Johannesburg, 09 Nov 2011
Alchemex today announced the launch of Sage PFW ERP Intelligence, an integrated Microsoft Excel-based business intelligence solution for Sage PFW ERP. Sage PFW ERP Intelligence allows users to spend more time focusing on analysis and interpretation, and less time pulling the data together.
Jose Soeiro, Project Manager at Alchemex, says: “We are really excited with our first release of Sage PFW ERP Intelligence, and if early feedback from partners is anything to go by, then so will users of Sage PFW ERP be. Driving informed decision-making and instant visibility into your data, six out-the-box report templates delivered into the familiar environment of Microsoft Excel, will provide an immediate return on investment.”
Sage PFW ERP Intelligence (Intelligence) is a flexible reporting tool that allows users to access ready-to-use report templates or build reports in the way that suits them best. The project was embarked upon by Sage North America primarily to ensure that a quality alternative was available to fill the financial reporting gap left by Microsoft's discontinuation of FRx, but soon extended beyond financial reporting to addressing customers' needs for ready-to-use Excel-based report templates for operational reporting and management dashboards for real-time summaries of key business indicators.
Intelligence boasts a highly valuable list of benefits, allowing users to: quickly identify and respond to trends using sophisticated, customisable dashboards; empower staff with timely, meaningful information and trend reports; efficiently create in-depth reports; view, manipulate, analyse and distribute reports in a familiar Excel format; extract up-to-the-minute, high-level summaries, account groupings, or detailed transactions; effortlessly consolidate data from multiple companies, divisions, and even unrelated databases; and minimise manual, repetitive work in Excel.
According to Jennifer Schwarz, Product Manager at Sage: “Reporting is always an area we receive many requests about from our customer base. It's so important to stay on top of your business and watch for those indicators that can help you save or earn more revenue, especially in today's economy. With the integration of Sage Intelligence with Sage PFW ERP, our customers now have the ability to quickly and easily look at their entire business from one place. It's important to know that Sage Intelligence looks at all modules in Sage PFW ERP, not simply the General Ledger. We love that it uses Excel, which helps cut down the learning curve for our customers, and it means they can learn to create and maintain report templates on their own.”
The features of Intelligence include:
* Access to business-critical information: Unifying data from different data sources into one solution creates a true overall view of your business, which is vital to growth and profitability.
* Complex reporting made easy: Save time and get more accurate reports by eliminating redundant data entry efforts through direct integration with Sage PFW ERP. By pulling information already in the ERP system, Intelligence automatically knows fiscal periods, chart of accounts, detailed transactions, and various types of balances.
* Insightful decision-making: The Dashboard Analysis report provides a one-page summary of key business information. View information both textually and graphically to help with daily and long-term planning, ultimately providing a significant competitive advantage.
* Customised reporting: Executives and managers across the company can obtain customised reports in a format that suits them.
* Multi company capabilities: The Connector module allows reports to be created from multiple Sage PFW ERP company databases, or any ODBC-compliant data source from the Sage ecosystem, such as Sage Abra HRMS, or third-party solutions.
* Secure business integrity: Comprehensive security at variable levels protects reports from unauthorised access or manipulation.
Stephen Coull, Alchemex Director of Mid-Market Integrations, is enthusiastic about the launch of Sage PFW ERP Intelligence, the latest in a list of North American integrations. He says: “Business intelligence is key in driving organisational excellence; however, traditionally it has only been available to large businesses with larger budgets. Having achieved success in South Africa via integrated business intelligence software for Softline Pastel, Softline Accpac and Softline VIP, we have subsequently, over the last three years, integrated our software with a number of Sage accounting and ERP packages in North America. Sage ERP Accpac Intelligence, Sage ERP MAS Intelligence, Sage Simply Accounting Intelligence, Sage Peachtree Business Intelligence, and now Sage PFW ERP Intelligence, are providing decision-makers in the SMME market with meaningful 'Data-Out' in the familiar interface of Excel and with effortless integration to their ERP systems.”
Alchemex now boasts a user base of over 25 000 worldwide.
To support the launch of the Excel-based BI product, free 'Discovering Excel' and Sage PFW ERP Intelligence training is available online on the Sage University. Customers can also purchase 'Excel on Steroids' training, which are specialised Excel reporting workshops developed by Alchemex. Coull says: “We believe in delivering a 'whole product' to the market. We support business partners and customers with free webinars, provide a host of information via our BI community groups, and encourage users to complete product and Excel training to maximise their investment in our software. Accomplished Excel users can effectively view, manipulate, analyse and distribute the data, allowing for improved collaboration and quicker, more meaningful decision-making across the business.”
More information on Sage PFW ERP Intelligence can be found at http://www.sagepfw.com/intelligence/.
Share