IMGCAP(1)]This past week certainly had its share of vendor news, from executive hires to new or updated offerings, but none was more noteworthy than the Sage North America sell-off of three members of its product line.
It's not often I focus on one particular vendor, but given the gravity of Sage's latest move I think it demands some analysis.
First off, for those of you that didn't catch the news for some reason late last week Sage made a move to
While two of the three core "non-core" product groups are now gone, one is left to wonder just when or if Construction/Real Estate (formerly the Timberline and Master Builder line) will be next. I'd have to say with confidence this would be the case and probably even before the next Summit meeting in July. Then what of other so-called "non-core" product lines like Fixed Assets (FAS)? Again, that remains to be seen though just today Sage announced enhancements to that product offering as well with the
So maybe it wasn't so much the re-branding of all of its products that is the most significant move for Sage, but the fact that it realizes in order to compete in what has become a very crowded field when it comes to accounting, ERP and CRM, it must innovate and focus -- yes, remember 'focus' those of you who attended Summit 2012, it was the most notable term Houillon stated for a number of reasons. That focus will of course be on continued rebranding efforts, but also on making sure the aforementioned product lines can indeed compete and maybe even lead one day so overall, even though it may be a loss on the books, the sell-off was a good move if that focus is to happen.
As I mentioned, this week was not all about Sage and I would like to give a quick recap of some of the other goings on over the past several days:
The executive-level hiring at Acumatica clearly does not seem to stop as the cloud and hosted ERP product maker continue to
Xero is also back adding to its offerings, this week it announced that its users can now do
Also on the mobile front, Intuit brought its
In fact, I would go so far as to say its more noteworthy these days if you have a Web-based business application or service and you do Not have a mobile offering. I've said it before and it bears repeating, if you are in this space and you do not have a mobile strategy then what exactly Is your strategy? ERP may take some time, as will tax and some accounting but it's getting there and anything else you can think of for back office is going mobile because, well, so are the people who are using them, simple as. Sure, the devices you are accessing the data or applications from may change but I'd be surprised to see too much more investment made in improving desktop-based products. That's my take.