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Sage MMS Q&A: David Karlin, Sage Mid Market Division

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25th Dec 2005
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As Sage launches a new version of Sage MMS, the managing director of Sage's Mid Market Division, David Karlin, explains the strategy behind his flagship product.

What position does Sage MMS hold within Sage's product portfolio?
In the UK, Sage sees three market levels for its accounting products. Sage Instant and Line 50 are for small businesses, who view the software as a personal productivity tool for their accounts.

If you rely on someone serious to put in a solution for you, you're mid-market. Companies with their own IT departments who handle deployment and want very fine control over the business processes typically use Line 200 and 500. If you're thinking about replacing your existing system and can accept business processes that meet the majority of your needs but can be tailored to suit, MMS is the product for you.

What is the relationship between Sage MMS and Line 100?
We've done a complete technology renewal in MMS and in the fullness of time MMS will succeed Line 100. However Line 100 has a massive community of third party developers who have created a whole support infrastructure around it. We are keeping faith with those people by keeping the product available and adding some enhancements, but MMS remains the main thrust of our mid-market product development. MMS is the future, but Line 100 retains its place and will continue to do so until MMS enjoys the vertical market support that Line 100 has today.

What is the philosophy behind the development of Sage MMS?
Sage MMS is there to support grown-up business processes - perhaps for the first time. Our whole approach is based on creating the best processes. Then we provide a first class user interface that makes it easy for people to understand and implement to provide the smoothest possible transition from their old system.

A lot of the success we've had so far with Sage MMS is because we've been unbelievably draconian about getting this stuff right.

What kind of technology enhancements have you made within Sage MMS version 2?
Our attitude is that technology is the servant, not the master. The new technology enables us to provide features that allow people to work the way they want. For example, we've put in a full Excel library of reporting functions that gives users access to most of the data within the product. Excel is the data presentation tool people feel most comfortable with - it's what users want.

Other big features include batch and serial number tracking. That's a very important feature that wasn't in version 1, but by taking a little extra time we have made a particularly strong implementation.

We've also taken the transaction email system that has been in Sage Line 50 and put it into MMS. It uses BASDA's eBIS-XML standard for financial documentation, which is making headway as the standard means of electronic trading in the future.

The fourth large thing we've tackled is the way we view the nominal ledger. We've created a new user interface that gives you a tree view of the nominal ledger hierarchy so you can drill down into the transactions under any code. If Excel is a reporting enhancement, this is an enquiry enhancement.

As you develop software, you invariably discover that you've missed things out. We get a steady stream of suggestions from our customers, and we're trying to tackle them really, really quickly. For example, when you input a sales order and pick an item, you want to see how much is in stock. As a result, we now have the amount of stock available on a drop down.

What are the main things you are working on for the next release of Sage MMS?
In a few months' time, we will have a Bill of Materials module in version 2.1. That's dear to my heart because I come from a manufacturing background. I've tried to put everything I knew about running a manufacturing company into the software so people can use it without having to go through all the problems I experienced.

Project costing is another key area. That will become available in version 3. And David Carter will be pleased that we will implement open period accounting in version 3. Technically, the most important thing we're going to do for version 3 is move the whole thing over to SQL Server.

What kind of application support is MMS getting from third party developers?
Part of the reason for the move to SQL Server is in response to our partners, because it will allow them to use things like Analysis Services and "snapshot" back-ups.

We're putting put a great deal of effort in to make Sage MMS "upgrade safe" - so you can modify our data structures and add scripts in such a way that when we produce the next release, the customisations will still work.

The third party community is very important to us. They have a lot of code invested in Line 100 and it's not straightforward for them to migrate to a new code base. But that process is underway and we're beginning to see significant applications written for MMS. Often it's the minor stuff around the edges - like giving them access to the spool queue to manipulate print items - that can really make a difference to these guys.

Sage recently created a new Mid-Market Division. What difference will the new organisational structure make to how MMS is developed and rolled out to customers?
There won't be much difference in how we develop the product, but the roll-out will definitely change. We've divided the sales and marketing operation up by vertical sector rather than by product. Sales and marketing are tasked with knowing certain kinds of customer to enable them to sell whatever is right for that kind of business.

We can turn our portfolio of different products to our advantage by genuinely providing choice - but it's also important to speak to customers in one voice. The organisation that understands the different sectors in the marketplace and speaks to customers in terms they understand will be in the right place to offer the right product.

With Sage MMS, we won over 500 customers for the product within a year - so I think we're beginning to get the focus right.

SageFor more information about Sage MMS, visit the developer's information page on AccountingWEB.

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