Business software vendor Sage North America has launched several new mobile solutions designed to help businesses innovate in the field, and provide new revenue streams for channel partners.
The solutions are delivered through the new Sage Data Cloud, and are available for download now through Apple iTunes. The solutions include Sage Mobile Sales and Sage Mobile Service. Another new mobile solution, Sage Billing and Payment, is a browser-based web.
According to Sage, mobility is a key part of its connected services strategy, allowing businesses to leverage their investment in on-premises software by extending those solutions to be accessible on local devices. The vendor added it is also focused on responsive design to allow for little to no learning curve for employees accessing Sage applications across devices and platforms.
Related News
“Sage is on a mission to provide the most purposefully built mobile solutions on the market,” said Himanshu Palsule, CTO and head of product strategy at Sage North America, in a statement. “We’ve developed our solutions to deliver maximum value for each person. We didn’t want to just create another mobile version of our existing software; instead, we intentionally took advantage of the mobile platform to streamline processes and create a competitive advantage for businesses using Sage mobile applications and services in the field.
Sage Mobile Sales is a native iPad application providing manufacturers, distributors and retailers all information to make a positive impression and close bigger sales. Sage Mobile Service allows field service technicians to be more efficient and flexible in the field. And Sage Billing and Payment is designed to offer a cost-effective way to improve the invoicing cycle.
For partners, Sage said mobile solutions offer an easy revenue stream with subscription-based applications, little implementation time, and happier customers with net promoter score research showing customers want to procure their solutions from a single software provider.
These types of mobile applications are useful, and congratulations to Sage for finally coming up with some. In fact, the ones they have created are rather well done. However this is too little too late. Old school vendors are on a life-extension mission for their 30+ year old products but the patient is already on life-support. Adding bionic-limbs to a wasted body will do little to revive it.
The on-premise generation of products from these vendors was followed in the early 2000s by FIRST GENERATION CLOUD offerings from vendors like Netsuite, Intacct and Financial Force. Being cloud and browser based they could be used from anywhere at any time from a laptop. When tablets and smartphones arrived these applications had to be retrofitted by making a limited number of functions available on these devices.
Today, this approach is also yesterday’s news. Modern ERP systems like VersAccounts http://www.versaccounts.com are built for the MOBILE CLOUD, not just the cloud. They are designed from the ground up to run in their entirety on all platforms, making absolutely no assumption as to where they will be used.