Sage Products gets New Names.

Sage Re-Branding

Sage is rebranding most products in its portfolio to be consistent with their naming conventions worldwide. However, there may be some confusion as, for example, Sage has a product in the UK called Sage 100 ERP and what we know as MAS 90 in US today will become Sage 100. The two products are completely different but Sage’s hope is that they are different customer sets and the confusion will be minimal….

We in Asia need not be concern about the confusion as we have only one (1) product that is Sage Accpac name change.

Sage ERP Accpac becomes Sage 300 ERP

Old Name                                                                   New Name
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Sage ERP Accpac 100                                    Sage 300 Standard ERP

Sage ERP Accpac 200                                    Sage 300 Advanced ERP

Sage ERP Accpac 500                                    Sage 300 Premium ERP

The other product will be Sage ERP X3, newly introduced to our market.

This rebranding shouldn’t have much effect on our clients, but clearly you may be surprised to see these new names and new terms. Please call us if you have any questions about this.
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Sage Asia Premier Partner Award for 2011.

Sage Asia Premier Partner Award for 2011.

We want to thank our valued customers for your invaluable support over the years. We are honored to announce that we have been awarded the Sage Asia Premier Partner 2011.

The award was given out during the Sage Vision 2011 conference held in Royal Orchid Sheraton, Bangkok, which was attended by business partners from all over Asia

Thank you again for your support and look forward to a prosperous year as we go into the year of the 2012!

Boss Day on October 17

I guess that very few people knows that there is a "Boss Day". They will know about  "Secretary day" but Boss Day, unheard off until i read in The Starpaper this evening. I guess that bosses are not very popular judging from the Boss jokes that is circulating around. :)

Remember this poem when we used to send around and still do when we were not yet become boss? Have a good laugh!! See below.

Differences Between You and Your Boss

When you take a long time, you're slow.
When your boss takes a long time, he's thorough.
When you don't do it, you're lazy.
When your boss doesn't do it, he's too busy.
When you make a mistake, you're an idiot.
When your boss makes a mistake, he's only human.
When doing something without being told, you're overstepping your authority.
When your boss does the same thing, that's initiative.
When you take a stand, you're being bull-headed.
When your boss does it, he's being firm.
When you overlooked a rule of etiquette, you're being rude.
When your boss skips a few rules, he's being original.
When you please your boss, you're apple polishing.
When your boss pleases his boss, he's being co-operative.
When you're out of the office, you're wandering around.
When your boss is out of the office, he's on business.
When you're on a day off sick, you're always sick.
When your boss is a day off sick, he must be very ill.
When you apply for leave, you must be going for an interview.
When your boss applies for leave, it's because he's overworked
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http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=%2F2011%2F10%2F16%2Fnation%2F9707418&sec=nation

Hyundai Construction Equipment moves from Excel to new CRM

Hyundai Construction Equipment moves from Excel to new CRM that integrates to their Sage ERP Accpac

Construction company Hyundai Construction Equipment Australia (HCEA) has moved from using Excel spreadsheets for client management to implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Systems Manager, Matt Golby, said the upgrade is the first step in HECA’s move to the Cloud, and that it was necessary after staff communication became problematic.

“The CRM is the first tool that we’ve put in through the net and the rest is systems based and driven back through the internet… Cloud services will provide a more user friendly platform for us,” he said.

“With this CRM portal we’re using, it provides us with flexibility, and [beforehand] it was very stagnant because we couldn’t communicate back to our management team.”

After informally looking at a few companies, Golby said he chose Sage as a vendor because of HECA’s use of the vendor's ERP Accpac.

“We didn’t get anyone else involved, but we did have a look with other offerings like Salesforce and SAP, but to go down that path we probably would have changed our whole environment and systems,” he said.

“Sage was a natural progression for us [because of] the cost benefits we incurred and [because] the... package itself works well.”

Six ways to get your employees to use CRM software

With some 70 staff in Australia and a dealer network extending to Papua New Guinea, the rollout at HECA was fairly slow, Golby said.

“We took baby steps with this and... we made sure that it was an easy transition for staff so they could go from an Excel environment to more of a systems environment that could integrate between departments,” he said.

Next on Golby’s agenda is a continued effort to embrace mobility, with HECA now looking at implementing a tablet strategy.

“The next step for us is to look at tablets between now and when Sage CRM provides services in a tablet form,” he said. “We’re looking at using iPads and taking that next step and... the business is looking at taking its next step in upgrades.”

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/403394/hyundai_construction_equipment_moves_from_excel_new_crm/

Steve Job - A passing of a Legend

A Tribute Artwork to Steve Job that has becomes Viral

This is a terrific article about Jobs. A long interview last year with Sculley: http://www.cultofmac.com/63295/john-sculley-on-steve-jobs-the-full-interview-transcript/
He emphasizes how much Jobs was a DESIGNER. Design is what mattered to him. This one of several passages that really struck me:

"The thing that separated Steve Jobs from other people like Bill Gates — Bill was brilliant too — but Bill was never interested in great taste. He was always interested in being able to dominate a market. He would put out whatever he had to put out there to own that space. Steve would never do that. Steve believed in perfection. Steve was willing to take extraordinary chances in trying new product areas but it was always from the vantage point of being a designer."

The unusual mix of design talent with a personality that could "warp reality" around people he was wooing, and also be stubborn as hell is what made him the force he was.

It also helped that made a mountain of money early, so that he could keep control longer than most entrepreneurs.

I've read a lot of retrospectives on Jobs today. I think it's relevant to what WE want to do with our Sage-related business. Jobs and Gates will always be linked together, but I suspect that Jobs will be remembered for his industry influence long past Gates. And yet Gates built a far larger business. I suspect that Gates will ultimately be remembered, 100 years from now, much as Carnegie is remembered: for his impact on philanthropy.

From the Sculley interview:

"Steve’s point of reference was Sony at the time [early 80's]. He really wanted to be Sony. He didn’t want to be IBM. He didn’t want to be Microsoft. He wanted to be Sony.

... It was always an end-to-end system with Steve. He was not a designer but a great systems thinker. That is something you don’t see with other companies."

Which leads me to the strategy question I'm pondering now: what sort of firm would SmartBridge Partners be if we focused much, much more on the final user experience, the DESIGN experience? I am a "recovering engineer" and this is hard ...

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Jerry Norman : CEO at SmartBridge Partners, A Sage Partner.
Comapny Website : http://www.smartbridgepartners.com/