Reporting |
✗ |
✗ |
✗ |
✓ Built-in |
✓ Built-in |
|
Support |
✗ Email only |
✗ Phone only |
✗ |
✓ Dedicated Sage partner |
✓ Dedicated Sage partner |
|
Purchase and Sales Order Processing |
✗ Add-ons |
✗ Manual |
✗ Limited |
✓ |
✓ |
|
Custom reports/dashboards |
✗ Add-ons |
✗ Limited |
– Some |
✓ Built-in and extendable |
✓ Built-in and extendable |
|
Scalability |
✗ Low |
✗ Low |
– Medium |
✓ High |
✓ High |
|
Pricing |
From £30 a month |
From £30 a month |
From £70 a month |
From £350 a month |
What might not be clear from the above table is how easy-to-use Xero and Quickbooks are. It makes them ideal for start-ups or small businesses. But as growth begins to happen organically you start building in other software, ecommerce, stockholding or other complexities. This might be covered in different software packages that you want to integrate into Xero, Quickbooks or Sage 50.
While that might not always be possible, when it is, you might use Microsoft Access or similar to extend the functionality. Something that feels like a ‘just for now’ solution but then ends up remaining in place for a long-time. That knowledge then doesn’t necessarily pass onto new starters leaving you with functionality that can struggle.
Reviewing Sage 200 Standard is our recommendation for growing businesses. It is ideal for businesses that need the next step but are still growing towards the well-known names of Sage 200 Professional, Business Central, NetSuite or SAP.
Sage 200 Standard is ideal for growing businesses
Sage 200 Standard sits between Sage 50 and Sage 200 Professional as an ideal solution for growing businesses. The future might look like Sage 200 Professional, but Sage 200 Standard gives increased functionality without the same level of cost and with a learning curve that can, potentially, be managed in-house.
It gives businesses increased data, visibility, users and all securely within the cloud. Sage 200 Standard gives you the headspace to grow your business without a significant amount of investment that would be needed for an enterprise-level ERP. While investment is still needed, EBS has developed a unique solution that can help SMEs implement Sage 200 Standard in a way that suits them.
What to consider when choosing Sage 200 Standard?
Our Software Director, Simon Pritchard, talks through the features and benefits of Sage 200 Standard including:
Configure and customise with EBS SelfLaunch
EBS has developed EBS SelfLaunch. A unique, video-led training portal that allows you to configure and customise Sage 200 Standard in-house but backed by the knowledge and experience of a Sage Business Partner. As a Sage Business Partner and Sage Developer, our expertise is in implementing their software to suit a range of different businesses. This expertise and experience has been used to create three learning pathways to implementing Sage 200 Standard successfully.
And for those businesses that need more, or get stuck along the way, you can call on EBS for additional support or for full peace of mind and we can implement Sage 200 Standard for you.
Learn more about EBS SelfLaunch: https://ebs.tech/start-scaling-with-sage-200-standard-and-ebs-selflaunch/
