General Consultant Discussion

Have you started to push customers to move off FRX? If so, what product? I've been hesitant to make a strong recommendation because I fear the inevitable ""that's not the way that FRX worked"" and ""Before you made us move off FRX our reporting was .... "". In other words there's very limited upside for the first half dozen customers who you recommend to move off FRX --- until you become a pro at whatever you are recommending. And my gut feel is that this is a two horse race for most (aka typical) customers -- either SI for those who want a spreadsheet based solution or RenovoFYI for those who are in love with FRX and shattered that they might have to use something that works differently. So I've been telling customers that the day will come when FRX stops working, that day is not here yet, and most customers are waiting until it stops working before they move to another solution. The people who definitely have to move are the ones undergoing a new reporting project or who are brand new to Sage 100 and need custom financial reporting. But those people don't have much of a choice so I don't expect to hear a lot of ""why did you make us change"" which I'm afraid of with existing FRX users where the system is actually still working pretty well. I think that most of my customers are light enough users that RenovoFYI (who promises a high success of converting files at a fixed fee) is probably a solid choice. I have quite a few who once we created FRX reports they never modified them and just run the same ones month after month. What has been your experience?

I have a similar experience as most users wait until the last moment, when they FRx not longer will work before changing. I do have a few who have been proactive and requested a move. A year or two ago, after sitting through 3 or 4 Summit session on SI, I thought it was too complicated for most users (and me). To Sage's credit, they have poured a lot of resources into the product over the last few years. If you buy the Designer, creating financial statements is a breeze. The user interface is 1000 times better than 2 years ago and the learning curve is 1000 times less. Until recently, I directed the few users that wanted off of FRx to BizNet. I had BizNet perform the installation and the training, and I sat through both. It can be complicated and will definitely require (a lot of) experience to install and train professionally. Today, I recommend SI. The product is much improved and I have been successful implementing it. I believe it will benefit everyone if I can standardize the financial reporting package. I haven't tried RenovoFYI, and am always open to seeing what's available. I will check it out the next time the opportunity arises.

We have been recommending BizInsight and we and our clients have been very pleased with the product. We tried SMI when it was first released and it was a disaster. I hear that it has been greatly improved, but with the success we have experienced with BizInsight, and the fact that our clients are happy, we plan to stay with what works and is proven.

We like BizInsight (BizNet) also. I tell the clients that they can get SMI for free, but it doesn't work as well as BizNet. So in the lomg run, Biznet is less expensive. I have heard that SMI is starting to get their act together. But I have personally seen it yet.

I have taken a different approach to this. I break the recommendations out into 1) Excel based solutions a.Sage Intelligence b.BizNet Software c.F9 2)Non-Excel based solutions a.Renovofyi Financial Intelligence 3)Planning and budgeting solutions. a.Adaptive Planning b.Sage Budgeting and Planning By doing this I have removed the focus from an FRx replacement to a broader approach to planning, reporting and dashboard.

Kim, I like your approach. Have you evaluaged centage for budgeting and planning? It is apparently a smaller footprint than either of the 2 you mentioned.

I like the approach that Kim offers however my fear is that my customers would either do nothing or would ask me to recommend one. Also I find that it's a pain to support that deeply. There's really huge benefit to picking one or two and becoming an expert.

Jerry, I have evaluated the Budget Maestro products but found that I myself would rather use Excel. I wanted to be able to recommend a product that I would actually use. I actually only recommend Adaptive Planning but show other solutions for comparison.

Wayne, I should have mentioned that I show these but my main focus in to get them to look at Adaptive Planning. Adaptive Planning is a great planning and budgeting solution that will also handle all of their reporting. I have found that Adaptive Planning costs about 10-20% more than a reporting only solution. I have also become a partner with Adaptive Planning.

for financials/FRx replacement, Sage Intelligence is a pretty good fit now (not two years ago). It installs quickly and takes less than an hour to get people up and running. The whole process reminds me very much of the old FRx process - as far as install and training. You can copy and paste your FRx row formats over (and just change the formulas using the built-in excel functions) and the trees are exactly the same as FRx. It's $660 to get the designer. There is nothing else that comes close - cost or ease-or use/ease-of install. If you have multiple companies, it's somewhere around 1660 for the connector and designer. You can add report viewer licenses that allow report generation (similar to FRx launcher/viewers). Have taken many clients from FRx to SI and with the addition of the excel add-in, I don't think there is one customer that doesn't like it better than FRx. You can take your 10-20 FRx reports, throw them into different excel tabs, and generate one report with all of the financials, typically just as fast or faster than running one of the 20 FRx reports.

We are having good luck with SI. Do i remember correctly that the Connector and Designer components will just be part of the product as of the 2014 release?

We are recommending RenovoFYI only for customers that have a large and/or complex reporting package that was developed in FRx. This should result in savings, even including the cost of the RenovoFYI package. We already had a substantial number of customers using F9, and we continue to recommend this for those that only need to customize financials. For the remainder, we recommend SI, citing the fact that it is included with Sage 100 and is the Sage solution for both financials and BI reporting. This is working out well for those customers.

My opinion is Biznet. The key is with Biznet you can work with many ERP systems. There's alot of opportunity out there in report writing. With SI, you continue your Sage exclusivity and given the changing face of ERP why invest in a solution that keeps yo locked into one vendor. A vendor that by any measure is not #1 in the industry and definitely not moving toward that direction. It also means you are giving your clients one more reason to stay locked into Sage only options when Sage finally either pulls the plug on 100 or it becomes so non-competitive that clients do that for you.

And if you as a VAR realize you need to pick up another solution, its one less report writer you and/or your staff need to learn. With Biznet, I can have one consultant do report writing for 100, Epicor, and Business One.