Sage News and Discussion

Nice Sage Intelligence site - and a reason that we're going to need to be involved with this product. I do not think Sage is giving up this fight.

You know, after using the FRx converter and creating a new quarterly report and figuring out how to do a comparative Balance Sheet for 2 companies, I would have hoped I would start to come around. But no, but no. Still like it for non-financials and see it as too much work for the financials. Hoping the next upgrade is a big leap forward, because I'm sick of prettying up a million spreadsheets. There is just too much work to do manually in Excel after you start the report. (And then again, if I knew more Excel, maybe I wouldn't be so grouchy.)

Put yourself in the shoes of the vast majority of Excel users. Many only know the basic functionality of Excel. I could probably count on one hand the number of Excel power users in my client base. Still need to attend the rocket science academy to get basic SMI results.

I think our involvement will be to provide guidance as to the best solutions - to be able to talk intelligently. We'll be encountering Sage cross selling this solution and we may only come into the conversation at the 11th hour so the more we understand the better we can assist a customer. Certainly the cost to create the reports is going to be a huge factor that the customer may not consider.

Great point @WayneSchulz and @JeffSchwenk . That is why I am trying to get even stronger in excel since both SMI and BizNet are using excel... With that said that is why I am going to the BizNet Excelapalooza to learn BiaNet better but also get more excel classes that can help me in both products. Now I just have to work with SMI more. I think customers are use to us creating their reports for them and when Sage talked about Crystal they always made it sound like the customer could do it. I always give the customer the option of learning how to write their own reports but most ,not all just think it is easier for me to do it. I do think since it is in excel they will try to dabble in it first, but will still need our help for the majority of the reports they want. We will have to help them decided what prod will work the best for them and be the most cost effective. That is where our value and trust with the customer comes in and that is what we have over Sage.

I think @ShawnSlavin had the best observation when we talked at Summit and he shared that he took both BizNet and SMI and sent two people to create identical reports and had them give updates on how they progressed. From that experience he was able to very effectively communicate to the customer that the cost for BizNet was X and SMI was X times some higher factor. I will be interested to hear how the BizNet conference goes. I also think we'll need to be able to provide some concrete compare and contract information to customers who will undoubtedly be barraged by Sage salespeople pushing Sage Intelligence.

One segment of ERP users that I think is growing: those who are really, really interested in ""Business Intelligence."" Sage is (and should) pushing Alchemex forward forcefully. BizNet and others are pushing, too. I see a competitive advantage for partners who can clearly educate customers on their options. I think 90Minds could gain an edge by working together to develop some tools to help achieve this.

Ideas, @JerryNorman? We had a discussion about this internally this morning. We have one employee who has done the most work with SI (who is also very good at Crystal) and he said he just want's to see a 'successful' report, one where you know the data, what you want at the end, and the final report. (Granted, his emphasis was on financials.) Others feedback? Any raving fans (or at least rah-rah-ing fans)??

EASE OF USE! You can push the SMI boulder up the hill all you want but until it becomes easy and intuitive, it just isn't going anywhere no matter how much money is thrown down the rat hole. FRx took about 4 hours to get proficient. Once you are proficient, your enthusiasm sky rockets. Pivot tables are powerful Excel tools. The learning curve was a bit steeper, but now I use a PT almost daily. Why are the I-Anythings so popular? Because they are easy to use and quite powerful. Sometime this fall, I intend to have a session with a 90Minds SMI expert. Using the latest available tools, I hope to create a usable simple departmental P/L for a client who bought SMI 18 months ago. They are still dead in the water. Based on the posts I have read to date, I don't have a sense that this is possible yet.

So you're saying @JeffSchwenk there is no EASE OF USE with 'SMI' (how are we supposed to refer to it now?)??? Or am I misinterpreting your post?

Is SMI easy to use, learn and instruct? I look at it occasionally and just get glassy eyed. I read the posts here and I really don't see anything ready for prime time yet. Would SOMEONE prove me wrong? And if you can, I have a few reports that need written.

Thanks @JeffSchwenk for clarifying! I can't say it any more succinctly.

Full disclosure: Chuck is our guy with deep familiarity with SMI and Biznet. If I'm following the alchemex posts correctly, this next release is supposed be a Big Deal. Jeff, have you had a chance to evaluate the Beta?

I'd love to be wrong, but Biznet seems to be getting an upper hand here, is anyone selling more copies than Scott Hickman. Should we be looking at Renovofyi for financial reporting and be looking at other data analysis solutions for the non GL tables?

No. At this point in the SMI cycle, I don't think I could fight my way out of wet paper SMI bag. I just can't work up any enthusiasm for the product. I went to a couple sessions last month and I was embarrassed. And what was the official (or real reason) why the Biznet sessions were cancelled at Summit?

We might have to separate BI Financials and other BI reporting since Sage can't get the financial part easy to use. I do think I have heard that the BI reporting for the other modules is easier (I haven't found that yet -my eyes get glassy like @JeffSchwenk ) ??? @BethBowers ? So maybe we might use SMI for report and another product for Financials - not that I want to have to learn 2 products :( Something we all need to really start looking at and thinking about. My .02

@DianeRuth - yes, creating dashboards for the non-financials is super-easy. I did a demo at a User's Group meeting last year and it took about 10-15 minutes (under pressure with an audience, yet) to have 4 nice graphs on one spreadsheet (dynamic) that showed you top 10 Items, top 5 customer types, salesmen ratio, etc. These are all the result of pivot tables based on one selection of data from invoice history. Now would I use it for most of the stuff I do with Crystal? Probably not. For REPORTING - probably not. But for visual stuff - it's pretty good.

So for the Pivot Table lovers in the group, this isn't anything new either.

No, just easier because the files are already prelinked, kind of like using the View files in Crystal.

http://www.sageintelligence.com/ On an unrelated topic, why do companies think its 'cool' to have all these social media links, including facebook. Besides the ultimate geek, why the hell would anybody want the homepage of the SMI product on their facebook wall? I guess I can't come up with an answer which is why it has a whole 2 likes so far, probably both from the web developer who created the site. Just what people want to see in their facebook streams, some esoteric specialized business to business software solution that 99% of their facebook followers would care less about

Wayne, I guess you're not allowed to anwer Mark's question.........

I agree with Mark - for ERP type stuff marketed to end users - I'm not sure Facebook, etc makes a lot of sense. People are still feeling their way.