Simply Accounting Batch Run

Tackling issues in Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Dallas

Every Wednesday this season, the research staff at the "Playbook" will be your questions by e-mail (playbook@nfl.com) and Twitter (@ NFLN_Playbook with # hashtags askplaybook), and respond in this blog .

This is the first batch of questions we have selected. Keep sending your questions to football, because you get a chance to be answered on "Playbook" by Joe Theismann, Sterling Sharpe, Brian Baldinger and Matt Millen.

"The Falcons' secondary problems as a result of the regime, to play it safe, play corner, or the lack of precipitation through?” — Lamar

The Falcons’ corners aren’t very good man, on-the-ball defenders, so they play a lot of soft zones and Cover 2. They simply rely on their front four — they don’t like to blitz — so that makes their defense susceptible to a finely tuned passing attack.

Their front four is solid, but they need to get home to get opposing offenses off the field. Ray Edwards was a nice addition in early free agency and will complement John Abraham and Kroy Biermann , but it will be interesting to see how much playing time former Patriot safety and newly minted Falcon James Sanders will see. He could shore up Atlanta’s defensive backend.

“How will the Texans new D handle the run? They are a very small 3-4 D line.” — Gustavo

Unlike a typical 3-4, defensive coordinator Wade Phillips is asking his front line to play a “one-gap” responsibility by using an under front. Though Mario Williams is labeled as a linebacker, he’s playing defensive end from a stand-up position. Most 3-4 teams ask their interior lineman to hold two gaps, vs. Phillips’ variation of the scheme, which allows his smaller guys to play in one gap. Because Phillips puts his personnel in a position to be successful, we see their run defense being better than in years past.

Sage Software – A Guide to the Product Portfolio - Software Advice ...

By market share, SAP is the largest business applications software vendor. Oracle is number two. You probably knew that. Do you know the third largest applications vendor?

Sage, with 8% market share, is the third largest business applications software vendor. And in the SMB segment (companies with fewer than 500 employees), it's the largest. Sage is a $1 billion plus company whose software products power hundreds of thousands of organizations' mission-critical functions. However, given the evolution of this highly acquisitive company, its product portfolio and corporate background might merit some explaining. We'll give it a try.

Sage was founded by David Goldman in 1981 in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, and first sold estimating and accounting software for the printing industry. Like its competitors, the company grew dramatically and primarily through acquisitions. Sage focused mostly on the U.K. market until it entered the North American market in 1991 via the acquisition of DacEasy accounting software. Since then, the company has acquired over 100 software systems. Some of these acquisitions have helped the company penetrate new geographic markets or narrow verticals, while some of the acquired products have been more broad.

Sage's more notable North American acquisitions are presented below:

Of course, Sage has a number of other products that are used by small companies in a variety of industries – Peachtree, Simply Accounting, SageCRM, ACT!, SalesLogix, etc. For the scope of this article, we will focus on clarifying Sage's ERP offerings in the manufacturing and distribution software industries. MAS 90/200/500, X3, Pro, and PFW are the most prevalent, so let's take a look at each in detail.

MAS: One Size Fits Most As can be seen in the diagram above, MAS a popular system that Sage markets to a lot of buyers. State of the Art, Inc. first developed MAS (Master Accounting Series) in the 1980's and staked its claim in the SMB market by building out a large reseller network. Many of these resellers included CPAs who used the program and even resold it to their clients. Although many CPAs stopped reselling the system as conflicts of interest occurred, this scenario proved effective in getting MAS installed in more than 70,000 locations. Sage eventually acquired State of the Art in 1998, giving the British company a strategic position in the North American SMB market.

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