Peachtree 2012 Annual Report Download - page 23

The actions taken to streamline the portfolio will result in a
reallocation of key resources towards the areas with highest
potential that will support a signicant improvement in growth.
Our sales and marketing will become sharper; our portfolio less
fragmented, offering a clearer choice to prospective and current
customers; and we will leverage our considerable R&D resources
more effectively as we innovate and transition to the next
generation of products and technologies.
Leveraging our global scale and assets
The delivery of this strategy will see us leveraging our global assets
and skills far more effectively, ensuring that we set global priorities
and execute on them in a global manner.
A single, consistent global brand is a critical pillar of this strategy.
We have launched a new powerful global brand proposition that
sits at the heart of our business, guides our activities and ensures
our relevance to all of our stakeholders.
Capturing the
technology opportunity
We don’t just make software products; we use technology to
support the success of millions of small and medium sized
businesses around the world, aiming to deliver an extraordinary
customer experience. Our approach to technology is guided by
the current and future needs of our customers and the unrivalled
position Sage enjoys to lead small and medium sized companies
to apply technology to best effect.
Technology is also providing the opportunity to expand our
addressable market, by attracting a new generation of
Sage customers, also supporting a step change in growth
and performance.
We are delivering the benets of the web to our three core
marketsegments:
• Sage One – the focus of our online investment for the start-up
and small business segment.
• Hybrid cloud solutions – the focus of our online investment
for the SMB market.
• Sage ERP X3 – the focus of our investment for the mid-market.
We are also developing new product architecture, including
product innovation to embrace mobile technology. The importance
of connected and payment services is very signicant as a catalyst
for growth.
Sage One
Sage One is a simple and efcient online bookkeeping and business
management application, designed to address the needs of
entrepreneurs and very small businesses.
To date, we have rolled out Sage One in the UK, Ireland, and
North America. We are satised with the momentum of Sage One
in the UK & Ireland, with over 6,100 paying customers at the
year end.
We will enter more countries with Sage One in FY13 and will target
a broader reach with a more advanced service, targeting larger
customers with more sophisticated requirements.
²
Hybrid Cloud Solutions
Our partnership with Microsoft, announced in May 2012, is
designed to deliver this vision to the market. Building on the Azure
platform allows us to speed up development of customer solutions,
accelerate time to market and reduce duplication.
The focus of development started in Europe with Sage 200
“Hybrid” in the UK and Sage Murano in Spain. The solutions will
also be interoperable with Ofce 365, creating a single integrated
on-demand business platform. The solutions are in development
now and will be released to market in 2013.
Sage ERP X3 – the focus of our investment
for the mid-market
Sage ERP X3 is our global offering in the mid-market segment
and is designed to address the sophisticated needs of a large
enterprise but the limited resources of an SMB.
We have 3,700 customers in 58 countries and 260 implementation
partners. A subscription service was launched in the US in August
2012 and more countries will have a subscription offer in the
coming months.
New product architecture
Our product architecture is continuing to evolve and represents
a signicant catalyst for growth in relation to both new and
existingcustomers.
Mobility
We see the revolution in mobility as a particularly compelling
opportunity to develop more active relationships with our
customers and to expand the number of our paying customers.
Expanding the product architecture will grow the addressable
market by signicantly expanding the number of users who
consume our services. Today, Sage reaches a narrow band of
principal business users which only represents about 20% of
the addressable user base within a company. The existence of a
pervasive ecosystem for connected apps will allow us to extend
the Sage experience to new roles in management, sales and to
the workforce at large.
Connected apps can also act as an entry point into a paying Sage
relationship. A good example is the free Sage Record Keeper app
in the UK – co-developed with HMRC – that feeds into Sage 50
and soon into Sage One.
Payments services
Our current activity in payments is in three distinct areas:
merchant acquiring in North America (SPS); e-commerce and
card holder present payments by customers in Europe (Sage Pay);
and NetCash in South Africa.
The unique proposition that we offer is the capability to integrate
all payment transactions with the customer‘s broader nancial and
support systems infrastructure. This integration capability offers
our customers the compelling proposition of time savings and
increased accuracy.
On payments integration, we have services live and available.
For example, in the US we currently have over 9,700 paying
customers. We connect various payment and vendor applications
to the accounting environment and further to payment networks
and fraud protection.
Overview
Performance
GovernanceFinancial statements
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The Sage Group plc | Annual Report & Accounts 2012