Industry Whitepapers

Managing Business Risk in Industrial Equipment and Supply

Few industrial companies were prepared for the swift economic decline in 2001. The losses led to industrywide cost control measures including off-shore sourcing. Wise companies also implemented greater risk management oversight. As the economic cycle rebounds and customers once again invest heavily in capital equipment, industrial companies should continue to be careful of risks as they pursue expansion opportunities.

Prior to the global economic crisis, industrial companies had been expanding into new regions, industries, product lines, and services. At the same time, they had been dealing with industrywide changes that posed additional risks to their business. The challenging economic times put a spotlight on those companies not equipped to deal with these risks.

Fresh Business Practices for Food and Beverage Manufacturers  and Distributors to Meet Today’s Top Three Issues

Everyone consumes food and beverages—but few know the challenges facing manufacturers and distributors of what we consume. The already demanding business of transforming and handling agricultural products is getting more complex. Beyond shifting consumer tastes and trends, retail and food-service customers are asking suppliers to do more. Recent food contamination episodes have reinforced the need for good manufacturing practices and handling processes, and also raise the specter of further regulations.

Growing Pains: What to do When You Have Outgrown Small Business Accounting Software

Straight Talk about Selecting the Right Solution to Support Your Company’s Growth Requirements

Your small business software provided the basic bookkeeping capabilities you needed to get your company started. But as you have grown, things have changed. You have more customers, more employees, more data, more automation requirements. In short, your small business isn’t so small anymore, and you need more from the software that is the foundation for your growing business.

Forget "Business as Usual": Thriving in the post-downturn's "New Normal"

Don’t just weather the downturn–actively prepare for a post-crisis world.

The economy is slowly recovering. So, will everything just go back to “business as usual”? You’ve managed to stay afloat through one of the toughest economies ever. Now signs are pointing toward a recovery. But will everything just go back to the way it was before the recession? Not likely. The post-downturn economy will redefine how businesses operate and compete.

On The Hot Seat: How your Peers are Tackling the Questions that Matter Now

It’s a scary climate out there for small and mid-size businesses. There are more than enough uncertainties to keep you tossing and turning late at night. Time Inc. Research & Insights division conducted 306 online interviews among small and mid-size business owners and decision makers on the Fortune Business Leader Council between January 30 and February 4, 2009 to learn more about the pressing business and operational concerns of today’s small and mid-size businesses.

Managing Cash Flow in Tough Economic Times

During economic instability and slowdowns, cash flow management becomes critical to both the short and long term success of a business. Of course, generating sales and managing your business is also very important, but ensuring that cash from sales is collected and your daily cash flow requirements are managed is even more important.

IFRS and Sage Accpac: Meeting the Challenge

There’s no longer any doubt: International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are coming down the pipeline. The business and accounting press are full of news about IFRS, and businesses are realizing they need to pay attention. As an owner or manager of a small or medium-sized company, you’re probably uncertain about if, when, and how you should adopt the new requirements. Download this white paper, designed to be a helpful guide for those planning for the IFRS changeover.

Enhance Your Business Relationships with SageCRM

By integrating your sales, marketing, and customer service functions, SageCRM makes it easier for everyone inside your company to work together and share critical information. Sales, marketing, and customer service teams gain the tools they need to find new customers, close sales faster, and build lasting, more profitable relationships. And thanks to outof- the-box integration with ERP solutions such as Sage MAS 90/200 and Sage Accpac, SageCRM lets you view critical customer data from the back-office and provides your staff with true 360° visibility into customer interactions, differentiating SageCRM from many other CRM solutions in the market today.

CRM: A Business Imperative for Companies during the Global Economic Downturn

Navigating through turbulent times is never easy, but today’s economic conditions are more challenging than most companies have ever faced. The instinctive reaction is switch to defensive mode; cut all strategic projects and then wait until things improve. But retreating behind the bailey could actually prove to be more detrimental in the long term. These turbulent times present new opportunities for companies that invest wisely in information technologies. This whitepaper examines how Sage is working with small and medium sized businesses like yours today to help them protect and grow their revenues during the economic downturn through the use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

37-New Ideas for Growing your Business

With the speed of globalization, industry convergence, and technological change, business owners are waging competitive battles on many fronts: streamlining business processes, leveraging new technologies, and building value across the enterprise. If your organization is facing challenges like these, you need a paradigm for evaluating what’s best for your business. If you’re thinking about implementing a new accounting system, you’ll want to gather all the facts before you make a decision. The new system can impact nearly everyone in your corporation, so each decision is critical. The task is substantial and it can be tough to stay within your budget. This guide is designed to give you smart ideas and tips that business owners, accounting managers, consultants, and software publishers have shared with us over the years. These guidelines should prove useful as you make your own choices about business software.

Front-to-Back Office Integration

Independent research suggests that the area of back office connectivity is not adequately addressed by many CRM implementations, meaning, customer data cannot be shared effectively and business processes are prone to errors, delays, and unnecessary paperwork. Over the long term, this will significantly and negatively impact overall customer satisfaction, as well as increase transactional costs on an exponential basis. This White Paper demonstrates how front- to back-office integration enables small and midsized businesses (SMBs) to address these issues.

Optomize your Business: How ERP Can Improve Productivity and Profitability

As they grow, companies rely on more and more processes, activities and systems to run their businesses. These likely include a number of manual and automated workflows and procedures as well as a variety of departmental applications and legacy databases that are poorly integrated. While this approach may have served its purpose in the past, at some point it can become cumbersome. And in today’s dynamic and highly competitive marketplace, it can dangerously impede productivity, profitability and growth.

Ten Signs you need a New Solution

Maintaining your business management software is no longer a technical decision that can be made by the IT department alone, as your system is not just a key part of your IT strategy, but one of your most important and sensitive corporate assets. It is vital to ensure your business management solution is supporting your corporate strategies and providing the performance you need to sustain and grow your business. Don’t wait until you simply can not bandage the system any longer. Make sure you look for warning signs that your system can’t keep up. By the time you are certain that your current systems are inadequate, you’re probably already losing money to reduced productivity, lost opportunities, poor data quality, and insufficient information to make insightful decisions.

Making the Move: What to do When you have Outgrown QuickBooks

QuickBooks provided the basic bookkeeping capabilities you needed to start your company. But things have changed. You have more customers. More employees. More complexity. In short, your small business isn’t so small anymore. So how do you make the move to a more powerful accounting solution? First things first: It’s critical to gather all the facts before you make a decision. The new system can impact nearly everyone in your company, so each decision is critical. It pays to be meticulous.

How to Choose an Accounting System

Welcome to How to Choose an Accounting System. Selecting the best accounting software for your organization is one of the most critical business decisions you face. We created this guide to provide you with the essential information you need to make the best decision possible. You may be wondering, “Why would Sage Software distribute a booklet that doesn’t promote its own products?” We know how important great information is to making great decisions. What’s more, we’re confident that the more people know about accounting software, the more likely they are to seriously consider—and ultimately choose—Sage Software accounting and e-business software solutions. In other words, our software solutions stand up to the most stringent selection criteria.

How to Choose a Manufacturing System

For more than 25 years, Sage Software has been helping companies across the globe choose and implement lasting software solutions. Of the hundreds of thou¬sands of companies who use Sage Software solutions, each one had to decide which system to buy and when to buy it. Our experience has taught us that people need more than just product information; they also need other kinds of input to make sound accounting and manufacturing software decisions. And that’s what this booklet is all about.

How to Make Business Intelligence Pay

Business Intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term that describes the process of gathering, manipulating, and analyzing data from past and present sources, and providing intelligent reports that enable you to make informed business decisions. It provides interactive, real-time, business-critical information on behaviors and trends of your business and market.

The Bottom Line on HR Technology

A well-run business needs a strong, talented workforce. Business owners face a range of human resources challenges, from competition for top talent to spiraling benefits costs. Globalization is increasing the competitive pressures on businesses while rapid advances in technology require new skills and accelerated development of the workforce. For more than twenty years, Sage Software has been helping midsized businesses in all industries choose and implement Sage Abra Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS). Our experience has taught us that business owners and executives need more than just product information to successfully select and deploy HR technology in their businesses. That’s what this white paper is all about.

The Future of Accpac: Vision and Product Plan

In 2010, the next generation of Sage Accpac ERP–a leading midmarket business management software application–will be launched. Sage Accpac 2010 will harness the power of Web 2.0 technology to deliver a better user experience, lower total cost of ownership, and enhanced functionality. Sage Accpac 2010 will allow companies to spend less time managing their software and more time optimizing their business. The release of the next generation of Sage Accpac will be the culmination of three decades of customerconnected innovation that has seen Sage Accpac ERP become the business management solution of choice for 40,000 customers and over 200,000 users in 169 countries. This success has been built upon two fundamental business principles: create value for customers and continually innovate.

5-Ways SageCRM Delivers Value to the Finance Team

Your accounting department has big-picture goals—and everyday tasks. It’s a balancing act that doesn’t always balance out. SageCRM can help. It’s a powerful customer relationship management system that is available with your Sage Accpac ERP software in the Sage Accpac Extended Enterprise Suite. Together, SageCRM and Sage Accpac make your team members’ jobs easier and goals more attainable—like no other solution out there. Take a look at five of the many ways SageCRM can bring value to your accounting team.

Sage Accpac Business Intelligence

The term “Business Intelligence” and its acronym “BI” are so pervasive in today’s data-intensive lexicon that it’s a challenge to know just what to make of it. If you add in all the new trendy terminology such as business process management (BPM), data mining, data warehousing, business process automation, decision support systems, query and reporting systems, enterprise performance management, executive information systems (EIS), business activity monitoring (BAM), modeling and visualization, and so forth,your head can start spinning. To put it in simpler terms, BI makes the right information available in the right format to the right person at the right time.