Educor group of companies migrate to Sage 300

The Educor group adopted Sage 300 as their Enterprise System of choice. Main reason for this decision according to Group IT & Strategic Projects Officer Ian Bailey was the robustness & reliability experienced with Sage 300, previously known as ACCPAC.  According to Bailey, the modernization of the old ACCPAC has been very successful. “The introduction of the web browser based version, together with the stability that we experienced when running in excess of 70 users for more than 8 years, has proved to us that Sage 300 has reached a level of maturity that no other system can match for a group our size.”

Educor is the largest private education provider in Southern Africa. The group’s primary business is the delivery of high quality tertiary education through an offering of over 800 courses. Courses are channeled through a number of educational institutions, including CityVarsity, Damelin, Lyceum College, INTEC, Damelin Correspondence College and Central Technical College

The group’s education brands have an impressive legacy in the education market, with INTEC being over 100 years old, Lyceum College being over 90, and Damelin being over 69. The Educor group has a network of campuses throughout Southern Africa, with students across the African continent.

The creation of the Educor group over the years resulted in a mixed bag of systems, with a resultant requirements for diverse skills in accounting system users, which lead to a board decision to standardize on one Enterprise System that would support the group’s future growth. As result of past successes within Educor, Sage 300 was the natural choice, but one of the challenges to migrate all companies to Sage 300 was timing, choosing a relative quiet time in the business cycle. Sticking to project deadlines, completion on time was of the utmost importance for a project of this size.  In addition to migrating all companies to Sage 300, it was also decided to upgrade all to the latest browser based version Sage 300c.

The Educor group has a relationship with Sage Business Partner AWCape for more than 6 years, during which time the various teams learned to work together successfully. Commented AWCape Executive Chairman Henri Hattingh “In a migration project this size there was no room for error, a business the size of the Educor group could not afford to be side-tracked by an inefficient and poorly managed IT project. The project was delivered on-time and within budget which is an outstanding achievement for an IT project, which owes its success to the caliber and experience of people such as Educor’s Group IT & Strategic Projects Officer Ian Bailey and AWCape’s experienced consultants & project managers”. Hattingh further commented that “AWCape’s staff are focused on delivering successful Sage 300 projects. The AWCape team has never been side-tracked through supporting multiple product lines. We could see the value of this focus by measuring the benefit of delivering on-time and within budget for the Educor group”.  

“As a result of this focus on Sage 300 by AWCape, most of Cape Town’s large institutions running Sage 300 are being supported by AWCape, with this support being extended to large corporates in countries such as Ghana and Nigeria, with Kuwait currently being negotiated ” said Hattingh.