Sage MAS 500 ERP Product Roadmap

Sage recently has published a Product Roadmap for Sage ERP MAS 500. In this post we’ll provide an overview of the roadmap, as well as highlights of current and upcoming releases, including Product Update 3, released in May 2010.

Sage ERP MAS 500 Strategy
Sage developed the Product Roadmap with the intention of providing value to customers with minimal disruption to customer business processes, through a combination of frequent small enhancement releases or Product Updates, and less frequent major new version releases.

To determine what will be in its releases, Sage obtains customer feedback from a variety of mechanisms. These include customer input via surveys, customer site visits, and Customer Advisory Board meetings. Support cases are reviewed and enhancement suggestions from the online community are considered. Additional input comes from business partners through the Advisory Council, and technology direction is recommended by Sage Research and Development.

Product updates will include top customer-requested enhancements. Sage also is focusing on reducing the impact of upgrades on customersí customizations to the software.

May 2010 Product Update
The May 2010 Product Update for Version 7.3 is available for download. This release includes a number of customer-requested usability enhancements, as follows:

• Two security events have been added to Enter Transfer Orders to control updates to the Surcharge Amount and Percentage fields.
• Sales Order Entry Bulk Update now provides an option to update open sales order lines with defaults for Shipping Priority and Dates.
• The ability to select the unit of measure on three reports has been added. You can choose Stock, Sales, Purchase, or Price unit of measure before printing the Stock Status, Inventory Valuation, and Inventory Cost reports.

Future Product Updates
Future Product Updates for Version 7.3 are already planned and include such useful features as the ability to copy sales order and quotes to a new customer, and security events to control the deletion of sales order and purchase orders. You can expect new product updates for 7.3 to be available every three or four months until Version 7.4 is released.

Major Release Schedule
Major new version releases to Sage ERP MAS500 will occur approximately every 18 months. Version 7.4 is targeted for release in the second quarter of 2011. Enhancements planned for Version 7.4 fall under three themes:

• Manufacturing and distribution improvementsñ such as the ability to change preferred vendor for replenishment, using the transaction date as post date for manufacturing transactions, and the ability to backflush from bin-tracked warehouses.
• Productivity enhancementsñ workflow improvements such as simplified customer refunds, better tracking of overpaid invoices, and allowing negative line items on Sales Orders.
• Platform and performance updates ñ Crystal ReportsÆ 11 R2 and Microsoft Office 2010 will be supported, as well as Visual Studio 2010. Performance enhancements are planned for Business Insights Explorer.Version 7.5 is planned for the fourth quarter of 2012 and is expected to include enhancements to usability, manufacturing, technology platforms, and multi-currency capabilities.

Product Retirement Schedule
In order to focus development resources more effectively on current and future releases, Sage will be reducing the number of prior versions that are supported. Support for Sage ERP MAS 500 Versions 6.3 and 7.0 ends September 2010 and support for Version 7.05 will end with the release of Version 7.4.

Give us a call with your questions, or to plan your upgrade.