ERP: When newer isn’t necessarily better

A number of new cloud-based ERP solutions have been introduced to the market in recent years. These products clearly offer benefits to organizations who don’t want the headaches associated with managing their own local or “on premises” servers.

But just because a technology is new, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for you. Sometime new is just new. Let’s examine some reasons why, when it comes to ERP software, newer isn’t always better.

Experience matters.

Sage 100 (formerly MAS 90/MAS200) has been on the market for over 30 years. As you can imagine, in 30+ years, they’ve encountered just about every situation and need that users have experienced. While user needs are always evolving, Sage isn’t spending time trying to create core functionality. They can focus on adding new features to make the product even better. Read about what was recently added in Sage 100 / Sage 100cloud here

The newcomers tend to release products that check all the boxes, but when you look at the depth of functionality, it’s clear that they are years or even decades away from functional parity.

Crowdsourcing requires a crowd.

Often in ERP, subsets of users need additional functionality that doesn’t come with the core products. Whether it’s warehouse management, ecommerce, shipping automation, or anything else that the ERP publisher doesn’t deem a broad enough need to develop themselves, there is no solution that can be all things to all businesses. That’s where third-party software publishers come in to play.

Third party publishers will develop these types of solutions to integrate with an ERP if they see that there is enough demand. With tens of thousands of users, Sage 100 is a great market for these software publishers.

Newer ERPs fail to attract a healthy community of these type of add-on solutions simply because they don’t have the numbers of users to make the investment worthwhile for the publishers, so your options will be limited.

Reinventing the wheel

Sage 100 users have a lot of options when it comes to getting help. Our Sage 100 customers can count on our experienced team to have the answers they need because we’ve been selling and implementing Sage for over 25 years. They can also turn to the online community Sage City, or even just do a Google search to find plenty of information out there on how to get the most out of Sage 100.

With a new ERP, chances are your reseller is new to the product, and they’re learning right alongside you. There’s little information to be found online, and no one with 25 years of experience.

Vrakas/Blum customers can have the best of both worlds!

If you’re already using Sage 100, you’ve probably invested a fair amount of time and money into implementing, learning, and customizing it to meet your needs. This effort has allowed you to focus on your business, rather than worrying about your software. With Vrakas Blum and Summit Hosting, you can easily move your existing Sage 100 system to the cloud without having to go through all the time and expense of implementing a new ERP that might not even be as good as what you have in the end.

And if you’re not already using Sage 100, and you’re looking to implement a new cloud ERP, don’t rule out Sage 100cloud!

Through our partnership with the Sage cloud hosting experts at Summit Hosting, our customers can reap the benefits of a reliable, proven ERP system with a rich ecosystem of add-on solutions and vast resources of knowledge at their fingertips or a phone call away AND enjoy the convenience of the cloud.

Sage 100 private cloud hosting is the answer.

With Sage 100 / Sage 100cloud private cloud hosting by Summit Hosting, you get:

• Access to Sage from anywhere, on any device.
• Your own dedicated server – no shared environments.
• Ownership of your own data.
• Relief from large capital expenditures and IT costs that go along with maintaining your own server.
• Daily backups.
• A secure, modern cloud environment that is optimized for Sage 100 by an experienced hosting provider.