SAGE has acquired many software solutions over the years – including State of the Art in the US in 1998 (MAS 90 and MAS 500). Here is a partial listing of the products that SAGE sells in the US. You will probably recognize the names and may be surprised that they are owned by SAGE:

X3 (Formerly Adonix) – ERP
Accpac – ERP
MAS 90 – ERP
MAS 500 – ERP
Timberline – Construction/Property Management
MIP – Non-Profit
Peachtree – Small Office Accounting
ABRA – HR
BEST FAS – Fixed Assets
Saleslogix – CRM
Many others…

One product that has reached a couple of Short List’s recently in our software selection projects is the SAGE X3 product. This is a multi-national manufacturing focused software solution and is the former Adonix product that was acquired by SAGE in 2005. Adonix was originally developed in France and offers a robust accounting/manufacturing solution. It is interesting to note that the CEO of SAGE is Guy Berruyer who led the French SAGE operation. They also recently installed Pascal Houillon as the CEO of SAGE North America – who also came from the French operation. We think these moves point to a future emphasis on the X3 product at SAGE, and may even lead to X3 becoming the flagship product for SAGE on a worldwide basis.

Dynamics AX for Public Sector has a single implementation in process – City of Redmond, WA – which is fitting because Microsoft is based in Redmond. Go-live for the project is scheduled to be July 5, 2011. Right now they are only offering financials and do not have a wide functional footprint for the public sector. While they did say they would eventually expand the footprint for the government sector, they did not disclose the functionality they would develop next.

It is interesting to note that they have been working with Tyler for about 4 years now and are just now finishing up financials. While the government sector has many unique requirements, Dynamics AX has a strong base financial capability with dimensional charts of accounts that are very powerful that has been used for many years in the private sector. It will be interesting to see how the capabilities that are so useful in the private sector will be leveraged in the public sector.

Is this product ready for prime time for governments? Not yet, especially because governments in general tend to be very conservative. But as the functionality expands and a few more cities decide to implement a newer software product, the Dynamics AX product will be a player in the government sector.

There are more than 350 organizations that are using Serenic Navigator. (One of SoftResources’ notable clients that selected Serenic was the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee 2010.) While their focus is on both government and non-profit entities, the non-profit space is where they excel, and they have limited government implementations.

Serenic is especially strong with grant accounting requirements and they have recently developed a budgeting tool geared specifically for non-profits and grant accounting. Because the NAV product has good multi-national functionality, Serenic is starting to leverage that capability to drive expansion internationally and has set up sales offices overseas.

In December 2010 Serenic announced a Cloud/Hosted offering for the software. It will be interesting to see how non-profits accept the hosting model as the cloud gains more acceptance in the ERP space.

Serenic is a public company and at the end of January 2011 released their quarterly numbers showing they swung to a loss. They cited the fact that many non-profit organizations are pushing off purchases of new ERP software because of the economy. Also, because they are a Canadian company, they have had some currency losses as the majority of their installations are in the US.

Serenic is a major player in the mid-market non-profit area and should be considered by these organizations. We met up with Lisa Ramsey of Serenic at the GFOA 2010 show in June last year. Watch the video to get an overview of Serenic and some of the things they are working on.

As you will see in the accompanying video, they have positioned the products in the following way:

Munis – This product focuses on larger government organizations counties, cities, non-profits, and is also strong in the K-12 school district market. This is a mature product that offers a wide functional footprint. We have found that Tyler typically leads with this product for mid-large organizations unless there is a compelling reason to look at one of the others.

Eden – Functionally overlaps the Munis product in many ways, but seems to have a stronghold in certain geographic regions of the US – namely the Northwest and Southeast. Recently, we have found that Tyler only leads with Eden when there is a specific client preference to consider this product and does not seem to have the same sales focus that Munis does. This is not to say that Tyler will not sell this product, just that they seem to focus much more on the Munis product, which should be a consideration in your evaluation. 

Incode – This is a lower end product that works well for smaller cities. It is less costly and less complicated, but also much less robust than Munis and Eden. If you have an annual budget of $30M or below, you should consider this product unless you have a lot of complexity in your organization.

Tyler is also working in partnership with Microsoft to develop a government focused solution based on the Dynamics AX ERP software, but we will cover that topic in a different post.

The important thing to remember as you evaluate Lawson software is that they have two separate ERP software products – Lawson S3 and M3.

Lawson S3 is the traditional Lawson product. This software is a very strong financial solution that has a very broad implementation base in many different industries. S3 has a particular focus on Financials, Health Care, Non-Profits, Government, and service based organizations. It also has a very strong Human Capital Management (HCM – otherwise known as Human Resources). In fact, many organizations use Lawson’s HR solution as a stand alone HR product even if they do not use Lawson’s S3 ERP product. S3 also touts a very strong reporting tool called Lawson Business Intelligence (LBI).

Lawson M3 came to Lawson through the Intentia acquisition. This ERP is focused on Manufacturing and Distribution companies and is a stronger multi-national solution than S3. (In fact the majority of Lawson international installations and offices are focused on the M3 product). Keep in mind that this product is completely separate from S3. For example, the strong S3 HR solution would require an integration to the M3 product.

With regard to implementation, Lawson has their internal Professional Services Organization, but also has a network of 200+ software integrators in their Lawson Partner Network. Some of these partners focus on S3, while others focus on M3. Make sure that you do an implementation partner selection when considering Lawson to find an implementation partner with experience in your industry and the specific product you are implementing. Many times these partners have more experience in a particular industry at lower billing rates than Lawson’s direct implementation.

We consider both S3 and M3 to be Tier 2 ERP solutions in our 5 Tier Chart(www.softresources.com/software-market-overview). This means that Lawson can compete very favorably with the Oracle suite of products as well as SAP at a lower cost. Over the past 15 years we have been doing software selection consulting, both Lawson S3 and M3 have been selected by various clients. These products are definitely worth consideration as you evaluate your ERP software options.