Sage signs schools science supplier deal

Scientific & Chemical Supplies, a major supplier to the education system of scientific goods and services, has signed an £80,000 deal with UK software company Sage to use its suite of CRM and ERP applications.

Scientific & Chemical Supplies has been a long-time Sage customer but said it has made the move to Sage 1000 to update ageing systems which had become too disparate and inefficient to manage.

Philip Palser, operations manager at Scientific & Chemical, told silicon.com the company was previously using Sage Line 500 as well as ACT from Sage, which created too much complexity for a growing company.

Speaking of the move to Sage 1000, Palser said: "We wanted one customer database," which enables the company to join up its disparate systems with an integrated approach.

He said: "The switch has made information far more visible and created greater transparency across the business," adding office staff can now more quickly access customer records and move across various account functions – efficiencies which will lead to a 10 to 20 per cent increase in productivity, he claimed.

Currently the system supports 55 users, including sales reps and office staff, and Palser said most have adapted very quickly to using the service following a rollout which took around six weeks.

Although the time to roll it out was in line with Palser's expectations he said he had been "taken aback by the scale of the project". "The initial rollout was pretty quick but the fine-tuning took some time," he said.

Palser said Scientific & Chemical paid around £50,000 for Sage CRM MME and £30,000 for Sage 1000.

He said: "That's not too onerous for us but obviously we do have to justify all investment," adding that he expects a "two and a half year pay-back".