Sage 50 Manufacturing has not benefited from a technical upgrade for many years
There are no planned upgrades for Sage 50 Manufacturing and there are fewer Sage Business Partners in the UK who support the application every year.
It is still possible to purchase additional users and for the moment at least there is a service pack that ensures Sage 50 Accounts and Sage 50 Manufacturing can share data to offer some level of integration.
As one of the longest service Sage 50 Manufacturing business partners in the UK, Qi Ltd remains committed to supporting users of this application and assisting businesses to optimise its use. The Preactor Graphical Planner is no longer going to remain part of the solution but Sage 50 Manufacturing can still support businesses who need MRP until Sage UK ceases to release the necessary service packs for integration with Sage 50 Accounts. There has been no announcement to date from Sage that this is on the horizon but taking into account the lack of development and the loss of Preactor – businesses will want to start planning longer term.
Upgrading from Sage 50 Manufacturing
Once the link between Sage 50 Accounts and Sage 50 Manufacturing is no longer going to be made available – it is likely that Sage UK will promote a migration to one of its alternative solutions such as Sage 200. The manufacturing module in Sage 200 was actually based on the functionality of Sage 50 Manufacturing so whilst there will be the assurance that businesses are moving to a solution that is still on the Sage UK roadmap for development, there are limited advantages found in Sage 200 over Sage 50 for manufacturers. The cost of a migration from Sage 50 to Sage 200 will not be – as many businesses expect that of a large ‘upgrade’. The cost will be comparable to a migration to many of Sage 200’s current competitors.
Qi have made it its business to understand the needs of manufacturers. We currently support over 100 businesses who use Sage and make, distribute and assemble ‘stuff’ for a living. Our recommendation to our customers is to get the very most they can from the application they have. Increasingly, however there are compelling reasons for businesses to migrate away from Sage 50 Manufacturing.
Why businesses are moving away from Sage 50 Manufacturing
It can be the need for multi site stock locations, tighter stock controls, bar code data collection, remote work requirements and the need for cloud manufacturing software, data issues and the need for improved functionality which would have to be answered by bespoke software to sit alongside Sage 50 Manufacturing but which can be met by Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Business Central and its extensions in a central, single database solution. Increasingly the common denominator for our customers is that they want a real time view of accounts, manufacturing and CRM in one place rather across a series of different applications.
The pricing model of Microsoft’s Software as a Service model for Dynamics 365 Business Central when off set against the costs of Sage 50 Accounts subscription, support costs for Sage 50 Manufacturing, CRM, Dropbox and hardware costs is returning a better return on investment than ever before. In using Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS and maximising Office 365 licences which businesses are already commonly paying for but dramatically underusing our customers are benefitting from robust, secure and effective data processing and storage that provides the information required to support quality control, profits and customer service.
Thought for the Day
Fail to plan then plan to fail. Your IT Strategy is a business cornerstone. If you ignore the indications that a key part of your IT Strategy is coming to the end of its natural life then you will be forced to make a reactive rather than a proactive decision when the time comes. Which would you prefer?