ERP Software

SAP to buy Sage Again ?

Guy Berruyer the new Sage MD might have his hands full to fend off takeover approaches from SAP and possible Microsoft.

Sage's shares surged 8.1p to a year's peak of 266.2p as speculators   responded to gossip that SAP, the world's largest business software company, is gearing up for  a cash bid worth £5.1billion or 390p a share.. SAP is said to be sitting on cash, even after splashing out £3.7billionn on database-software maker Sybase earlier this year.

SAP would struggle to integrate Sage’s different solutions that they have bought, but this could be a great way to offer SaaS accounting software. Sage relationship with accountants might be worth a punt and help SAP push their new business bydesign software package.

What do you think?

Sage going after Teamsystem in 650m bid

Sage has emerged as the frontrunner to acquire TeamSystem, the Italian financial software group, for up to €650 million.

Final bids for TeamSystem are expected this Friday, the business that has been put up for sale by Bain Capital. Sage was expected to outbid HgCapital and Cinven.

The Newcastle business employs 1,200 people at its Newcastle head office and revealed in a management statement that its debts were down from £305m at the end of March to £280m by the end of June.

Guy Berruyer is to take over the role of CEO next year following long-time head Paul Walker's decision to step down at the end of the year. Walker took the job in 1994 and is one of the longest serving FTSE-100 company CEOs, but is leaving to pursue other projects. Berruyer was promoted from the role of head of Sage's mainland European operations.

Shareholders are hoping with the new management in place that Sage will announce a SaaS strategy to stop from the high end SAP Business By Design and on the lower end Netsuite from stealing market share.

Sage Moves Into Poland

UK ERP Software group Sage has launched a public tender offer to acquire Poland's Teta. for an  value of about £41m.

Teta provides enterprise resource planning software to medium  and large -sized companies. If the tender offer gets the goahead , Sage will become  the leading provider of business management software across Eastern Europe gaining a portfolio of 2000 customers across Poland and Hungary.

Teta’s  revenue for 2009 was £21m and EBIT £3m, with net assets of £22m.


CEO Paul Walker said the proposed acquisition complemented the group's existing business in Poland and would allow it to develop its offerings in the attractive Eastern European markets.

Sage CEO To Stand Down

Paul Walker, the chief executive of Sage software is to stand down. Mr Walker has told the board he wants to leave while he is still young enough to pursue fresh challenges

The Sage board   has hired headhunting group Russell Reynolds Associates to search for a replacement for Paul  Walker, who is one of the FTSE 100’s longest serving bosses.

 “Paul Walker has advised the board of his intention to stand down from the company in due course, after 16 years as chief executive and 26 years with the company. Paul and board will work to ensure a seamless transition and the board will make further announcement at an appropriate time.”

Sage SaaS online 50

Sage is about to release their Sage 50 as a hosted package from what I understand the system has not been built up to deliver information over the Internet but that will come in time.

Sage had to move fast to compete against the SaaS upstarts will be interesting how far they will take SaaS through their product line.

Sage SaaS

Sage snaps up Master Builder

Sage's  pre-tax profits are up 19 per cent to £113.7m (2005: £95.8m) on sales up 18 per cent to £455.9m (2005: £385.6m). most of this growth has come from acquisitions and have just made another niche purchase with  Master Builder, which focuses on the US construction industry for six million dollars.

There has been debate about how Sage balances the books.

"Sage's balance sheet remains a thing of controversy - saved from the ignominy of negative equity only by the company's decision not to amortise goodwill from acquisitions. Goodwill currently stands at £1,275.4m, up from £995.7m in 2005, contributing to shareholders' equity of £957.3m."

Sage info from the register

Sage buys Visma

Sage plans to buy Visma a Norwegian financial software and services company focusing on the SMB market for £334 million.

Visma turnover last year was £166m with a profit of £22 million

Visma has an install base of 130,000 with 1600 staff supporting their customers Visma specializes in

Finance

Accounting

Logistics

CRM

E-business applications.

They also have a financial services outsourcing division which must be up against stiff competition from the Indian financial services outsourcing giants.

If I had Visma software in my company I would be asking are they going to cut R&D, sell me a roadmap that migrates me on to sage. If you look at the two companies there is near perfect duplication on software functionality both comapnies focus on  SME financial software. 

Sage has decided they want to be player in the ERP market what with just purchasing USA  based Verus Financial Management in January.

Sage R&D spend

Sage is spending most of its research and development budget on guaranteeing future revenue from its existing products rather than inventing new services says David Karlin, managing director for Sage UK's mid-market division another brilliant quote is "You have to stop spending all your R&D time on legacy. Companies can get trapped in that situation, especially if they're in financial problems," and "If that happens, you know you're facing slow but certain death."

Well said David ,full story at zdnet

Sage gunning for the middle market

Sage 1000 is due to be released in May. The new application will be based around the mid-market Line 500 and CRM MME applications with a single database and common interface The vendor said that the software would enable end-users to map processes across their entire business in a single operation. Sage also claimed that this would lead to the retention of customers and a reduction in total cost of ownership.

Sir Julian Horn-Smith new chairman at Sage

Sir Julian Horn-Smith will be taking over as Sage chairman starting in August of this year .he comes from Vodafone as deputy chief executive and will bring to the table Vodafone’s experience of growing a global operation with Sage saying they want to take debt from a £100 million to £600 million to spend on acquisitions hopefully he can manage the change.