Why are we Stuck on Sage?  And What are the best Sage Alternatives?

As a reseller of NetSuite ERP software, the financial management software we come up against most often is Sage.    It’s the software package most likely to be already installed in an organisation.  It is loved and hated in equal measure.

When we win Financial Software (or ERP) clients, it’s often because the customer hates it and wants a Sage alternative.  When we lose CRM or Project Management software business it’s often because the financial manager won’t let go of Sage.

It’s a shame really because the benefits of running your whole business from one system are well defined and undisputed.

Love/Hate

By their own admission, almost 50% of the UK’s businesses use Sage software.  Perhaps it’s unsurprising that we come across this love/hate relationship.

Love:  You know to use it.  It performs well overall.  It’s relatively simple to use.  You were weaned on it.

Hate:  Business intelligence isn’t easy to interrogate.  It’s hard to correct a mistake.  Cell formatting…Urgh!  And I bet you hate, hate, hate the price and upgrade costs.

When a brand is so well established it becomes the de facto supplier across the entire nation, it must be easy, for both brand and customer, to become complacent.

Sage have never really got behind cloud.  Sage Live had a spluttering launch and is still playing catch up to the likes of Xero.   The product isn’t being developed fast enough.  Meanwhile some versions of the Sage software, like Sage 100, are no longer supported.  It’s not surprising some customers feel they are caught by the short and curlies.

Sage Alternatives

Whilst financial software is much of a muchness – it all needs to do the same kind of stuff – there are plenty of great alternatives to Sage in the market place.  It’s the ease with which you can transact and the benefits to your other departments which make cloud based ERP alternatives really stand out.

If you can run your whole business off a unified system you minimise useless, secondary data entry.  When every sale processed, invoice paid, bill received is automatically updated live on your system you get much better visibility of business performance.    A reduction in errors means cleaner, healthier data and business.

NetSuite have published a handy “Sage Switch Guide” to help you understand the warning signs that you’ve outgrown your Sage solution and get you back on the right track.

But, if you’re not interested in learning more about the software which has grown almost 42% in the last year by comparison to Sage’s 0.9%; or if you don’t want your financial management system to be the one voted best in the SIIA CODiE in 2015 software awards; then just keep doing what you’re doing.

Written by Emma Stewart – Sales & Marketing Director and NetSuite Evangelist at Cofficient Ltd

We provide very smart software for very smart businesses.  To find out more about alternatives to Sage just get in touch