Johannesburg, 23 Jun 2010
Alchemex today announced the successful launch of Simply Accounting Intelligence, an integrated Excel-based business intelligence solution for Simply Accounting by Sage, powered by Alchemex.
Simply Accounting, the market-leader in accounting software for small businesses in Canada, is Alchemex's second Sage North American OEM partner to launch a BI solution powered by the South African based software vendor.
Currently in Vancouver for the product launch, Charles Teversham, Alchemex Integrations Director for Small Business, says: “It appears that BI in Excel for SMEs is pressing all the right buttons in North America, given the excellent response from Sage OEM partners, business partners and end-users to our simple and affordable Excel-based BI solutions.
“This is in line with Gartner analysts' and BI managers' admittance at Gartner's annual Business Intelligence Summit, in Las Vegas, in April, that efforts to stop Excel BI use were bound to fail and that the use of Excel as a BI tool is inevitable. Alchemex's longstanding and very successful partnerships with Softline Pastel and Softline VIP have entrenched the use of 'BI in Excel' in South Africa via Pastel's Business Intelligence Centre and VIP Payroll's Business Intelligence Manager. Now the OEM agreement signed with Sage North America in November 2009 is set to proliferate the use of Alchemex software globally.”
Alchemex's first step into the North American market was to develop Sage Accpac ERP Intelligence, released worldwide in December 2009, which offers an integrated BI solution for Sage Accpac ERP users in the mid-tier space. At the Sage Insights Conference, in May, held in Denver, Colorado, USA, Alchemex team members presented Sage Intelligence to Sage Business partners at the Sage Tradeshow corporate booth and facilitated a number of BI sessions and demos.
Alchemex Integrations Director for Mid-Market, Stephen Coull, believes: “The integrated Alchemex BI solution addresses the number one pain point of poor and inflexible reporting as voted by users of Accpac and also differentiates Accpac from its competitors as it ships with a single user licence offering immediate value out of the box at no cost. In fact, Intelligence was voted at the Sage Insights Conference as the number one module that would facilitate cross- and up-sell opportunities for business partners.”
Says Gary Boddington, Alchemex CEO: “It was very exciting for our team to bring all of our experience in BI for SMEs to the mid-market business partners in North America. Judging by the response we have had, I think our message resonated broadly across all the platforms we are integrating with. The advanced Excel sessions were presented to crowded venues, and traffic at the booth showed a marked increase after the Opportunity Ahead sessions. We are currently fielding a flood of queries as a result of the positive momentum that is being built.”
Work is currently under way in the Alchemex corridors on MAS Intelligence, integrated BI solutions for Sage MAS 90/200 and Sage MAS 500. Teversham says: “Our committed Alchemex team has worked exceptionally well with the professional Simply Accounting team to deliver another innovative 'BI in Excel' software product powered by Alchemex. We are expecting this product to successfully address reporting issues for small businesses in North America, while the Accpac and MAS Intelligence products will address the BI needs of the mid-market, thereby significantly expanding our global reach in the SME space.”
With the overwhelming response received at Sage Insights 2010, and two successful North American OEM integrations to date, the Alchemex executive are having to prioritise further integration requests, something that Boddington believes “is the result of BI truly becoming mainstream for all businesses - no longer just the preserve of enterprise-sized organisations. For many years as we developed our model, there were sceptics about the relevance of BI for SMEs or the role of Excel in BI for a business. The market has matured and our products, people and processes are ready for the tornado.”
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