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Sapphire SunSystems Customer Newsletter

Welcome  to the latest edition of Sapphire’s newsletter for SunSystems users.  I would like to start by thanking everyone that came to our User Day at the British Museum on 11^th September and helped make it such a success. 

Feedback from the day includes:

“Great day.  It's good to know that you care.  Well done“.

 “As always the User day is very useful in highlighting new innovations, as well as reinforcing and reminders of the functionality of SunSystems“

“Very useful sessions as it gives users a chance to compare available systems and get to meet other users and updates“

 “A useful day, and well worth attending“

 “A good day for which my thanks. Well done“

“Well done guys - a very well run and very useful day as always“

 “Very well organised and enjoyable day“.

Those that attended the User Day will know that David Singh has recently joined the Sapphire team as Sales and Marketing Director.  We are very pleased to have David on board at Sapphire as he is highly regarded by Infor as a product and customer champion.  David is a certified accountant with a wealth of knowledge acquired over 20 years in the business solutions market.  The newest member of the Sapphire team, David brings with him 15 years of experience working with SunSystems.  He has held senior roles, as both an end user of SunSystems and in support and consultancy positions with SunSystems providers. 

Tony Martin has moved into a new role as Client Service Director.  He will be on hand to work closely with Account Managers and the team at Sapphire to build on the Sapphire tradition of excellence and innovation in customer service.  If your Account Manager is out of the office, you will now have access to a named senior figure to give immediate assistance with any query you might have.

Inforum UK takes place next month in Wales; this is a fantastic learning and networking opportunity and I hope to see you there.  Further information can be found in the newsletter.

I am always keen find out what you think of the Sapphire newsletter, as well as any feedback you may have on Sapphire’s service to you as a whole, so please email me your thoughts at ian.caswell@sapphiresystems.co.uk.

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What can you expect from us this Year?

As always, there will be keynote sessions from both Sapphire and Infor in which you can learn more about the future of SunSystems - and what’s new at Sapphire.  Add to this the chance to meet with many of Sapphire’s support, consulting and services staff … together with many other SunSystems Users and am I sure you will agree that this event is one not to miss!

Influence the Agenda

The Agenda will be formalised on 8th October 2007 and we would welcome any ideas and suggestions you might have to make the User Day an event that is closely tailored  to the requirements of you and your team. 

To contribute, please submit your ideas  to us as soon as possible.

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Opportunities to improve the performance of our businesses are all around us. Unfortunately business life doesn’t often afford us the chance to pause, stand back and understand where those opportunities really are. Here’s one.

 Inforum UK 2007 really is the right time, the right place and has the right people to discuss and to demonstrate solutions that could make a difference.

This is a unique opportunity for you to build lasting business connections and extend the benefits that Infor™ can deliver to you. Join senior UK and global Infor executives and meet some of the most enterprising business professionals in this invaluable two-day networking and learning experience.

Be informed

Benefit from a host of technology, industry and best practice sessions to enrich your knowledge and inspire change and success. With more than 120 sessions to choose from, Infor will ensure there’s something to suit delegates at all levels and from different industries. Presentations and roundtable forums will be available in the topical areas such as: Financial Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Performance Management, Distribution and Transportation Management, Human Capital Management, Enterprise Asset Management, Supply Chain Management and Customer Relationship Management.

Be inspired

See the latest innovations and technology from Infor brought to life – as they are demonstrated by experienced consultants at the Technology Expo. Explore a range of core industry-focused Infor solutions up close. See how they look, how they flow, how they reflect real business processes and how they could change the way you operate.

Be connected

Inforum UK brings together partners and customers from many industries and solution areas. Infor know that meeting like minded people is important and this really is the biggest networking event of the year. Their programme is designed to encourage free sharing of ideas, experience and knowledge, through customer presentations, roundtable sessions, and user group meetings. There will also be opportunities in the Technology Expo to meet on a one to one basis with some of the best consultants and professionals in the industry. Make use of this wealth of knowledge and take away invaluable advice.

Be enterprising

 Your business success is based on adapting to and benefiting from the latest innovations – to ensure you’re always ahead of the game. You’ll learn how, with Infor Open SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture), they are stating their commitment to ensure that the solutions they develop are interoperable, innovative and flexible enough to evolve and that they always deliver the best business agility you need to succeed.

Be the first to hear

For senior directors, get priority access to strategic announcements that could help shape your business year. Get the big picture. Meet the senior Infor management at one of their executive meetings to discuss how a continuing partnership with Infor could help change and improve the way you operate.

Register your place at Inforum UK 2007 today. www.infor.co.uk/inforumuk

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The program is designed to give you an introductory overview to the solutions detailed below in a format that offers you and your colleagues a time-efficient  (and carbon-neutral)  learning environment.  The web seminars are designed to help you understand how Sapphire's range of solutions can help improve productivity, increase user satisfaction and foster better internal controls across a variety of areas within your organisation.

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Latest Course Schedule Now Available!

We are pleased to announce that Training Course dates for April, May and June are now available from the Sapphire Training team.  Please click here to request your copy. 

The cost per delegate per course is £345 + VAT including lunch and course notes - receive 10% off when you book 3 or more people on the same course!

Design your own Vision Course on the topics of your choice for just £925 + VAT per day at your office, or £1380 + VAT at one of Sapphire's Training Centres, for up to 6 people.  Training can be given on a copy of your own data at an extra charge if required.

Tailored training for your Finance Team will facilitate the production of even better and more meaningful management reports, helping you get the most from your solution and the best return on your solution and training investment.

For information on any of our Training Courses you can call our Training Advisor Sharon Stevenson on 020 7684 2000 or email training@sapphiresystems.co.uk for more information.

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Private sector and public sector organisations are similarly driven to save costs and maximise service delivery. So improving an organisation's efficiency is a high priority. Experience shows that automating the ‘procure-to-pay' process is one of the easiest and most effective ways of driving significant benefits for an organisation, irrespective of whether it is a large public entity or a small trading company.

The traditional ‘procure-to-pay' process is extremely manually-intensive and costly as it involves the processing and distribution of large numbers of documents, for example, placing purchase orders, processing purchase invoices, gaining budget holder approval and paying suppliers. Printing information onto pre-printed stationery and posting paper documents has traditionally been the way to create and distribute purchase orders, remittance advices and cheques, but it is costly. Similarly, when purchase invoices arrive from suppliers, manually intensive and paper-based internal processes are involved when processing, approving and coding the relevant purchase invoice data. For all of these reasons, the cost of retrieval and document storage can quickly spiral, exacerbated by the requirement of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to store all relevant documents for seven years.

A completely automated e-Procurement solution may be considered ideal, but in practice this is difficult to achieve. However, electronic document management (EDM) technology can help organisations quickly realise efficiency gains in their ‘procure-to-pay' process, allowing them to bridge the divide between paper and electronic processes whilst reducing costs.

Employing EDM Solutions:

Commonly, there are four distinct phases of the procure-to-pay process, each involving different documents. The initial communication with suppliers involves purchase orders and remittance advices; data capture from supplier documents such as purchase invoices; authorisation and coding of internal documents and finally; making the payment using cheques. However, using EDM, organisations can generate significant savings from each of these stages in the process.

Supplier Communication

Moving away from pre-printed stationery is the first step in reducing document production costs. Desktop form publishing tools can be used to merge data from a finance system with a graphical overlay, providing plain paper laser printing. Complex business rules can also be employed, such as varying delivery details or terms and conditions, providing far greater levels of flexibility over and above traditional methods. Data look-up facilities to other business systems can also automatically merge relevant data, without the need for complex system integration.

Whilst plain paper gives the most cost effective print solution, even greater cost reductions can be gained through the electronic delivery of documents. Both automated fax and email delivery significantly reduce costs as well as reducing delivery times. An automated fax solution provides secure and reliable document delivery, as well as an audit report. Conducting business using email communication is now also accepted and provides the cheapest form of document delivery available. In addition to merging data into the body of the email, providing the document as a PDF attachment is becoming increasingly standard. Once the creation and distribution of documents has been automated, organisations can look to complementary messaging to deliver additional document copies at no cost to other business users – reducing the number of queries placed on the finance team.

For regulatory reasons, copies of these documents need to be retained for several years. However, with EDM available there is no need to print and file office copies or distribute internally. An exact image of the document produced can be stored electronically and made available to the appropriate users directly through a finance system or intranet.

Data Capture

Controlling documents generated in-house and the associated costs is only one part of the paper process. Typically, purchase invoices are sent to organisations in paper form and this represents its own challenges and costs for an organisation. The key difference here is data. With internal documents, a company already possesses the originating data, whereas with external supplier documents, it is totally reliant on inbound paper documents for the data it needs. In order to process this data, finance departments typically have to re-key the information into their own finance systems. This data re-keying is time consuming and expensive, so EDM can be used to facilitate automated data capture.

To automate this process, purchase invoices are scanned and converted into electronic images. Images are then passed through an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process and key data is captured and verified. Firstly, unique data such as the VAT or Company Registration Number is analysed to identify the supplier. Once the supplier is validated against the finance system, header and line-level data from the purchase invoice is extracted before being validated against purchase order data already held (if available). Once validated, the data can be presented to the user, alongside the purchase invoice image, for any final checks before the data is automatically loaded into a finance system for final processing.

The result is a dramatic reduction in manual keying effort, data automatically loaded into the finance system and an image of the purchase invoice available ‘on-tap' for electronic retrieval.

Internal Authorisation

Once a purchase invoice is processed by the finance operation, there is often a requirement for input from budget holders to approve the purchase invoice for payment and/or to add nominal ledger codes for budget allocation. Again, the typically manual process of photocopying the document, sending it out in the internal mail and waiting for a response is time consuming and extremely costly. EDM can be used to automate this process, using the document images already captured.

An electronic authorisation process can be triggered automatically, and an email sent to the appropriate user indicating they have a task to complete. By clicking on a link contained within the email, the user is presented with the purchase invoice image, a summary of the data and fields to add coding information, if required. A user can then accept, reject or query the entry as required. Multiple levels of authorisation can be configured, to handle multiple budget holders if appropriate. Once given final approval, the data entered can be automatically imported into a finance system, to update the purchase invoice status. Email reminders can be generated automatically, if no user response is detected within the allocated time period. The EDM keeps an audit trail of the users and their data and stores this as a permanent record against the purchase invoice for future reference and audit purposes.

For users who are frequently out of the office, modern smartphones give them the ability to access all these processes quickly and easily, regardless of their current location. For example, whilst waiting for his flight, a Financial Director could approve purchase invoices on his PDA.

Secure Payments

The purchase invoice transaction is now approved and coded on the finance system and awaiting payment to the supplier. Traditionally, payments were, and sometimes still are, made via manually written cheques. Some organisations use pre-printed cheque stationery with impact printers. The BACS-iP system is the most cost-effective method for making payment and maximises efficiency through secure electronic payments. Batches of payments are produced by the finance system, and the BACS-iP solution validates the data against known sort and account codes before requiring a digital signature to approve the payment run. The digital signature is provided by a secure chip-and-pin system. Reports are then made available electronically, so mistakes in supplier payment details can be quickly identified and rectified.

If electronic payments cannot be made, an EDM solution can still help with cheque payment efficiencies. By combining APACS approved MICR printers with secure, blank cheque stationery, an efficient laser printing cheque solution can be employed. In a similar manner to the purchase order documents, business rules can be used to automate the cheque production process, so one type of stationery can be used for multiple bank accounts, and data can be merged from other systems.

Benefits

As highlighted earlier, EDM can be used throughout the ‘procure-to-pay' process to support and image-enable manual procedures. Organisations are implementing this technology to realise savings, around;

• document production and distribution costs which are slashed when moving to electronic methods. (An organisation typically saves up to £1.00 per document when it is sent electronically rather than in the post).

• the electronic storage of documents in the EDM system resulting in negligible storage costs, retrieval costs and internal distribution costs.

• automated data capture which can save organisations in excess of £10 per purchase invoice processed when compared with manual keying.

• the electronic routing of documents for authorisation which removes all the costs associated with internal copying and distribution.

• automating secure payments (through BACS-iP or laser printed cheques) which maximises efficiency and cuts costs.

In addition to this, organisations that have implemented EDM to support procure-to-pay are also highlighting a range of other additional benefits, such as;

• more timely purchase invoice approval which enables supplier discounts to be achieved and late payments penalties to be avoided.

• improvements to audit processes as all the documentation can be made available electronically, rather than the traditional time-consuming trawl through paper archives.

• faster purchase invoice processing which results in more timely budget and financial data on which sound business decisions can be made.

• reduced requirements for document storage as documents stored electronically free up space occupied by filing cabinets and storage boxes. This space can then be used for additional desks and office facilities.

• establishing credentials around Corporate Social Responsibility, especially the environment. Paper use is significantly reduced when documents are delivered electronically, and EDM storage means there is no requirement to print off file copies. Energy use, and hence an organisation's carbon footprint, is also reduced due to less printing and copying of business documents.

• Improved levels of business continuity as electronically stored documents can be easily backed up and stored off-site for contingency planning.

• reduced levels of cheque fraud by moving to electronic payments and secure laser cheque printing.

 Conclusion

By implementing electronic document management (EDM) within a ‘procure-to-pay' process, cost savings become increasingly obvious across the organisation. From the simplest step of the electronic delivery of documents, through to image storage, automated data capture and electronic authorisation of documents, efficiency and productivity gains are quickly and easily achievable.

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JAC Travel is a privately owned, forward thinking travel group that works closely in partnership with its clients and suppliers around the world.  Every aspect of JAC’s operation is geared toward speed and efficiency, from their online booking system through to their back office operations. 

In recent years the company has invested heavily in the latest technology in order to benefit staff and customers alike, enabling the company to provide an extremely wide range of travel related products and services to clients throughout the world.

Due to the successful growth of the company, Financial Director, Steve O’Hara and his team at JAC were struggling with their incumbent financial accounting solution which was integrated with the operations system - and was starting to creak at the seams.  The management team came to the conclusion that a pure accounting system would be a more appropriate fit for the company.  In addition, JAC had a requirement for their accounting solution to work in 4 different currencies, which the old system was unable to do.

JAC’s Financial Controller, Anwer Chandoo, was tasked with sourcing and implementing a new solution.  As part of his research he attended a conference and exhibition in London, where he met with Sapphire and was introduced to SunSystems.

Following a comprehensive review process Anwer short-listed SunSystems and MS Dynamics GP before concluding that SunSystems would be the best fit for JAC. 

In explaining the decision Anwer tells us “In comparison to other systems we felt that SunSystems offered superior reporting and would provide more information on our data. It was also able to cope with the requirements we have for working in multiple currencies and is more user-friendly.  The installation period for SunSystems was more or less the same as for MS Dynamics GP, but analysis codes can be developed more easily in SunSystems – plus the licensing structure means that long-term we will save money with SunSystems.” 

He goes on to say “During the initial phases of looking for the right solution, Sapphire’s personnel were very professional and presented the software well.  They gave us very tailored information and really listened to what we wanted, rather than giving us the hard sell.  We were reassured by the approach and felt we could work well with the team at Sapphire.”

Commenting on the installation, Anwer said “The Sapphire consultant that implemented and designed our solution was absolutely amazing.  He was extremely patient and very efficient – and the implementation took a lot less time than we had anticipated.  He also transferred all the relevant data over from our last system which has been a terrific help to us.  The roll-out was completed well within the timeframe agreed and we were very confident in the new solution when we started working with it on a day to day basis.”

Now that JAC have been using SunSystems for a while, the finance department is benefiting from significant time savings. In addition, they now have complete confidence in all the reports they run, now that data manipulation in Microsoft Excel is no longer a requirement.  Anwer comments “The system is very fast and we get great reporting with the SunSystems Vision reporting tool for documents such as supplier statements.  We used to prepare these in Excel which could take 4 to 5 days, now it’s all done in the click of a button.”

JAC have one network covering their sites in London and Scotland, with a total of around 10 people logged into the SunSystems solution throughout the day, and they have had no problems training 2 recent additions to the team in how to use the system.  Anwer observes “If you have accounting knowledge then it’s pretty obvious how SunSystems works.”

The finance team at JAC also benefit from the strong integration links that SunSystems has with other systems.  Anwer says “We have integrated SunSystems with our banking system – Barclays Business Master - to good effect and have introduced eConnect from Albany to deal with remittance advice.  This was introduced to us by Sapphire and we have found it very time efficient and reliable.  Our plans for the future include upgrading our Vision solution to Vision 6 at the beginning of our next financial year.”

In describing the level of service JAC receive, and their working relationship with Sapphire, Anwer says “From the time we decided to implement SunSystems, to the present day, we have been very happy with Sapphire.  All Sapphire staff are very helpful and the support team in particular are great – they compare very favourably to the support we receive from our other software suppliers and deal with any issues we have right away.”

Anwer concludes “If you are looking for a new financial accounting system, I would definitely recommend SunSystems from Sapphire.  The solution is user friendly, the reports are excellent and the service provided by Sapphire is outstanding.”

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Please note that the email address for the Support Team is: support@sapphiresystems.co.uk (the old address, support@sapphire.org.uk is no longer in use).

Sapphire’s dedicated SunSystems Support site can be found at: www.sapphiresystems.co.uk/cas.  You will need to log-in in order to view some of the content – if you require log-in details, or have forgotten your password please contact the Support Team who will be happy to help.

The Sapphire SunSystems Support Site is a valuable customer resource including:

• Produce Hints and Tips

• Hot News – the latest information regarding the solution

• Product and Release Information

• Support Call Log – view the status of any current support calls

• Service Details

• Customer Presentations – from previous User Days and relevant seminars

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• To download the SunSystems 5.3 solution update brochure please click here.

• To download the SunSystems 4.3 solution update brochure please click here.

SunSystems 5.3.1 Released

SunSystems 5.3.1 has now completed the Sapphire New Release testing and is available for installation and upgrade as of 20th August 2007. This new release addresses a number of issues that affected earlier versions as well as introducing additional functionality. Please refer to the New Release documentation on this site for further information relating to this new release.

Note that this release is not compatible with Vision 5x and will require Vision 6 as a minimum

Further information detailing Sapphire’s new release policy and the testing process is available on the support site (www.sapphiresystems.co.uk/cas).

Vision 6 - Serducts

The latest version of Vision is 6.3.3-1 and the latest serducts (interface definitions used by Vision to access various application databases) are as follows:

• Vision for SunSystems 5            10.004

• Vision for SunSystems 4            10.007.004

• Vision for Maximo                       5.002

• Vision for Earnie                         5.002

 To check the version of Vision 6 and the serducts in use, open Vision Setup. The Vision version is shown on the login screen. To check the serduct version that is in place, hover the cursor over the application icon that appears on the login screen. If you wish to update your serducts please contact Sapphire Support. [10/08/07]

The 10.004 SunSystems 5 Serduct addresses (amongst others) the following issues:

An issue when doing a data send in Vision XL for Movement Orders, Purchase Orders and Sales Orders with a Value Label ID of 34.  This would previously hang the Data Send.  This has now had the correct change made to the value label tag.

An issue of reporting with Vision over multiple collation databases has been fixed.

An issue with Data Access Groups where they were not being correctly applied to all business units for multi-database environments. This now has been amended to take into account a multi-database environment with multiple business units with the correct SunSystems setup.

The 10.007 SunSystems 4 Serduct addresses (amongst others) the following issues:

The addition of an Original Order column from the Purchase Order Header table, where the new column holds the original value of the order.

The ability to Set Data Access Groups on both the Chart of accounts and the Ledger tables in Vision for both Oracle and SQL.

SunSystems version 4

4.3.2 will undergo the Sapphire New Release Testing very shortly and is anticipated to be available by mid October.

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Sapphire is pleased to announce that it is to join forces with Proactis, to provide its’ customers with a complete spend control and procurement system that integrates with their financial accounting solution. Proactis Group is a specialist in Spend Control software that helps organisations take control of costs and streamline procurement.  A  web-based solution, Proactis Spend Control is user-friendly, highly customisable and has strong integration links to the SunSystems and SAP applications.

Ian Caswell, Managing Director at Sapphire says “We are very excited about this new partnership which will enable us to provide our customers an even more complete service in gaining control over expenditure.  We also see this new venture as opening up a market for additional sales for Sapphire; with Proactis Spend Control we have a product fit for additional  markets that until now we have had no solution for.”

He goes on to say “It is also noticeable that customer activity surrounding spend control is increasing  - until relatively recently people were interested in finding out about what was available, whereas now they are ready to invest.  One of the benefits of Proactis Spend Control is that accounts staff are no longer bogged down in paper, which can only be a good thing from both an organisational and environmental stand point.”

Mark McCarthy, General Manager (EMEA) at Proactis adds “Sapphire is an exciting addition to the Proactis channel, extending our reach into the SunSystems community as well as across each of the major SAP platforms. Sapphire’s existing expertise in this arena means that its clients can start enjoying the benefits of Proactis Spend Control right a