This is according to Muphulusi Nematondoni, Head of Sage Intacct at Sage Platinum reseller Rayburn Holdings, who says Sage Intacct features are addressing some of the top headaches faced by local finance departments.

“The Rayburn team draws on over 40 years of sector-specific expertise to understand the environments our customers operate in. Plus, as a CA(SA) with audit experience myself, I have insight into the financial team’s pain points,” he says. “With our expertise and Sage Intacct, we’re helping our customers overcome some of the biggest challenges they face today.”

These challenges include a lack of up-to-date visibility across the environment, stock theft and losses, and unnecessarily time-consuming processes.

Nematondoni cites the example of a manufacturer that was losing up to half of its stock of crucial raw materials until it implemented the Bill of Materials function in the Distribution and Manufacturing Operations for Sage Intacct module.

Distribution and Manufacturing Operations for Sage Intacct enables organisations to reduce costs and efficiently manage the design, make and assemble functions of the production process, track routing and costs for real-time visibility throughout manufacturing and assembly, and achieve visibility into production resources, including machines, inventory and labour.

“They are now able to see live information being fed into the system so they can spot anomalies in stock levels and movements and establish relationships between the movement of stock and revenue. Because of the visibility and improved controls, they have significantly reduced losses. Instead of waiting a week or two to reconcile what’s on hand, this is now done daily, so it becomes harder for stock to go missing,” he says.

Another customer, a food manufacturer, has reduced risk and improved revenue by improving its ability to monitor slow moving stock and stock about to expire.

“It improved their controls to help minimise overbuying or underbuying,” Nematondoni says.

Sage Intacct Consolidations Reporting with Auto-Eliminations allows organisations to consolidate hundreds of entities in minutes, simplifying complex multi-entity, multi-currency and multi-level consolidations. Sage Intacct Bank Feeds connects securely to over 10 000 banks worldwide to deliver daily accurate cash insights and automated transaction matching. “Sage Intacct is linked to all local major banks, which saves organisations a lot of time,” he says.

“We recently hosted an insightful Sage Intacct event aimed at showcasing the power of modern cloud-based financial management partnered with Sage. The event featured firsthand testimonials from two of Lorge’s valued clients, the Trevor Noah Foundation and Iseli, who shared how Sage Intacct has transformed their financial operations.

“Using Sage Intacct with Rayburn expertise has been a game-changer for us,” says Mpolokeng Pitso, assistant director of Finance and Operations at the Trevor Noah Foundation. “We can now access real-time data and insights that support smarter decision-making and ensure accountability to our supporters.”

“With Sage Intacct, we’ve gained greater visibility into our finances, which has been essential for our growth,” Lebohang Tyilekile, ERP Systems Operator at Iseli Energy, says. “Rayburn implementation and support have ensured that we can make informed decisions and operate efficiently in a competitive market.”

The event highlighted Rayburn’s dedication to supporting clients across diverse sectors. Through a combination of expertise and cutting-edge technology, Rayburn and Sage Intacct are driving efficient, scalable solutions tailored to meet the unique needs of each client.

Nematondoni notes that Rayburn partners with customers to understand their business needs, advise on appropriate Sage Intacct features to meet their needs and customise the solution for specialised requirements.

“We look at the client business as a whole – we’re client-centric not product-centric,” he says.

“We advise wisely, considering their needs and the costs versus benefits of particular features. Instead of basic implementations, we customise the solution so no two entities have exactly the same Sage Intacct environment. We are able to advise on business processes and beyond – understanding where customers see businesses going, how they grow, the risks they need to mitigate and how to attain an optimal balance between growth and efficient management, while also offering the best goods and services.”

Even though Rayburn has been in business for nearly 40 years, the company remains agile and updates its processes and best practice methodologies in line with changing trends and markets, he says. Rayburn now focuses on supporting customers in the services, manufacturing, mining, agriculture, hospitality, healthcare and non-profit sectors, he says.

The post Sage Intacct cuts risk and boosts revenue for Rayburn Holdings customers appeared first on Rayburn Holdings.

On this page you can scan the list of release highlights to get a quick overview of the release or you can review a list of all the changes organized by category.

Release highlights

All changes

The post Sage Intacct 2024 New Release appeared first on Rayburn Holdings.

The Woman of Stature Awards South Africa, now in its 11th year, shines a spotlight on remarkable women who have triumphed within their respective industries. This year, over 200 nominations were submitted and 87 finalists announced. The gala awards dinner in Johannesburg celebrated outstanding women in several categories.

Representing Rayburn at the event on behalf of Neville Govender, Group CEO, were Rosette Cele, key accounts manager and customer success manager at Rayburn Group, and Marry-Jane Nqwane, a seasoned Sage 300 consultant at Rayburn.

Cele describes the awards as inspiring: “The event was the cream of the crop celebrating the cream of the crop. It celebrated real success, women who not only generate revenue, but who are also catalysts and forces to be reckoned with in their sectors and their communities.”

She presented the Rayburn-sponsored Woman in Technology trophy to Fikile Mdiniso, a data engineer at MTN South Africa, as well as a commercial model and philanthropist.

Rayburn supported the awards for the first time this year, but plans to continue sponsoring the event in line with its commitment to empowering women. Cele says the awards align with Rayburn’s philosophies: “In our business, gender equality is important and we also recognise the multiple roles women play in society, at home and at work.”

Cele notes that the company has a gender imbalance – unusually, in favour of women. “I don’t think it was planned, but we have a three-to-one ratio of women to men, and women outnumber men overall,” she says.

She believes this is due to the company’s supportive environment, flexible hours and focus on upskilling and empowerment. “The company enables working moms to meet their family obligations and catch up on work in the evening; it has helped staff continue working through incapacitating illnesses where other companies might have laid them off. They show interest in our personal priorities and home lives and help us balance these with work. We are very socially driven, and this instils great loyalty among employees,” Cele says.

The post Rayburn Holdings sponsors Woman of Stature Technology trophy to elevate women in IT appeared first on Rayburn Holdings.

By Tiana Cline for Rayburn
Johannesburg, 20 Feb 2024

The workplace in 2024 looks remarkably different to what it did just a few years ago. The way employees work, collaborate and communicate has shifted, but HR and payroll hasn’t quite kept up with how modern businesses operate. “Business is changing extremely fast,” says Francois Steyn, a chartered HR professional at Rayburn. “In the 90s, HR moved beyond record-keeping. HR went from being only operational to transactional, moving to a value-add position.”

While little changed in the 2000s, the coronavirus pandemic accelerated technology to the point that people now expect fast, easy-to-navigate systems for personal use. Today, typical HR and payroll systems with basic functionality are the status quo, but do not cater for industry-specific functionality. The mining industry, for example, has strict rules and regulations around injuries, which require real-time incident recording. Larger retailers with employee scheduling requirements need a time and attendance system that goes beyond clocking in and out using biometrics.

Beyond record-keeping

“Historically, HR and payroll is a completely manual, paper-driven process,” explains Sybrand Botes, Rayburn’s head of department for HR and payroll. Even though companies have advanced to the point of buying HR and payroll systems, they’re mostly there for record-keeping, helping to meet legislative requirements. “But now as we’re moving into the next generation of requirements, people are looking at these systems to act as a guideline to what the process needs to be,” says Botes. “But the moment you automate something that involves people, it doesn’t always work as expected because people are human systems.”

What is actually required from HR and payroll is a solution that needs to be both flexible and configurable, a solution that must fit into multiple business types and industries. Simply put, modern businesses require workflows that weren’t originally created in HR and payroll systems. “In the current marketplace, some businesses opt to provide a solution that is plug-and-play and others create a system,” adds Botes. While there is technology to fill this gap, there needs to be a next step, which is where Botes believes artificial intelligence (AI) will have a role to play: “HR has always kind of been an advisory role to business and now systems are starting to become more involved from that perspective. AI has the ability to give recommendations of what business decisions need to be and that’s the direction technology is moving in.”

According to McKinsey’s state of AI report for 2023, one in three businesses plan to increase their investment in AI. In HR and payroll, AI is also accelerating the creation of job roles, creating standardised descriptions based on company data. “A lot of big companies do not have sufficient job descriptions – even if they use electronic recruitment systems. That integration will make it so much easier for HR people to get the information they need to do their business,” says Steyn. “Business decisions will become much faster and more user-friendly.” As more employee data is collected over time, AI may be able to assist with tasks like analysing past hiring patterns or providing recommendations for the best candidates for internal roles.

The age of mobility

There’s no question that the requirements from HR and payroll have become more intricate. From a process perspective, there are corporates that treat employee contracts as living documents. “A system not only designs and generates these documents, everybody from legal to HR and the employee need to have a view of this document at all times – and sign it off,” explains Botes. “Everything needs to be an electronic and process flow-driven experience. At the moment, it’s still an expensive solution to get implemented for most companies but we’re moving into an era where that’s going to be the norm.”

Another change is the ability for employees to use WhatsApp to view payslips or apply for leave on ESS. There are even add-ons that include capabilities like loan management – taking salary advances before payday. “That is where employees are moving towards – they want an easy way of engaging with the business and with HR, the way they apply for leave, the way they get scheduled for temporary work… that is where the future lies,” says Steyn. As the workforce becomes more dispersed, HR and payroll systems need to adapt with mobility in mind and provide solutions that are both multi-legislation and multi-currency. “They don’t want to use complicated business intelligence systems that require an IT degree to be able to extract data,” adds Steyn. “And while there may not be an architecture right now that completely caters for everything, a step forward is meeting an HR consultant who can find out the bigger picture. It’s not just about the HR or payroll you want to replace, it’s about understanding the whole business ecosystem and tailoring a solution for a more seamless integration and greater functionality.”

The post Future trends in HR and payroll solutions appeared first on Rayburn Holdings.

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This is an exclusive accolade to the partner who shows an unwavering commitment to the Sage strategy, ambition and values, shows innovation and drives market acceleration not only for their business, but for Sage ecosystems.

Says Neville Govender, CEO of Rayburn, “Our customer-first approach to service provision, coupled with our unparalleled industry experience, adds creative value to the customers embarking on their digital transformation journey. Our position to our customers is to see the value in the Sage brand and align to the Sage strategy to ensure flawless execution.

“This approach sets us apart from our competitors and keeps us ahead of current thinking in business solutions. While it was an honour to receive the award with many partners competing for the award, my team’s unwavering commitment to service excellence has resulted in us achieving this accolade.”

As an established ICT services provider with presence in Africa and the Middle East, Rayburn plans to continue to grow its market share across the region.

“Allow us to be your trusted business advisor to find the right solutions that take your organisation to the next level,” says Neville Govender.

Pieter Bensch, Executive Vice President for Sage Africa & Middle East, says, “We congratulate Rayburn Consulting and commend the company for its excellence in advancing our vision to become a great software-as-a-service (SaaS) company. Rayburn has demonstrated a customer-centric approach and achieved exceptional performance throughout the year. We support the company’s ambition to take on new cloud products and expand into new territories.”

About Rayburn Consulting

Our reputation rests on smart thinking and decisive action from a team of talented experts who plan, design, cost and develop implementation process, supervise implementation, manage existing infrastructure growth and identify key intervention processes to ensure flawless system integration.

We customize practical, efficient and cost-effective solutions to deal across multiple industries.

We provide predictive and actionable intelligence that enables strategic and operational decision making and can be a game-changer for your business empower our cusotmers with industry intelligence that will enable them to make smarter decisions faster for accelerated growth

About Sage

Sage is the global market leader for technology that provides small and medium businesses with the visibility, flexibility and efficiency to manage finances, operations and people. With our partners, Sage is trusted by millions of customers worldwide to deliver the best cloud technology and support. Our years of experience mean that our colleagues and partners understand how to serve our customers and communities through the good, and more challenging times. We are here to help, with practical advice, solutions, expertise and insight.

Find out more: www.sage.com/za

The post Rayburn Consulting named Sage EVP Partner of the Year appeared first on Rayburn Holdings.

In industries such as manufacturing, distribution and services, the digital revolution has come in the form of Industry 4.0, where connectivity and the availability of data allows businesses to produce higher quality goods at lower cost. It allows the virtual and physical worlds to integrate, bringing forth innovation and powerful new ways of working.

• Big data analytics – Businesses can take advantage of the data they hold to make better and faster decisions, increase productivity and efficiency, identify new opportunities, and create happier customers.
• The Internet of Things – IoT allows hardware devices, often through sensors, to connect, send and receive data. In manufacturing for example, networked devices on the factory floor can collect data to drive predictive analytics.
• Automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence – Automation is already in use in multiple industries, for software applications or through robots on an assembly line. In time, advances in AI could allow robots to take over the manufacturing and distribution process themselves.

Business management supports digital transformation

ERP has been associated with monolithic systems that have come to symbolize slow IT and poor customer satisfaction. That is why the future is more than ERP – it’s about business management solutions. Businesses embarking on digital transformation initiatives must consider replacing ERP systems with business management solutions to develop a flexible and agile core which can underpin and support their strategy. Legacy ERP holds businesses back – for example, poor legacy ERP user experiences can interfere with productivity and efficiency, even if they have digital technology working successfully elsewhere. To create a robust and agile digital core, businesses must look at replacing their existing ERP systems with business management solutions that have system-of-record capabilities, which makes up the essential core of a digital business. A solid digital core is crucial to build differentiated and innovative solutions.

The post Benefits of Digital Transformation appeared first on Rayburn Holdings.

We don’t have to go very far back in time for a good example of one of these attacks on a healthcare or pharma organization. On June 27, 2017, Merck, one of the largest pharma companies in the world, and 2,000 other companies were hit with ransomware called Petya that infected employees’ computers across 65 countries and left a ransomware note demanding a bitcoin payment to decrypt their infected files. Weeks later, the pharma giant is still trying to get their infrastructure back on track.

So, before a company like Merck – or any company for that matter – can determine a plan of action to prevent the next cyberattack, it must consider why the attack happened in the first place. With that in mind, let’s explore a few narratives that could come into play in the process of becoming a cyberattack target.

Four Narratives that Could Explain Why

1. A decade ago, cybersecurity was all about securing the perimeter to ensure that corporate IT systems were closed to outsiders. In the past five years, however, working remotely has become more and more ubiquitous with a high percentage of employees working outside of the perimeter, accessing sensitive data through the cloud and unsecured systems, and often doing it all via a mobile device. As a result, the entire enterprise has become fundamentally more vulnerable, making it difficult to determine where the perimeter ends and the outside world begins.
2. Healthcare and life sciences companies have long been slow to innovate when it comes to digital, and this hasn’t been helped by the fact that technology is not their core business proposition. In fact, as other industries have had to adopt new business models to grow their revenues, which typically resulted in disproportionate investment into technology, healthcare and life sciences have stayed a little behind the digitization curve.
3. For many organizations, being slow to innovate is not by choice. Instead, it’s often for compliance reasons, like in a scenario where a business has to choose between meeting the latest regulatory standard and rolling out a new technology. In this case, the company may stay in business without the new software component, but not without meeting the regulatory standard. Indeed, compliance has long been a burden to the CIO agenda.
4. Finally, considering the above narrative about the ever-expanding perimeter and how the June cyberattack on Merck affected so many employees, it’s worth noting that the companies making headlines for data breaches aren’t small or even medium-sized. Instead, hackers go after the biggest and, by extension, most profitable targets – companies with the highest numbers of employees, locations, and potential entry points.

How to Plan for What’s Next

Considering the size and scope of the data breach against Merck, it’s hard not to start posing what-if questions. What if they had implemented better or more security controls sooner? What if they had run a mixture of Windows and iOS to stave off Windows-attacking viruses like WannaCry and Petya? What if they had identified the virus before it made its way across the entire enterprise?

There will always be what-ifs, but with so many possible access points for a data breach, it’s nearly impossible to ever be 100% uncompromised, especially when you’re a huge company trying to balance growth and revenue with compliance and security.

It’s not easy, but it is absolutely worth your time to not only determine a plan to improve your cybersecurity, but also create a plan for how to respond if your company falls victim to a cyberattack. The best way to get started is to assume you’re already compromised, or that you’ll be compromised tomorrow at the latest, and then find a partner who can help you. The faster you make cybersecurity a priority, the better off you’ll be.

The post Weighing Cybersecurity Risk Factors in Life & Healthcare appeared first on Rayburn Holdings.

In a recent posting we discussed “journey mapping” as a tool for improving customer experiences in the healthcare sector. This week, we share thoughts on “design thinking,” an approach that is described as “a human-centered way of innovation that draws from the designer toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success,” according to design thinking guru Tim Brown, Chief Executive Officer, IDEO.

Put simply, design thinking tackles problems with the objective of keeping peoples’ needs always in mind while working towards solutions that succeed from a business perspective as well. It does so by a process of divergent thinking – ideating, prototyping, testing – that ultimately converges on the most viable solution.

When it comes to the United States’ healthcare sector, however, applying design thinking to working with health plans and health providers is particularly challenging. Here’s why:

Firstly, the healthcare sector’s complex regulatory framework means stakeholders are sanctioned more for under-regulating than for over-regulating, so they tend to be cautious when design and regulation come face-to-face. One approach, however, is to brainstorm design challenges as if the rules simply don’t exist, and then to overlay them to see where they create pain points, adjusting the design as needed.

A second challenge when applying design thinking in healthcare is designing a service that works for an entire population. Most products and services are aimed at specific demographics. With healthcare, however, a true design solution must cater to people of varying ages, accessibility needs, income levels, language abilities, as well as housing and employment status.

One more major challenge for healthcare-related design is its multi-agency structure. A care plan for someone can involve several different providers, from a hospital to a physical therapist, all of whom need to be brought onboard during the design thinking process. Add in the growing importance of home care, the accompanying family & friends support network, and the ability to apply this concept at scale is apparent.

To combat the variables of design thinking in healthcare in the real world, it is critical that hospitals and healthcare companies prioritize prototyping and testing before implementing change. Focus groups enable concepts to be tested with a variety of patient demographics and, importantly, with service providers, sometimes overlooked in an increasingly patient-centric industry.

Real change requires stakeholders to work together, often necessitating a shift in culture and the willingness to reject “custom and practice.” For those willing to embrace change, design thinking offers a way to reconcile the needs of both patients and service providers.

The post Overcoming Healthcare’s Challenges in Design Thinking appeared first on Rayburn Holdings.

As the retail industry turns increasingly digital, customers are now more well-informed and connected than ever before. To take on this challenge, and drive significant customer engagement, retailers need to blur the lines between the offline and online retail experience. This calls for making data analytics—operational and customer—a key component of an organization’s growth strategy.

In our latest white paper, Retail Analytics: The 5 Keys to Success for Customer Analytics in the Retail Industry, we focus on how data analytics can help retailers to better serve their customers and in turn increase conversion rate, loyalty, and ROI. We go over the importance of having a personalized shopping experience for your customers and how to build an effective personalization strategy.

This latest piece is a follow-up to our white paper from last fall, Retail Analytics: Turning Operational Data into Actionable Insights, which highlights the importance of operational analytics and its potential in solving the various challenges that retailers face. More specifically, retailers are able to analyze various internal functions within their organization and subsequently streamline them for a greater ROI.

Both these papers show the importance of data analytics within the retail industry and how insights drawn from data analytics can help retailers discover business capabilities/challenges and increase overall ROI.

The post How to Leverage Customer Analytics in the Retail Industry appeared first on Rayburn Holdings.