How Intacct is your financial position?
by Jeff Ryan, MD of AWCape
Clouds never look back.. and neither do cloud-based systems.
They are always looking forward; what is next and improving. But maybe (with just over a year in South Africa), it is time to reflect on Sage Intacct ‘s rollout before we look ahead.
AWCape has now implemented Sage Intacct at several customers. And much like Marc Meiring at Colmed, each customer had clear goals of what they wanted Sage Intacct to deliver.
“My ultimate goal was to be able to easily view each business’s financials – as well as those of the group – in real-time and on a single screen.”
Marc Meiring – Colmed
In addition, the fanfare during the launch in 2020 said customers would deliver the following benefits from Sage Intacct:
Has Sage Intacct delivered?
1. Let’s start with cost
We are lucky in South Africa to have many world-class Sage and other products in the Accounting / Finance and ERP space that has been built in South Africa. So this US product had a tough market to enter…and it has succeeded.
The total cost of a cloud product (like Sage Intacct) versus an on-premise or cloud-hosted solution is a lot less (even without the fantastic early adopter prices available to customers).
In our webinar, we worked through a costing example and showed Sage Intacct was 5 x more cost-effective than a current customer’s solution. This is due to the hidden infrastructure costs of hosting a system i.e. server, software, network equipment, server room, backup, IT resources, Disaster Recovery and backup etc. This excludes the time and cost required for audits or when there is any downtime / issues.
2. And what about the benefits of cloud?
Well, Sage Intacct guarantees 99.8 % uptime, airtight data security, and comprehensive disaster recovery. It has completed both SSAE 18 SOC 1 Type II, as well as SOC 2 Type II, audits. It is also PCI certified as you entrust Sage with the most private, most critical data in your business. For the man on the street – “this is the Rolls-Royce of cloud accounting solutions”
3. Compliance
Besides minor updates required by the South African developer team for South Africa VAT calculations, the system is compliant with all the local regulatory requirements. The updates are another benefit of a cloud product with 4 releases a year. And it happens without you knowing (or paying). No more “Click Yes to update” and then making coffee… lunch… dinner… taking leave 😄 while you wait for the update.
4. Integration
As a best-in-class financial management solution, Sage Intacct was built from the ground up to integrate with other best-in-class solutions. Globally, most customers integrate at least two external applications with Sage Intacct, which provides the flexibility to choose the best options for your organization. Each of our South African customers have had at least one integration need including CRM, billing, payments, banking, inventory and project systems.
Integration can be through hundreds of pre-built applications in the Sage Intacct marketplace or custom integrations using the well documented APIs. In addition, Sage Intacct’s platform services help accelerate customisation with infrastructure solutions built to match unique business requirements.
We may be (a bit) biased… So, what are the negatives?
South African customers who have taken the leap will provide honest feedback of Sage Intacct and we hosted two webinars with our customers to get their unfiltered views. You can listen and read more about these customers’ feedback here. However, the most critical will be those customers who have not chosen Sage Intacct when it was showcased to them. Below is some of their feedback:
• Other systems we use are not available in the Sage Intacct Marketplace (or the equivalent too expensive as dollar-based)
• My existing ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning system) bought many years ago is cheaper per year and I cannot justify the migration costs
• Need a prebuilt POS (Point of Sale) or CRM (Customer Relationship Management) as part of solution
• Our ERP has invested heavily in integrations to other systems
The above are all valid and we at AWCape (and Sage) believe in ensuring the “right fit” for each customer. And the Sage South Africa team is working on solutions to all of the above.
And what else is the market saying?
Sage Intacct has just recently won (for the 5th year running): Gartner 2021 Critical Capabilities for Lower Midsize Enterprise (Cloud Core Financial Management Suites).
In addition (and more importantly), Sage Intacct consistently places at the top of the G2 customer satisfaction surveys. So independent review places them at the top but this product team is not one to rest on laurels and is always innovating and using the latest technology. Below are some of the latest exciting latest releases:
1. Sage Intelligent Time: Revolutionize your timesheets with the only AI-powered timesheet built into a financial solution. Sage Intelligent Time provides continuous, accurate, and complete insights to profitably manage your service business.
2. GL Outlier Detection scores outliers using machine learning to call attention to what requires a closer look during the GL approval process
3. Interactive Visual Explorer allows you to interactively explore your financial data using a multi-angle, multi-dimensional graphical tool. With data visualization, you clearly understand insights at a glance. You don’t need special skills or IT to explore your data
“Companies that have higher digital maturity reported 45% revenue growth compared to 15% for lower maturity companies”
So… looking forward
Accenture and Deloitte research both agree that HIGH digital adoption has given massive advantages to those organisations over their peers.
The question is whether your organisation is ready to leapfrog your competitors in 2022? Or will you be still struggling with VPN and late-night server issues when doing your month and year-end?
(Technology) Leaders are now growing (revenue) 5x faster than laggards (Accenture 2020)
Interested to explore Sage Intacct for your business? Find out how our AWCape customers have benefited from migrating to Sage Intacct. Get in touch with us.
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