When choosing an ERP you want to choose a system that can grow with you and is familiar when using it. Small to medium-sized business need to grow and having an ERP system that is scalable and easy to up-grade will be the best choice. When evaluating ERP software, there are many different solutions to choose from. They all do mostly the same functions and even tend to look the same, to where you can’t even remember which ERP was which when watching demos during an ERP evaluation process.
A good place to start are with 2 of the more popular ERP products in the market, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC) vs. Sage. Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP) can really help growing businesses to improve efficiency, financial management, streamline operations, communicate across departments and customer functions. Now which one is better for your business? Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central makes it easier to expand your business in the long run and there are some other notable differences we’ll explain below.
Scalability
Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC offers the ability to expand without having to change out the software every time that you outgrow it. Sage is a company over the years that has discontinued many products. Here is a list of some of the products that have been discontinued:
- 1991 acquired DacEasy (discontinued)
- 1992 acquired Ciel & TeleMagic (discontinued)
- 1994 acquired MultiSoft (discontinued)
- 1999 acquired Peachtree (discontinued)
- Here the full list of 73… 73 different software’s Sage currently has to offer. How are you supposed to even know which product is the right fit for your company???
- This week acquired Intacct (discontinued_..TBD)
With Dynamics 365 BC, the software has been upgraded overtime and you are getting support from the Microsoft team. This reduces the cost of adding new users and functions. With Sage you have to change the whole system out when your company outgrows the current solution and do a migration to the new product which can prove to be very costly.
Integration
Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC integrates with other business applications easily. It’s built off of Microsoft SQL, the most developer friendly product for businesses and integrates natively with the full suite of Microsoft Office products like Outlook, Excel, and Word. This makes it easy to learn as well, because it is similar to other Microsoft products like Office and Windows, so your employees will have a short learning curve since the products look so similar. Sage will not integrate with directly with Microsoft Office and SQL scripts have to be created.
Deployment Options: Cloud vs. On-Premise?
You have 3 options with Microsoft:
- Subscription: Monthly software/hosting fees deployed on Microsoft’s Azure cloud
- Private cloud hybrid model: You own the software but have it hosted on Microsoft Azure
- Complete cloud migration: Migrate to Dynamics 365 Business Central to leverage cloud benefits
- Traditional On Premise: Purchase the software up front and have it housed on your own server
Sage’s traditional software is only deployed On Premise. Some of their new software they acquired is available by the Cloud, but it’s still a work in progress as they are working out the kinks. This forces a company to go On Premise vs. Microsoft you get options that make the most sense on how your software should be deployed for your company.
We are an experienced Microsoft Dynamics Partner that will be with you today and in the future, contact us.
