OREANDA-NEWS. March 30, 2009. Energy Consulting and Sage announced they have signed a partnership agreement to promote Sage ERP X3, Sage’s international enterprise resource planning software solution, to the Russian market, reported the press-centre of Energy Consulting.

As part of the arrangement Energy Consulting has become a Сertified Partner of Sage, one of the world’s leading suppliers of business management software and services, and obtained the right to distribute this software in the Russian Federation and the CIS states.

Sage ERP Х3 is designed for upper mid market companies, typically with between 150 and 2,500 employees, which not only need a robust local solution but also one which has comprehensive international functionality. Today more than 2,000 companies with over 70,000 users across 35 countries are already successfully using the fully web based solution. The system has been implemented in a number of sectors including the food industry, chemical industry, energy sector, electronics, instrumentation technologies, transport and logistics, machinery manufacturing and in educational and medical establishments. Energy Consulting will provide localization of the solution in cooperation with Sage. At the same time Sage will support the training of specialists and assist with maintenance and marketing.

Guy Berruyer, Member of the Board, The Sage Group plc and President for Sage Mainland Europe and Asia, expressed his pleasure at the partnership, “I am delighted to be working with Energy Consulting and together we form an excellent team. We share a commitment to providing our customers with an outstanding experience and the most relevant solutions to their business problems.”

Explaining the unique combination of local expertise and global reach which the partnership brings Mr Berruyer continues, “We both have expertise and experience of working with large SMEs. This means we completely understand the importance of delivering software and services tailored to local markets and this is why it is important for us to partner with a local expert such as Energy Consulting. At the same time we have global reach and knowledge and therefore can also fulfill our customers’ international needs. I look forward to a mutually beneficial relationship.”

Mikhail Ponomarev, General Director of Energy Consulting, underlined this opinion, “Our agreement with Sage is an exciting long-term project for us.  It is a great opportunity to expand the market where there is a demand for a robust and multifunctional yet simple, lean and flexible solution.  The Sage ERP X3 solution is time and cost-optimal for implementation and with its international functionality is a product that perfectly meets the requirements of medium-sized businesses which currently operate or who are seeking to expand into other countries.  Through our partnership with Sage we are able to expand the scope of the ERP solutions we offer and bring best practices and best world experience to our customers”.

Technology and Functionality
The Sage ERP X3 technology is based on scalable, multi-tier software architecture deployable for 10 to 1,500 concurrent users and has user-friendly interface and usability. The web based technology can be operated either in a client/server environment or from a simple internet browser. In this way, new subsidiaries, for example, can work productively via a secure internet link, without heavy investments in new IT infrastructure.

The open technology platform offers a multitude of collaboration and web service functionality and is designed as an ideal application platform. The open technology concept also means that there is absolutely no dependency between function and technology, the system works well with all popular operating systems such as Windows (2003, XP, Vista), UNIX (AIX, HP) and Linux (Red Hat) and is compatible with most mainstream databases such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL.

The software offers all the necessary functionality for professionally managing multinational enterprises, covering everything from production and distribution to sourcing, stock management, warehouse logistics and financial accounting. The solution contains a fully-integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system which helps companies to improve their customer relationships by providing a single, complete view of the customer to all users of the system.

This enables companies to be more effective in their marketing, more professionally manage their sales processes and better forecast future revenues. Additionally, Sage ERP X3 contains extensive business intelligence functions for analysing mission-critical KPIs based on the prevalent Crystal Reports technology. The capabilities for analytical reports and business process modeling are one of the main advantages of the ERP solution, providing corporate management with all the enterprise’s mission critical data, enabling them to plan and react to every business situation.

Flexible structure for international solutions
A further particularity of the Sage ERP Х3 platform is the MCS system (multi-company system). It has crucial importance for companies who predominantly operate on an international basis. Sage ERP X3 is currently running in 5 continents and supports the respective languages, currencies and legislation of many different countries including Germany, the USA, the UK, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Argentina and China.

The system processes multilingual data, such as invoice texts, articles and currency information, entered into the system from different international locations. At the same time, the software models all the country-specific parameters (such as legal or market-specific requirements) centrally within the solution and consolidates these details in a uniform system. In this way, for example, a company’s merchandize produced in China and temporarily stored in Germany can be sold via the system by an American colleague. In the process, the item’s local name can be used to describe the product in the country concerned. Also, the item can be managed with different calculations, pricelists, quantity units etc. at each location.

The use of a uniform, international software solution significantly smoothes collaboration between various international divisions thereby substantially reducing companies’ administrative and procedural workloads. With this global coverage, Sage ERP X3 is the ideal system for businesses wanting to develop their business internationally without having to invest in complex, cumbersome and costly software, which often characterise international solutions.

About Sage
The Sage Group plc is a leading global supplier of business management software solutions 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 5.8 million customers and more than 14,500 employees worldwide. We operate in over 26 countries covering the UK, Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia, India and China. For further information please visit www.sage.com.