Sage goes after the little people
Coughs up HR offering for SMBs
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Acquisition-happy payroll software maker Sage (UK) has moved into the HR biz with the launch of a new system aimed at SMBs.
The software, which is available now, can be used by firms to manage, update, access and analyse employee details and has a starting price tag of £250.
The company said Sage 50 HR 2007 can be integrated fully into the firm's Payroll 2007 offering.
Sage has specifically targeted SMBs following its own in-house research. It claimed that many customers recorded and managed HR data manually or by using Excel because there was not an affordable alternative.
Sage SMB managing director, Jo Ray, underlined the firm's focus on the SMB people management market and said:
"Employment legislation and compliance requirements are placing a growing burden on small businesses, making it even more important for them to keep accurate records about their people."
In May this year, Sage swallowed up HR business management firm Snowdrop in a £17m cash deal.
Sage chief exec Paul Stobart said at the time that the acquisition would allow the firm to enter the SMB HR space. ®
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COMMENTS
Hmm.
And they're being rather forceful about it's uptake, pretty much telling us that as we use Payroll we have to buy the support contract that incorporates the HR module too... which comes in at approximately £2k pa.
Now where do i search for other payroll systems...
Snowdrop
In a previous life I had the misfortune of having Snowdrop forced upon my 200 user enviroment (gotta love those HR Consultants), nearly £10k a year for software maintenance on the basic MsSql/VB frontended tosh, If I remember rightly they wanted an extra £250 per user for enabling the employee self service web front end on it. Lets just hope Sage don't try the same upgrade route with their SMB version. Then again, looking back on it Sage hasn't had the best history in developing their non accounting type acquisitions, anyone seriously using Act?.
Done it already...
Did something very similar for my employer about 4 years ago.... in Access! Not the best solution, but it works...
Tracks regulatory compliance, employee leave/sickness/holidays, appraisals, reporting lines, pretty much anything you can think of from an HR perspective.
Wish i could get £250 per user off them!! Yeah, and pigs might fly!
Must get round to the PHP version! Maybe i could go work for Sage....

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