PKF SCS in Paris: Sage 200 Manufacturing and SDMO

If you’ve been following our social media, you might have seen some recent posts from our Technical Director, Richard Brewster, with a bit of a change of scenery.

Richard, along with Sage 200 Consultant, Mike Henderson, were invited to Paris by Sage to meet the Development Team, share their expertise and review the process of SDMO.

As one of the leading Sage 200 Manufacturing Partners in the UK, and given our geographic location, a large percentage of our client base utilises Sage 200 Manufacturing, Sicon Manufacturing and CIM Manufacturing to handle their end-to-end system requirements.

Bringing SDMO into our manufacturing portfolio means we can learn and adapt to the capabilities and features of SDMO. Being the first Sage Business Partner to sell SDMO in the UK means we were already well-placed to do this. Our attention turned to how this true cloud solution would add to our range of offerings.

Post-training, it was clear that the fundamentals of a manufacturing system were very present. It also exceeded in a number of areas, but there were still questions regarding how it would fit into our UK marketplace and how existing Sage 200 users looking to migrate to a cloud solution with Intacct could use it.

So, Sage invited Richard and Mike to meet the Development team in Paris to present a typical manufacturing solution in Sage 200 and review the same process in SDMO.

Over two days they walked through the stock, BOM, MRP and Works Order processes of Sage 200 and discussed what the mirrored process would look like in SDMO. By the end of this, there was a clear understanding of how the process worked for UK users, and the base functionality requirements from SDMO to achieve this.

Richard shared his thoughts:

“It was a great insight into the architecture of SDMO and where the product is going. It’s clear that Sage are keen to ensure the core functionality is built into the system at this early stage. Once embedded in the database, this functionality can then be expanded without the need to create work arounds, as we’ve seen with Sage 200 and third party add-ons that are hamstrung by the core Sage 200 database schema.

During the visit, we also discussed the roadmap and new features for SDMO. Although we can’t go into detail in this article, we are excited to see the developments that are coming in the next few months that mean we can streamline processes to suit clients particular needs and speed up the processing time. Efficiency is clearly key.

We also discussed the SDMO API. As a leading Sage 200 Development Partner, we have our own APIs and integrate systems into Sage 200 on a daily basis. As SDMO can be a stand alone product, there’s no reason it cannot integrate with your existing financial suite. This means for businesses not wanting to migrate their financials but who want to migrate their operations into the cloud, SDMO is potentially now a viable option.

Given the distance of travel and investment in time, this immersive review of both systems provided a great platform for us to work together to move the software forwards. We came away feeling energised about the product and excited about the future. No doubt there will be many further calls to discuss but nothing beats a face-to-face meeting to kick off a project like this! Exciting times are ahead…“

To learn more about our APIs, Sage SDMO, or other products we offer, get in touch with PKF Smith Cooper Systems today.

Contact us on 01332 959008 or use the enquiry form.