Sage wants Africa, Middle East to leverage cloud solutions

Sage has unveiled new products and features that will take Africa and Middle East’s business builders and entrepreneurs closer to a world where administration is invisible.

According to Anton van Heerden, Sage Managing Director and Executive Vice-President, Africa & Middle East, at the just concluded Sage Summit in South Africa, the key products are Sage Live, Sage One Payroll, Sage X3 with Cloud deployment and Fast Start configuration options.

Specifically, he said Sage Live is a powerful, customisable, and cost-effective cloud accounting solution for scale up businesses and will be available to business builders in South Africa later this year. Customers can manage multiple locations and currencies all in the palm of their hand, while taking advantage of the add-on solutions available on the Sage market place and the Salesforce App exchange.

Sage One Payroll, he further stated would be launched in Kenya by end-March and in Nigeria by end-June. The cloud solution integrates smoothly with Sage One Accounting, offering a complete business solution for start-up and small businesses. Easier than spread sheets, Sage One is the essential online accounting and payroll solution for start-up businesses. It lets companies conveniently manage everything from sales and purchasing to cash flow and taxes. It offers online invoicing and allows collaboration with the bookkeeping or accounting team from anywhere.

The new online entry level offering of Sage One Accounting, Sage One Invoicing, will be launched in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of April. It gives start-ups the ability to produce professional quotes and invoices from a mobile device or personal computer with access to the internet. It also provides reports and dashboards to monitor the outcome of quotes, and track due and overdue invoices.

In addition, a Customer Zone provides customers with the ability to easily pay invoices by activating a secure pay now service through Sage Pay. Full reporting is available to monitor gross profits and identify popular and fast-selling items.

In addition, he said the latest release of Sage X3 is an open and modular solution for companies who want to move away from maintaining their own data centres. There are no hidden costs as it gives enterprises even more control and visibility into their businesses with features such as e-commerce management, manufacturing project management, automated bank statements and a sales force CRM connector.