Sage UK has announced the acquisition of George Stamford Limited, the holding company of Advanced PayPoint Solutions (APS), a developer of specialist retail software, for an undisclosed sum.
Through this acquisition, Sage will obtain a market-leading EPOS product, PayPoint that integrates point of sale systems with Sage's accounting software products.
This acquisition marks Sage's entry into the specialist retail software market and represents another step in Sage's strategy of providing industry-specific (vertical) market software to supplement its core accounting and business management software products.
According to research conducted by Sage, 80% of UK retail businesses manually reconcile till receipts with their financial software. By providing customers with software that integrates the EPOS system with the back-office accounting system, Sage will be able to increase efficiency, improve resilience and provide improved management information for retailers.
Sage estimates the retail sector in the UK comprises over 230 000 businesses with many of these already using Sage accounting products.
PayPoint is used by small and medium-sized retailers with between one and 80 outlets such as department stores and specialist retail and leisure businesses, many of which already use Sage Line 50, Line 100, MMS, Sage Line 200 and Line 500 products. As an authorised development partner of Sage for four years, the PayPoint system is already integrated with Sage's financial software products enabling customers to take advantage of the benefits immediately.
PayPoint EPOS consists of PayPoint till application, LaunchPad till manager, a powerful Macro language and a number of PayPort modules to enable the link with different accounting systems.
As well as linking the back-office financial systems to the till, the Advanced PayPoint software will enable Sage retail customers to integrate a Chip & PIN machine into their existing EPOS system in preparation for the new Chip & PIN regulations due to become effective on 1 January 2005.
Gavin May, Sage's business development director, commented: "If the 80% of Sage's retail customers who manually reconcile till data with their accounting system saved one hour a day by implementing an integrated EPOS system, each business would save themselves the equivalent of 30 working days a year. This is a huge benefit to any business but especially to those businesses with a single owner manager."
May added: "Sage's goal with all its products is to improve the efficiency of its customers' businesses. APS has over 12 years' experience in doing just that in the retail sector. Our aim with this acquisition is to bring those benefits not just to the entire Sage retail customer base but to a significant proportion of UK retail businesses."
For more information on Sage Enterprise Solutions, visit www.sageafrica.com.
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