You may be considering a new accounting solution or perhaps moving from an existing finance software system to something more modern or robust. If you are researching applications you will undoubtedly have taken a Sage product in to account - you're reading this blog at the very least.
For mid-sized businesses, Sage offers 3 main solutions; Sage Intacct; Sage X3 and; Sage 200. As two of Sage's main solutions, you will likely be wondering what the differences are between Sage X3 vs Sage Intacct.
In this article, we explore some of the main differences between the two software products and give you “food for thought” and ideas for selecting the best product to meet your organisational needs.
When comparing Sage Intacct and Sage X3, it is like comparing “apples and oranges” – in the sense that both are great, but both are quite different!
Sage X3 is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, and it truly is an enterprise-wide application. Whereas Sage Intacct is a best of breed product in the accounting, financial and business management areas of an organisation. However, let’s go into further detail as it’s most important to drill down to who the software is for.
Sage X3 is an extraordinarily successful ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution from Sage. Our What is Sage X3 page provides further information, including best fit from an industry perspective and also a brief history of the product.
In fact, Sage markets X3 as “More than ERP” as “it provides a faster, much more intuitive, and easy to tailor business management solution than conventional ERP’s.”
In contrast, Sage Intacct is a cloud-based accounting, financial and business management software suite that is designed for small to medium sized businesses. It is however also used by larger, global organisations. As Sage's only true-cloud application, Sage Intacct is a popular choice for companies looking to move to a modern, flexible financial management system. Visit What is Sage Intacct to learn more.
When weighing up Sage X3 vs Intacct, the size of your business is a key consideration.
Sage Intacct targets small to medium-sized organisations (SME’s) with often between 10 and 100 employees. The costs are frequently prohibitive for very small businesses, whereas the functionality may not be broad enough on its own for larger organisations, albeit functionality can be extended through integration. An example here being Salesforce for CRM.
Sage X3 works in a similar market space, but more typically aligns with medium, large, and global organisations. Implementation costs do often rule out smaller companies. X3 implementations will comfortably manage systems with 200 to 10,000+ employees, however Sage positions it as a good fit for organisations with around 50 employees and above. As Sage X3 is aimed at the entire enterprise it naturally tends to attract larger sized organisations with richer functional needs.
As software progresses, industry specific strengths can often arise. Looking at Sage X3 vs Intacct, the relative strengths of the two products are:
• Sage Intacct – The key industries Intacct is best fit for include financial services, healthcare, not for profit, professional services, manufacturing, software and SaaS – although there are many other industries too.
• Sage X3– Sage cites the following industry verticals as strengths of the application – chemicals, distribution (retail trade, wholesale), food & beverage, manufacturing (high tech, industrial, medical, and metal fabrication) and services (advertising, consulting, engineering).
Both products cover a broad range of industries.
According to analysis from Capterra, the main functional gaps between the two products are that Sage Intacct does not include (within the core product) distribution management, enterprise asset management, HR management and supply chain management.
Both products operate from an implementation core with add-ons and extensions being available from Sage, the Sage marketplace, and partners. All of these gaps identified by Capterra can be eliminated by extending and tailoring the solution with add-ons.
Sage Intacct deployment
Sage Intacct is and always has been a cloud-based SaaS only application. There is no option with Sage Intacct for an on-premise version. Organisations will use the product via the internet and have access 24/7 from multiple devices. Upgrades are applied automatically four times per year resulting in there only ever being one version of Sage Intacct available. All users are always on the same version, always up to date with minimal to no business disruption. There are no additional costs for Sage Intacct patches and updates, they are all included in the software's monthly subscription.
Sage X3 deployment
With Sage X3 you can choose to run your solution in the cloud, either in your own data centre or through CPiO, via the CPiO Cloud.
There are many factors to consider and you have the flexibility to choose the service offering that works for your organisation. You can migrate to the Cloud and change your Sage X3 deployment model as your business evolves, and this is where the services of an experienced Sage Consultant is needed.
Contact one of our CPiO's solution experts to see Sage X3 and/or Sage Intacct in action to discover the full range of benefits and capabilities for yourself.