The SIGs were tasked with discussing the proposals put forward by Bill Hill - Marketing Director - Sage Enterprise Solutions on the manner that logs escalated by resellers to Sage should be dealt with, and the degree of involvement in this process that end users wished to have.

Distribution Special Interest Group (DSIG) - Our breakout session was supported by Sheila Brisland of Sage. The issue of logs escalated to Sage was discussed, with members in general in favour of being kept informed either by the reseller or by Sage. Members in general would welcome some direct content on escalated issues if only to ensure that Sage understood the issue fully. In general discussion it was apparent that those who had direct contact with Sage had good problem resolution. Other requests were for access to the Sage Knowledge base currently only available to Sage direct customers.

Finance Special Interest Group (FSIG) - The users are happy with the process for resellers logging calls but are still not kept up to date with progress or escalation. The general view was that they would like to be told the log numbers, be kept informed and be able to escalate direct to Sage if the reseller was not getting an adequate response e.g. if an answer took months. Some resellers do send weekly logs of calls for users, but even they, are not up to date.

A request was made for a reference site on Job Costing – it was suggested that Henry Waters may be the best person to speak to about this.

Manufacturing Special Interest Group (MSIG) - watch out for a sharp increase in interest in MSIG Members as Sage start to look at the issues relating to manufacturing, and start the process of identifying best of breed products in this sector. MSIG will be taking a keen interest in these activities, and will want to contribute. There were no specific issues raised at this meeting.

Reporting Special Interest Group (RSIG) - the whole meeting was involved in a discussion about the future of Sage Reporting Tools led by David Stokes of Sage who was making a case for a cross product reporting tool that fully met the requirements of end users. Online readers can view the Sage Discussion Document on this subject and forward any comments to David Stokes. This was generally a very lively and animated session with Sage being left in no doubt the view of end users about the present tools and what was required.

PURCHASE TO PAY - Made easy. - This was a presentation given by Dave King of FormScan on the merits of being able to scan all incoming documents, locate key fields and link the associated data direct to the Sage System to automate the invoicing and subsequent payment procedures. The demonstration showed a success rate of data capture in the order of 95% across a broad range of dissimilar documents, with a very simple manual intervention to correct the capture errors driven by the system. Online readers can view the presentation.

E-Business on Demand - would you like to have computing power and IT staff you can turn on and off to suit the irregular demands of your business. If this appeals to you then you should be talking with IBM Global Services according to Phil Clark of IBM. This subject formed the basis of Phil's presentation and online readers can look at the presentation and see the breadth of services being offered to meet the ever flexible requirements of business. This approach could be of especial interest to those businesses that are subject to seasonal peaks and troughs, or whose systems slow down during period end and year end processing. View the presentation online.