Microsoft Dynamics AX (discontinued) vs. Sage 100

It integrates fully with the other Microsoft software we use daily, and this coordination speeds up our work and gives us the agility to run easily. For example, in a purchase inquiry, the customer, after submitting a request, identifies the teams that should work on the project, and if they need further review by other people, they are added to the process, and everything is managed seamlessly rather than the sales process. Get the result as fast as possible.

Incentivized

Sage 100 has been well suited for running the monthly accounts receivable and accounts payable aging reports. This helps us track our accounts that need to be collected and payments that need to be made. Our field operations team has been slow and unwanting to adopt the Sage Field Ops just because they're resistant to change and technology. It's less appropriate for really detailed accounting reports spanning for long periods of time with all accounts because it takes a very long time to run and process.

Incentivized

• Microsoft Dynamics AX's scalability to meet our regional office needs provide flexibility to the team's requirements.
• Combined with Citrix Xenapp, the application offers seamless access for users on high latency unreliable network connection to the application.
• Application maintenance and updates are easy which makes it possible for us to manage remotely considering the servers are located in a remote Asia site.

Incentivized

• Simple to implement and use. Operation very intuitive so new employees are quickly trained.
• It is very flexible with many modules and many features allows for easy customization to suit particular needs of any department or company.
• Context sensitive help, training and support make it easy for a company to operate with out a lot of additional outside tech support.
• Scalable plenty of room to grow as the business grows without being bloated.
• Pricing is very reasonable.

Incentivized

• MRP can be slow to adapt to changes in actual production or supply chain transactions.
• Setting up number sequences seems a trivial matter, but these numbers ID transactions once they are in the ledger and are key--easy to miss this point in the implementation process.
• Bank rec being easily automated and able to quickly plug into a bank back end to get data is not the best.
• Payment processing can be 'clunky' based on checks, ACH, Wires...as some of these items are not triggered out of the box in AX, bur are easily added --talking ACH and Wires specifically.

Incentivized

• Sage 100 at times will simply not connect to our server, we get remote support & all is well but, that issue tends to happen 2-3X a year.
• Other than the above, I really can't complain. Coming from a more custom U.V. type database that used a whole bunch of codes to navigate, I think Sage 100 is 10x easier to use.

Incentivized

Microsoft Dynamics continues to evolve by bringing more functionality to the customer. Also there are several independent software providers that offer a wide range of solutions for vertical markets.

Incentivized

I would put this out to bid, if I were at the same organization. There have been a lot of improvements and changes in enterprise software and my preference would be to find a good web-based or cloud-based tool. Lower overall cost of ownership and improved efficiency would be my target criteria for a rebid of this.

Incentivized

Overall the product does what we need it to do in order for us to function as a company. While there are some concerns over ongoing costs, the belief is, once we have it fully acclimated to our business the cost should settle into alignment with our original expectations. The new features that are consistently being added do add value to the product as they are usually customer request directed.

Incentivized

Overall Sage 100 has been pretty user friendly. If we have a question on anything, we are able to contact our implementation rep who helps us right away. Some of the Sage Field Operations may not be as intuitive for our field personnel to use. I wish the reports ran faster so that we could run and put together many reports quickly at once.

Incentivized

Some integration and high volume ramping challenges, particularly with BizTalk and SQL Server, but getting sorted out. Outages over time appeared to be more dependent on integration complexity than AX MES.

Some integration and high volume ramping challenges, particularly with BizTalk and SQL Server, but getting sorted out. Outages over time appeared to be more dependent on integration complexity than AX MES.

We use a 3rd-party Microsoft Partner for the system. They are responsive and very knowledgeable. While costs have been mentioned several times in this review they are very aware of costs and have developers who are more economical they use to help offset the level of work required to meet our changes and fix our issues.

Incentivized

Sage Support is very good. I usually get a person on the phone in a short time frame and usually get my issues fixed in one called.

Incentivized

It took a lot of work, but Microsoft ultimately did a good job with in-person training, including being onsite in multiple global locations for extended periods.

Our solution deviated from a number of key out-of-the-box standards that were included in Online training. We just used that for introduction to the general functionality.

Some rough spots, but ultimately worked out. The contract didn't appear to be structured to support the level of overlapping facility deployments required to meet timeline commitments. Merging cultures on the program was also challenging. Overall, not an easy implementation by any stretch. Everyone did the best they could.

We had an advantage in implementing the tool in that our director of Ops had been part of the team implementing the ERP for other users so we knew what to expect and were able to avoid a lot of the challenges people sometimes face with implementations. However, the process still took far longer than desired.

Incentivized

I was not part of the decision making process to select Microsoft Dynamics AX, however, I do know that an exhaustive search was done and many options were considered alongside Microsoft Dynamics AX and I feel that the right decision was made in choosing this solution.

Incentivized

I didn't choose Sage 100 ERP -- it was already in use when I started at the organization over five years ago. It has the same types of pros and cons as other big hulking software suites meant to power the infrastructure of corporations. It's slow, tough to customize, and doesn't connect well with other software. It does bring all the information into one place, which is great

Incentivized

• With the robust built-in reporting we were able to drop an external reporting platform that costed about $40,000.
• API integrations have saved manual entry and reduced having to hire 2-3 people to manage data.
• Several administrators and developers are required for this which costs about 200-300 thousand in employee costs.

Incentivized

• Sage 100 overall had a very positive overall ROI for the business. All users were making decisions based on the same information and valuable time was no longer spent trying to analyze data from a number of sources.
• Moving the warehouses to using Sage 100 reduced the operating expense of the distribution side of the business by 5% on an annual basis (~$100K).

Incentivized