1. Sage ERP X3 Version 7
Technology evolutions

2. Agenda What are our customers expecting from an ERP
Focus on technology
User interface and usability
Collaboration features
Conclusion
Version 7 technology – presentation

3. What Customers Really Care About
GROWTH 1
Top business priorities | All regions
Winning new customers
PRODUCTIVITY 2
Reducing my operating costs
Growing my revenue
Sage Business Index 2013 – Mid-Market
When we ask customers what they care about most, it comes down to 2 things.
They want Sage to help them grow their business, win new customers and increase revenue
They want Sage to help them eliminate inefficiencies, reduce costs and become more profitable.
Note: in South Africa in particular, the number one priority of mid market customers is to win new customers, by expanding to new markets and geographies.
V7 Evolutions

4. $55,900
revenue increase per employees when the usability of company data increases by 10%*
(*) Center for Research in Electronic Commerce at the McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin
A recent research by the University of Texas at Austin shows that a 10% increase in accessibility and usability of enterprise data can translate in a 14% increase in revenue per employee.
=> Beyond the number which may vary by region and market (this research was conducted on Fortune 1000 companies), how easily employees can access and use enterprise data has a direct impact on the bottom line!
V7 Evolutions

5. 7 Benefits of Version 7 Technology1
Usability: a redesigned user experience, to get more done, faster
Mobility: native mobile technology to go where your business takes you
Control: increased control over business processes
Intelligence: the insight you need, when you need it
Responsiveness: easy access to data to better serve customers and earn repeat business
Profitability: increased user productivity
Expansion: the ability to scale and expand to new geographies, new markets, or in the cloud 2 3 4 5 6 7
Version 7 7
V7 Evolutions

6. The aim of the V7 evolution
Capitalize on our existing assets:
Flexibility of our solutions
Broad functional scope
Partners solutions and knowledge
Review the ergonomics to leverage SAGE ERP X3 as a solution:
More user friendly than ever
More accessible to all the users
More intelligent for everyone (in bringing the accurate information)
V7 Evolutions

7. How do these technology operate?
Have the best user experience possible
A renewed look
Best use of the spaces (web pages rather than screens)
Simplicity: the actions are obvious links
Navigation as on the web: by links, by search, by bookmarks
The availability for an authorized user to change the screen layout
Include collaboration features
Ease the extraction of data with Office tools
Share the documents between teams
Capitalize on a strong open source technology stack
Based on the industry standards
With scalability and performance in mind
V7 Evolutions

8. A scalable and cloud ready architecture
Load balancer
This slide shows more in detail how the scalability is handled:
On the web server, multiple instances can run, managed by a load balancer
MongoDB and ElasticSearch can be configured on clusters, and even store data in multiple shards if the corresponding data becomes really huge (should unlikely happen with mid-market customers).
The database can of course also scale up
Multiple X3 process servers can be added if necessary.
One of the important points about the scalability is that the protocol used between the web server and the clients is stateless as long as only data is requested, and stateful when a modification is in progress.
Version 7 technology – presentation 8

9. The standard choices we made
Standard REST protocol (http, https) between the browser and the server
Stateless protocol whenever possible (scalability)
Stateful when a user interface transaction is in progress (performance)
Tolerant to bad connections conditions (mobility)
Web server stack based on
Very powerful and scalable on farms
With a load balancer to address several node servers on several servers
Able to work with additional load balancing / failover proxies
Native https or https provided by a proxy
Able to run with an external load balancer / failover proxy
No more boundary between the browser and server, allowing engineers to code both.
Built almost twice as fast with fewer people 
Written in 33% fewer lines of code 
Constructed with 40% fewer files
Double the requests per second vs. the Java application.
35% decrease in the average response time for the same page.
Rewrote account overview from java technology to node.js
V7 Evolutions

10. The standard choices we made
More than 2 millions visitors per day
Update 2 million item catalog takes 15 minutes
MongoDB dynamic schema makes it easy to adapt quickly the data model to the evolving needs
Continuous availability and scaling capabilities
The biggest German online retailer
Document database based on
Very powerful and scalable on farms
NOSQL, able to work with documents
Used for personalization, collaboration
& administration data.
Search engine powered by
Open source, based on apache lucene.
Able to scale and to run on farms.
Global music service available over 180 countries
5 millions paid subscribers, 12 millions active users
40 millions songs, albums, artists searchable
Gain 10x response time and great scalability
V7 Evolutions

11. Reinforce security: not an option on the Cloud
Support of external identity providers
Connection secured by certificates
Database security
SSL encryption
Sandbox definition to secure access to application server resources
Security services
AMAZON SECURITY GROUPS
The solution has been audited and certified by an external company for safe operation in the Cloud. 11

12. The ability to work on every modern browser
The client is any recent browser:
HTML5, CSS3
Dedicated client for mobiles
No need to download a dedicated application
Uses API javascript for local storage, communication management, thread management…
Some elements:
HTML 5 and CSS3 are the standards used by modern browsers; JQuery is a library allowing to insulate the Document Object model of browsers and thus creating code almost independent from browser. Javascript on the client, no more Active X nor flash components
V7 Evolutions

13. Evolution of the development platform
V7 workbench designs services
Based on metadata dictionaries (Classes, properties, methods)
Usable without user interface
Supplied with QA tools and performance tools
The user interface is designed in representations
V6 written code continues to work
Based on the existing metadata
“classic page” technology embedded in the client
A switch exists from “read-only” V7 pages to convergence pages
V7 Evolutions

14. Evolution of the development platform
V7 workbench allows to develop mobile transactions:
The same class
A dedicated representation
Data is stored in drafts:
Offline input is possible with further synchronization
Local cache is possible on reference data
V7 Evolutions

15. Search in data and functions
User interface is full web
A very light shell at the top bar and the full page dedicated to application data Navigation uses hyper-links, search, browser back button
Shortcut in favorite bar
Search in data and functions
Home page
Organize favorites
help
Page personalization
Navigation page
Add to favorites
Access to user panel
logout
Change role
Change endpoint
Change locale
V7 Evolutions

16. User interface is full web
The right bar is used to trigger operations and methods:
In classic page, all the previous buttons and upper links are grouped
The actions on a field are identified by icons and shortcuts are displayed in tooltips
V7 Evolutions

17. Additional filters are possible
User interface is full web
Search operations on functions (menu items) and ERP data
with a quick result on a vertical bar
The complete results can be based on approximated matching
Additional filters are possible

18. User interface can be personalized
Dashboards and navigation pages can also be personalized
Drag and drop editor
Use of components in the portal (processes, statistics, reports, web pages)
Pages can be personalized
V6 pages with some constraints (order)
V7 page with no limits
No more developer skill needed for personalization
Personalization can be shared
Personalization can be defined as “factory” and delivered by partners and Sage
The personalization is WYSIWYG

19. User interface personalization : home page

20. User interface personalization : navigation page

21. Page personalization for users
Elements can be moved by drag and drop
Every page has a structure that can be reorganized and redesigned

22. Office Integration : Office is a client
The V7 web client
Office Integration : Office is a client
A plugin to be installed and an additional panel in Office menus
PowerPoint export of any query including requests and stats
Excel export of query
Word mail merge on lists, and Word report on details
Excel export on V6 grids
Office client works as the browser client, and uses the same JavaScript layers
V7 Evolutions

23. An user can be member of teams
Collaboration tools
An user can be member of teams
A team is a free organization of users for collaboration purposes only
Every team has an administrator, authors, and members
V7 Evolutions

24. Teams member can publish and share documents
Collaboration tools
Teams member can publish and share documents
The documents are stored in mongoDB
V7 Evolutions

25. The version 7 technology brings
A better usability with a simple web experience
A mobile access to the ERP
The insights you need with portals, dashboards, processes description
An increased user productivity with easy navigation, search…
The ability to grow seamlessly with an optimized and scalable platform