Newcastle upon Tyne-based Sage Group Plc has launched a new module for its Sovereign accounting system which it describes as an Executive Information System for the small to medium-sized business. It’s not quite what most of us would think of as an EIS, though: it can handle data only from Sovereign and its various modules and dealer-produced additions, so don’t try asking it anything too demanding. It takes this MS-DOS or Unix-based data and presents it in a Windows format in a variety of graphical styles. Sovereign product manager Jim Beckwith justifies calling it an Executive Information System by claiming An EIS that’s being bought by a corporate client would probably expect to pull data from different sources, but a Sovereign customer would not have these different data sources. He added that it would be technically possible to add the facility to draw on alien sources, but that the company had no plans to do so. Sovereign EIS comes with a series of standard screens for customers, bank, suppliers, profit and loss accounts, balance sheet, sales order processing and stock. It’s available as a shrink-wrapped module, or to resellers with a developers’ tool kit, so that screens and reports can be customised to users’ individual requirements. It’s available now, costing ?700.
