Here are a few of my conference observations:

Cloud computing is moving to the forefront of the Sage product strategy. In his keynote presentation, Himanshu Palsule, EVP of product strategy and marketing, called cloud computing one of two major trends to capitalize upon and introduced Sage North America’s cloud-based “connected services” as a key product strategy pillar. Connected services take “the richness of on-premise applications and connect to the reach of cloud-based services.” The launches of Sage SalesLogix Cloud and Sage Fundraising Online are examples of Sage dipping a toe in the “cloud” water (does that make it “rain”?)

Visitors at Indicee's booth at Sage Insights keenly interested in Cloud BI....or maybe Craig was sharing another uproarious story from trade shows past.

Business intelligence continues to gain in prominence within the Sage community. This year’s conference featured an entire presentation track dedicated to business intelligence, analysis, and reporting. And if the buzz at the Indicee booth was any indication, the opportunities for cloud-based analysis and reporting solutions are immense. Business partners outlined the challenges that clients are facing when it comes to creating and updating reports especially when the data resides in multiple systems such as Sage ERP MAS or Sage ERP Accpac and SageCRM. Conversations also revealed that the complexity and costs of typical on-premise BI solutions are often barriers to adoption.

Sage ERP Accpac – still near and dear to me – continues to garner much attention as the ERP of the future (very near future with Version 6 beta just around the corner); the slick user interface and improved workflow continue to impress. Kudos to the product team under the leadership of Scott Zandbergen, Erik Kaas, Alok Tyagi, and others.

The Simply Accounting group under the stewardship of Jamie Sutherland continues to be one of the most innovative teams in the Sage family. They have followed up on the success of Billing Boss, the online invoicing tool, with a mobile payment processing solution called Payment Boss.

Sage continues to be the “partner’s choice” for top vendor–forthrightness, integrity, and accessibility are a few of the words that come to mind to describe Sage. Speaking with fellow attendees and trolling the online forums, common themes are the positive feeling about the Sage team and a real bullishness about the Sage strategy.

A big shout-out to the entire Sage team for pulling off another successful Insights conference. Can’t wait until Sage Summit 2011 in DC.

Keep dialed into this channel for more Indicee news including the upcoming launch of our iPhone & iPad mobile reporting application (incidentally, Himanshu indicated that mobility was the other key trend influencing Sage product direction).

Scott Pledger

Related posts:

1. Wrapping Sage Summit in Atlanta
2. F5 Expo to host Cloud Computing panel April 7, 2010
3. Indicee for 2010 : New look, New product, New offerings

In minutes, you could go into Google Apps and create a blog.  With a few more clicks of the mouse, you could create a place to share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with friends.  Then, you can go to Google Analytics and track the web traffic to your blog.  It doesn’t have to be Google, look at any of the websites you use on a regular basis.

Think about the websites you frequent on a regular basis as an individual.  Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter.

What do they have in common?

They are easy to use and they let you self-select what information will enter your field of vision.

It reminds me of those old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books I read as a kid.  Everyone gets the same book.  And then the reader decides where to let the adventure take them.  Same as the new generation of web applications.  Everyone gets the same framework and then you follow your interests.

Therefore, the framework needs to be big enough to encompass a variety of interests and needs, but the customization has to be easy enough to bring focus to any one individual user BY the user.  As easy as turning a page is optimal.

We’re using this same philosophy to guide our Management Dashboard feature.

A general framework that applies to all users.  But the ability for each user to assemble the information most suited to their purpose as simply as turning a page.  In our time & place, I guess we are more likely to say, as easy as a click.

You can choose from any of your existing reports.  Just click.

A dashboard is all about getting the most relevant, actionable information in front of you NOW.  Simple.  Clear.  Concise.

Have you tried our Dashboards?

Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Dashboards Made Easy

We have received lots of feedback about how easy (and cost effective) it is to get up and running with Indicee compared to traditional BI tools.  Why is it so much easier?  Because Indicee does not require a direct connection to your data base.  Instead, with Indicee you simply upload the reports or data export files from your applications.

Manual uploads work really well for small deployments and make a huge difference in how fast our customers can get up and running. However, once users see the benefit of easy access to information they inevitably want more data and want it updated more frequently. Up until now, the only way to get data into Indicee was to save a report or data file to your computer and then upload the file to Indicee.  Uploading a single file once a week is easy, uploading 10 files every day starts to take a lot of time.

Uploading reports – hands free

Indicee users have asked for an auto uploader.  We have added it, and more. Indicee (with your permission), can now be set up to grab data files from your computer.  Here are some examples of how it works:

• Schedule your reports to a folder. Lots of applications allow you to schedule reports to a folder on your computer.  You schedule the reports to run every hour or day and schedule Indicee to grab the reports from that folder and upload them to your data mart
• Schedule your queries.  Some customers have set up queries to grab data. You can use a program like Windows scheduler to automatically run the queries and have Indicee grab the data files and upload them to your data mart
• Direct database connection. For more complex BI requirements, it is not always possible to find reports that contain all the data needed to answer your questions.  Indicee now has the option of connecting directly to common business applications or running custom SQL queries and then uploading the resulting data

Want to try it?

We are looking for early adopters.  For existing customers,  contact support@indicee.com and we can add the auto uploader to your Indicee solution.  New customers can take advantage our our Free48 team who will get your up and running within 48 hours. Contact our Free48 team to get started.

Related posts:

1. Asset or Expense: How do you account for Data Quality?
2. Hello 2009
3. Indicee Launch