Sage Announces its Vision for Growth for Sage ERP X3

PARIS, May 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

- New Initiatives and Updates to Sage's Leading Mid-market ERP Solution, Sage ERP X3, Announced Today by the Sage Leadership Team

The Sage Group plc (LSE: SGE) (http://www.sage.com/), a leading business management software provider, today held a global online conference, Modernizing ERP - A Vision for Growth, to reinforce its strategy for Sage ERP X3 (http://www.sageerpx3.com/), its leading ERP solution for the midmarket. Guy Berruyer (http://www.sageerpx3.com/eng/page/biographie11), Sage's chief executive, outlined his strategic plan for Sage's growth in the upper mid-market and reaffirmed Sage's commitment to Sage ERP X3 as its flagship global ERP solution. New customers, partners and an enhanced solution have helped Sage ERP X3 achieve double digit revenue growth. Details were also provided on how Sage ERP X3 will maintain this momentum by providing an enhanced customer experience through new initiatives such as a global support service, global partner program and global certification for consultants (http://www.sageerpx3.com/eng/press_release/pr_erpx3_services/eng) and business partners.

Berruyer highlighted Sage ERP X3's strong foundation, focusing on its rapid progress since the introduction of version 6 in January 2010. Sage's strategy and investment in Sage ERP X3 is delivering results and the business now boasts an ecosystem of more than 3,000 customers and 200 business partners worldwide. He stated, "We have a significant opportunity to grow through upgrading existing customers as they themselves grow. Sage ERP X3 is a very good example of this, where it has expanded our addressable market and brought another type of customer into the Sage business, those being mid-market customers that operate on a multinational basis."

He went on to describe how Sage's web-based applications and connected services offerings are bringing great productivity improvements, flexibility and cost-effectiveness to its customers: "Our strategy is not to re-write our existing mid-market applications for the web. Instead we are making available hosted or cloud-based versions of many of our existing on-premise solutions that allow customers to take advantage of some of the benefits of SaaS solutions, such as subscription pricing and no hardware management."

Christophe Letellier (http://www.sageerpx3.com/eng/page/biographie11), general manager, Sage ERP X3 Worldwide, provided further detail around Sage ERP X3's progress in the various markets - Europe, North America, Asia Pacific and Africa - also announcing a number of new global initiatives aimed at providing a high quality and consistent customer experience. These include a premium global support service, a standardized methodology for Sage ERP X3 multi-country deployments and a global certification for consultants (http://www.sageerpx3.com/eng/press_release/pr_erpx3_services/eng) and business partners worldwide.

Letellier also outlined the importance of Sage's partner ecosystem to the growth of Sage ERP X3's market with the announcement of a comprehensive new partner program (http://www.sageerpx3.com/partners). Responding to demand from its customer community, the partner recruitment and certification initiatives aim to foster innovation and strengthen Sage ERP X3's mid-market presence through close collaboration and innovation on industry-based offerings.

The recruitment drive covers reseller partners, independent software vendors, system integrators, consultants and developers, as well as ISV's wishing to develop third party solutions and native SAFE X3 ( http://www.sageerpx3.com/eng/page/technology/) solutions - SAFE X3 stands for the Sage ERP X3 technology platform and embedded development environment (IDE). All will benefit from new revenue opportunities offered through partnership with Sage on a global level.

Finally, Emmanuel Obadia (http://www.sageerpx3.com/eng/page/biographie11) , senior vice president Sage ERP X3, focused on Sage ERP X3 Version 6.2 (http://www.sageerpx3.com/eng/press_release/pr_erpx3_product/eng) and its updated features including major announcements on the new functionality brought about by important strategic partnerships. These include the addition of Version One's Electronic Document Management solution ( http://www.sageerpx3.com/eng/press_release/pr_erpx3_versionone/eng), Talend's data exchange (ETL) (http://www.sageerpx3.com/eng/press_release/pr_talend/eng ) solution, the availability of Sage Enterprise Webtop TM jointly developed with Netvibes (http://business.netvibes.com/), and the combined Sage and Oracle developments for further integration of Oracle Database 11g into Sage ERP X3 (http://www.sageerpx3.com/eng/press_release/pr_erpx3_oracle/eng).

In addition, Obadia announced the new Industry Solutions Program (http://www.sageerpx3.com/eng/press_release/pr_erpx3_industry/eng), aimed at the process and discrete manufacturing, services and distribution sectors with the immediate availability of the first Industry Solutions for Services module Project and Job Costing.

For more information on the announcements made at the Sage ERP X3 Global Conference, or to watch a recorded version, please visit http://www.sageerpx3.com.

Notes to Editors

About The Sage Group plc

The Sage Group plc is a leading global supplier of business management software and related products and services, principally for small to medium-sized enterprises. Formed in 1981, Sage was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1989. Sage has more than 6 million customers and 13,600 employees worldwide. We operate in over 24 countries covering the UK, Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia, India and China. For further information please visit http://www.sage.com.

About Sage ERP X3 (http://www.sageerpx3.com)

Sage ERP X3 is a dedicated solution for mid-market and larger companies with international demands enables its clients to transform and perform through technologies. Over 3,000 customers representing 165,000 users worldwide already chose Sage ERP X3 because it is easy to use, fast to deploy and cost effective. For more than 10 years Sage ERP X3 has been a proven and comprehensive ERP solution addressing mid-market company's specific requirements and challenges in various industries from manufacturing, services to distribution and many more. Sage ERP X3 is present in 53 countries and counts a network of more than 1,500 Sage professionals and 200 partners in its ecosystem.

SOURCE Sage