“Sage maintains a very strong channel partner relationship, focusing on helping partners achieve profits while ensuring they deliver quality services. This means taking on the role of advisors as well as assisting partners in day to day activities,” said Marc Van der Ven, managing director, Sage Software Middle East. “The annual Partner Conference is a platform for us to not only share news and updates, but also for the partners to share best practices and benefit from each other’s success stories across the region. Sage has an intensive training program and partner program for the channel, developed to help partners grow and succeed. Understanding the business is a key element of this growth, and we work with our partners to come up with strategies best suited to generate leads and turn them into customers, especially in a region where the trends of the sales cycle change.”

The Sage Middle East Partner Conference will include sessions on the company’s vision for the region, new product roadmaps, sales strategy, marketing collaborations, technical support strategy, 3rd party vendor presentations & exhibition. Visiting speakers from Sage US and UK brought a global perspective to the conference. The event concluded with awards being handed out to partners with outstanding achievements in specific product categories.

“We’ve been looking at setting up a local presence in Bahrain for a while, as we were seeing the Kingdom’s business environment grow and develop very fast, thereby creating increased opportunities. Having signed the Free Trade Agreement last year, Bahrain today is one of the most promising Gulf economies, scoring 80% on Business Freedom*. In a fast-developing market, Bahraini organisations are becoming increasingly aware of the significance of business management solutions such as ERP, CRM and HRM and for this they require reliable partnerships with international vendors, “said Marc Van Der Ven, Managing Director, Sage Software Middle East. “Sage Software has been operational in Bahrain working closely with local partners, but we have now added dedicated resources to support our customers and channel alike. As well as leverage our resources in Bahrain to cover neighboring territories such as the Eastern Province in Saudi Arabia.”

The Sage team in Bahrain currently consists of five people, working across sales and support. Sage has the widest range of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions to help local businesses become more competitive and identify and leverage potentially lucrative opportunities.

Among Sage’s clients in Bahrain is Al-Mahroos Group, one of the biggest suppliers of construction equipment. “We have over 100 Sage Accpac ERP users in our company, relying hugely on the data provided through the system to make critical day to day decisions,” said Hassan Al Mahroos, managing director of M.H. Al Mahrous Group. “We’re a rapidly growing business and having a reliable business solution in place enables us to focus on our core operations. Working with Sage software has had a very positive impact on our business and its move to establish a bigger presence in Bahrain further strengthens our confidence in its people and products.” Other Sage customers in Bahrain include A.J.M. Kooheji, Shaheen Group, Kalaam Telecom and the Bhatia Group.

Van der Ven added: “The government of Bahrain has taken a number of steps in the right direction, to encourage investments and help local businesses grow. This increasing investment will create the need for more regulation, more human resources and hence a solid information infrastructure. Sage is working closely with its partners in Bahrain to identify areas where our products can help organisations compete and grow.”

Sage had recently also set up operations in Saudi Arabia, in addition to the regional head office based in Dubai Internet City. Sage today has over 45 skilled partners, 1,500 customers and 10,000 users in the Middle East region.

*from the US-based Heritage Foundation’s 2007 Index of Economic Freedom

“With around 10,000 employees in seven subsidiaries, our operational processes are growing significantly and this created an urgent need to integrate the Holding company’s information management system,” said Dr. Zeyad Al Hekail, general manager, information technology, Al Rajhi Holding. “The first implementation within the group was for Al Watania Industries. This was gradually expanded to the remaining divisions, to help organize the communication and business processes both internally, and externally as reflected in our service to customers. Our priority was ease and speed of implementation, without having to spend too much time customizing. A team of 11 consultants from Al Rajhi’s IT team were heavily involved with Sage partner consultants. The result was that the Sage ERP replaced several other systems, enhancing the entire business process within the group.”

Al Rajhi today has 120 concurrent Sage ERP users and 1200 named users. Prior to the implementation, each department functioned as a stand-alone unit. The Sage ERP is allowing all departments such as finance, logistics, procurement, production, sales, marketing and engineering to function as one entity. With Sage ERP, all the group’s divisions can monitor the stock in various warehouses spread across a hundred kilometers where physical verification is difficult. The company can see exactly which items are in stock in each location and which items have been ordered.

Dr. Al Hekail continued: “This helps to plan future purchases. Watania Agriculture is using Sage Project Accounting to track all costs including material and labour related to projects such as Green Houses for crops, and animal farms. The company also uses Sage purchase requisitions to streamline purchasing.”

Other noteworthy benefits include the use of Sage Business Intelligence (BI) and pivot tables to extensively analyze data within Sage ERP and help support decisions. Sales data is analyzed by region, product, salesman, period and other dimensions to assist in planning future sales strategy. Purchase and supplier data is analyzed to improve purchasing decisions. Other data is analyzed to highlight operational issues such as delays in sales invoicing. At an operational level, month end closing is much quicker and systematic. “It took us one week to set up a new company,” Dr. Al Hekail said. “Sage ERP flexible forms editor and application programmer interface (API) helps us easily customize screens and reports. Also, strict quality control in managing forms allows us to upgrade quickly. We recently upgraded our software version in a matter of just two weeks. Sage ERP is also integrated in real time to various other systems such as a manufacturing system (Kiwi Plan) that controls production of cardboard boxes. Sales orders from Line 500 are automatically loaded into the manufacturing system for production and data of products manufactured automatically update Line 500.”

Marc van der Ven, Managing Director, Sage Middle East, said: “This is a great example of how Sage ERP supports large organisations such as Al Rajhi, in consolidating their operations. By implementing a single system to integrate the entire business, Al Rajhi’s management and employees have experienced clear and tangible benefits in their day to day activity as well as overall processes. We’ve seen a number of Saudi businesses make the move to adopting a sophisticated IT infrastructure, to meet the new and forthcoming competition challenges of the market. Having just set up our local office in the Kingdom, we look forward to working more closely with our key customers and partners to drive this adoption further.”

About S.A. AlRajhi Holding Co.

Ranked one of the Top 30 companies in Saudi Arabia, S.A. Al Rajhi Group employs about 10000 staff with business interests in Poultry, Agriculture, Industries, Property, Investments, Transportation and Fast Food Retail. It’s group companies include Al Watania Poultry, the largest in the region, Watania Agriculture, Al Watania for Industries, Al Watania Transportation, Al Rajhi Property, Al Rajhi Investment and Dajen Fast Food.

Financial highlights

• Revenues increased by 22% to £935.6m (2005: £766.4m)
• EBITA increased by 23% to £249.3m (2005: £203.3m)
• Pre-tax profit after amortisation charges rose by 14% to £221.2m (2005: £193.6m)
• Adjusted earnings per share^ increased by 20% to 12.54p (2005: 10.49p)
• EBITA margin of 27% (2005: 27%)
• Operating cash flow represented 107% of EBITA (2005: 119%)
• Proposed total dividend raised 25% to 3.59p per share (2005: 2.88p)

Operational and strategic highlights

• Total licence growth of 12%, total growth in services of 28%
• 7% organic growth for the full year, reflecting 8% organic growth in the second half of the year
• Customer Relationship Management (”CRM”) products delivered global organic growth of 8%
• Customer base expanded to 5.2m businesses (2005: 4.7m)
• Significant acquisition activity, broadening both geographic reach and product range

Regional Analysis

Chief Executive, Paul Walker, commented: “This has been an exciting year for Sage with a number of significant acquisitions broadening both the products and services we offer to SMEs. We are one of the largest suppliers of business management software solutions to the SME market worldwide and our presence in high growth, high margin markets continues to expand. We have reported strong organic growth in our business, demonstrating the strength and potential of our existing customer base.

We will continue to serve the changing needs of our dynamic SME customer base using our expertise and insight into a wide range of industries. We remain confident about our prospects for continued growth through focusing on value-added services, tailored solutions and premium versions of current products.”

“Riffa Views is a major development project in the Kingdom which will occupy an area of 23 million square feet with 900 luxury villas, an international school, commercial and recreational facilities,” said Yasser Abdulla, Managing Director, Riffa Views. “Our vision is to bring new concepts in residential living and commercial investments to the region. In order to achieve this we need to focus on delivering the best service levels, and implement global best practice methodologies in our sales and marketing. This meant choosing a CRM product, first of all from an established global vendor, second with strong local support from an experienced partner, and of course with enough customizability and scalability to grow with our business.”

“Fakhroo IT Services did an excellent job of implementing Sage Accpac CRM in 30 days,” said Yasser. “One of the most important benefits for Riffa Views is the immediate availability of customer and prospect information to authorized staff to respond quickly and accurately to any queries. Through the Sage Accpac CRM system, all property account managers at Riffa Views have relevant project information available to them on-screen. This includes information of the various phases of the development, area sizes, prices and design styles. In addition, the history of communication with a prospect or customer is stored in the system for review, and financial transactions integrated to Sage Accpac ERP. It’s a seamless process.”

Using Sales Force Automation, Riffa Views has built greater efficiency within its sales force by offering easy access to information. The company is also planning to use Sage Accpac CRM campaign management feature to run targeted marketing campaigns and measure return on marketing investment. In the future, Riffa Views plans to extend the usage of Sage Accpac CRM to online information of property availability for customers and within the company’s different departments.

“Prospective property buyers today have a range of high quality projects to choose from, and most buyers from within the Middle East do not limit themselves geographically. This means that the competition within the real estate industry is on a regional level, not just local. Bahrain is emerging as one of the key strategic choices for both residential and commercial purposes. The key differentiator for a prestigious developer like Riffa Views will be the level of customer service they are able to offer and CRM plays a vital role in facilitating that” said Marc Van der Ven, Managing Director, Sage Middle East.

“We have been running our regional business out of the head office in Dubai, but business growth creates the demand for physical presence and greater commitment,” said Marc Van der Ven, managing director, Sage Software Middle East. “Sage has invested in setting up a local Saudi operation to be closer to our business partners and provide them with marketing and technical support and training to assist customers. The Saudi business environment is becoming increasingly competitive, and moving fast towards WTO compliance. This means that organizations will need to build greater efficiency into their business operations, and need to have reliable systems in place to ensure immediate data availability and also data integrity. There is a good level of awareness in the Kingdom today of these requirements, and businesses are realizing the need to invest in their infrastructure, whether it’s to manage their accounts, their people or their sales & marketing processes.”

The Kingdom makes up 55% of the market in the region for most industries including the IT business. Businesses operating in the Kingdom need to have greater control of their budgets, streamline their business processes, improve customer satisfaction and track their marketing spend to ensure their products and product messages are reaching the right audiences. Sage has the widest range of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions to help local businesses become more competitive and identify and leverage potentially lucrative opportunities.

Another important area where Sage has shown its commitment to the region is the delivery of a world class, localized HRMS solution. With competition on the rise, recruiting and retaining the right talent is vital to an organization’s success. Sage has invested significant time and resources to customize its flagship HRMS solution, Sage Abra HRMS, for the region. It has been Arabized, supports the Hijri calendar and local government regulations, which makes it user friendly for the local market.

Sage Software Middle East today has over 1500 customers, 10,000 software users and 45 highly skilled partners in the region. In Saudi Arabia, Sage has business partners in all major cities with aggressive plans to expand the channel in the Kingdom.

Sage has vast experience in helping organizations improve performance through superior business process automation. In fact, it has the maximum number of medium and large customers globally: HRMS - 19,000+, ERP - 50,000+, CRM – 8,000+. This is backed by a strong regional presence with offices in Riyadh, Dubai & Bahrain and over 45 skilled partners. Sage currently has 1,500 customers and 10,000 users in the region.

Join us for a Sage Solution Day in your city and find out how Sage can help your organization improve performance.

Who should attend:
MD, GM & Directors
HR Managers
Finance Managers
IT Managers
Customer Support Managers

Industries:
Healthcare, Education, Govt/ Semi Govt, Oil & Gas, Banking & Financial Services, Manufacturing, Wholesale Distribution, Trading, Real Estate, Chemicals, FMCG, Retail, Hitech, Transportation & Logistics, Utilities, Services, Projects.

Date, Place and Venue Details:
10th Dec, Riyadh - Marriott Riyadh
12th Dec, Bahrain - Sheraton Bahrain
19th Dec, Kuwait - Sheraton Kuwait

Sage Software invites you to spend an evening with us to understand:

What makes Sage Software an attractive vendor to Partner with in Saudi Arabia? What is the wide selection of solutions that Sage offers in Saudi Arabia?
What support does Sage offer Partners in Saudi Arabia?
What factors are driving demand for HRMS, ERP & CRM in Saudi Arabia?
What are the key verticals that Sage addresses?
How does Sage stack up against competition?

Al Alamiah distributes leading PC brands such as Dell & Acer and has a large number of customers. The company faced the challenge of providing efficient after sales support to an ever expanding customer base. Al Alamiah realized that it needed to be able to track customer support issues and share. this information across the company to resolve problems proactively.

Nadir Amin, Executive Director of Al Alamiah said, “SalesLOGIX has helped streamline our support center activities. Support engineers have all the necessary customer information they need to respond quickly customer issues and information is shared across the company. The system also helps us monitor the performance of our support engineers.”

“We chose SalesLOGIX because it was cost effective, easy to use and could be implemented quickly. More importantly, we needed a package to suit our requirements and SalesLOGIX could be easily customized to do that.” said Nadir.

When a customer encounters a problem, he either calls the support center in Riyadh or sends an email. If a help desk engineer cannot resolve a problem over the phone in 5 minutes he raises a support ticket in SalesLOGIX. If a customer sends an email regarding a support issue, the system automatically creates a support ticket based on the email content. The Support Manager assigns tickets to a mobile field engineer based on their availability and expertise required to resolve the issue.

Once a support ticket reaches a field engineer, he talks to the customer and decides which parts are required to resolve the problem. He can check availability of parts in the system and inform the client whether the problem can be resolved immediately. For critical equipment like Servers, the entire support cycle from the time a customer calls to the time an engineer fixes the problem should not exceed 2 hours. For other equipment like PC, the problem is fixed within 24 hours. When a support ticket is closed, the system automatically notifies a customer that the problem has been resolved.

In some cases when a particular part is not available, Logistics can send a request for material to the principal like Dell and get and expected date of arrival within 30 minutes. The system also helps track material requests against deliveries.

When a support agent gets a call, the customer only has to provide the serial number of the PC. The agent instantly knows whether that PC is under warranty and if required can send a quotation for repair to the customer. For walk-in customers the SalesLogix Support system is integrated to bar code scanners to capture the serial number of the PC.

SalesLOGIX stores comprehensive customer information including computer equipment and support contract details. Engineers record the time spent to resolve each ticket and the system helps Al Alamiah track profitability of support contracts. It also uses the customer’s history of support time and parts used to negotiate new support contracts profitably.

There is a large amount of useful information that principals such as Dell get from the system. These include reports on how many support issues were resolved on time, the first time an engineer visits a site, engineer utilization, machine failure statistics. Dell uses this information to improve its product line, decide what level of certification Al Alamiah support center gets and the benefits linked to that certification such as spare parts credit.

In the future, Al Alamiah plans to allow customers to track their own support tickets over the web. It also plans to setup and internal knowledge base using SalesLOGIX.

Ivor D’Cunha (left), Manager, Mannai Auto Division and Moni George, Senior IS Manager, Mannai Corp. are convinced that SalesLogix CRM will help boost sales of its many Auto brands.

Mannai Auto division represents leading brands in Qatar including GMC, Cadillac, Opel, Hummer and Subaru. When a prospect walks into a showroom or calls the company, details about the prospect such as model preference, finance options and contact details are recorded in SalesLOGIX. The system then reminders sales people to follow up on prospects regularly.

“A prospect that walks into an auto showroom is serious about buying a car,” said Ivor D’Cunha, Manager, Mannai Auto division. “They need to be followed up within 24 hours or less the sale is lost. SalesLOGIX helps the sales team proactively follow up prospects. Information stored within SalesLOGIX is shared across the division allowing sales people easy access to all relevant prospect information.”

He continued, “Once a prospect becomes a customer, we plan to use SalesLOGIX to improve communication with them. Customers can be targeted for new product information, FREE clinic checkups and special service offers that we run from time to time. We believe that better communication is one of the ways to enhance customer satisfaction.”

Moni George, Senior IS Manager, Mannai Corporation said, “Mannai has business divisions with interests in automobiles, consumer goods, engineering & construction, oil & gas, marine & travel. At present, each division has its own customer database. Our CRM vision is to have a consolidated customer database across all the divisions and leverage that database to cross sell products to a customer from different divisions. As a group, we see a huge sales potential in doing this.”

About Mannai Corporation

Established in 1951, Mannai Corporation is the largest private industrial company in Qatar employing over 4000 people. Mannai Corporation has diversified business activities in engineering & construction, services to oil & gas sector, marine operations, distribution of automobiles & consumer products, travel and IT solutions. Mannai Auto division represents leading auto brands GMC, Cadillac, Opel, Hummer & Subaru.