For a while now, Sage 500 has been rumored to be discontinued, sunset, or otherwise no longer under development. If you’re a user, you likely already know this from either a Sage email to clients, your local Sage Partner, or various reports from the past few Sage Summits. The fact is that though Sage has been tight-lipped about the actual EOL (End of Life) date for Sage 500, their development resources are pointedly directed elsewhere. Most Sage Partners and even Sage’s website advise clients to look at other products in their portfolio for imminent migration.
What does this mean for current users? We discussed this very topic (the value of staying on legacy software) in a recent SmartTalks, our free monthly webinar where we discuss tips and tricks for HR/Payroll, ERP/Accounting, and other general topics for HR professionals and their companies. To summarize, the costs of staying on a system that is considered Legacy (i.e. discontinued) will continue to rise every day. This is due to a number of factors including more limited programing and support resources to an increased number of customizations required to interact with other modern business technology. One of our consultants, Troy Vars, shared his thoughts around ERP customizations here.
Note that this does not mean that Sage 500 will stop working. It simply means that as time goes on, as other hardware and software in your environment continue to improve are receive updates, Sage 500 will look and feel much the same as it does today. For some, this is not an issue. For many of our clients, however, there is a pointed need to explore other solutions that can provide more modern integrations.
One of the biggest initiatives of most businesses today is the reduction of duplicate date entry. There are fewer and fewer reasons to have 2 (or more) systems sharing the same data without an automated integration. There is no value to your employees dedicating time to manually entering data when there are modern solutions with open APIs and a built-in shared master database. This is one of the biggest reasons we see clients moving from legacy systems that aren’t making these improvements, present software being included.
If you are a current Sage 500 client, you should be working with your team and partner to determine the best next step for your business. In some cases, you may be able to take advantage of more powerful software that has traditionally been considered less complex than Sage 500. The industry has advanced a great deal in even the past 3-5 years and you can expect to find the right solution without sacrificing functionality. It may be a viable option as well to step back and look at your entire business software needs. There are more robust ERP solutions available that can do what Sage 500 does for your environment as well as addressing other areas (such as CRM, Field Service, and Business Analytics). It is our recommendation that you start looking for a solution that fits with your business. Here is a quick read on features you should expect and consider for your next move: https://www.cs3technology.com/cs3-technology-feed/7-great-features-in-an-erp-software-solution
If you are a current Sage 500 client and have not started your search for a new system or had these discussions, reach out to your CS3 Consultant (or myself) and we can explore what next steps can be specific to your organization.
