Custom Development

Sage 300 is a complex ERP that has evolved over many decades. As its capabilities have expanded, through native development or acquisition, so too have the complexities of its internals. Add to the mix a large array of third party extensions and the resulting environment can provide unique challenges to the introduction of new customizations.

Through the development of over 50 Extender customizations, we have first hand experience with many of the pain points associated with customizing Sage 300. Even the simplest requests can be complicated by the local configuration, third party integrations, or unexpected limitations in Sage.

Improper qualification leads to extensive rework or requires the engagement of other third parties to complete; improper development workflow and tooling to unhandled errors that surface in production; differences in production and test data sets to challenges in testing; and complicated deployment topologies or incomplete upgrades to failed implementations.

All of these pain points can be addressed through improved software development practices and qualification, testing, and implementation processes. We have developed a process to address these pain points to ensure that projects are delivered predictably, of high quality, and with excellent value.

Our custom development service builds on this experience by dilligently working through a process mitigates these risks and helps to deliver a quality result. All custom development engagements go through the following steps:

1. Custom Development Request
2. Site Readiness Assessment
3. Custom Development Proposal
4. Customization Development
5. Testing with Representative Data
6. Production Implementation

Read more about the common pain points in Sage 300 customization development and how we tackle them.

Custom Development Request

Requesting a new customization is easy: send us an email with a description of the problem you’re trying to solve or the workflow that needs automating and we will start working out the details!

Site Readiness Assessment

The Site Readiness Assessment is performed online. You’ll complete a survey that helps us to qualify the customer’s Sage 300 environment for Extender and the customization.

Custom Development Proposal

The proposal includes a description of the request, a high level technical design for the solution, and a set of Acceptance Tests that are used to verify the successful completion of the project in the customer environment.

Once the scope of the project defined in the proposal has been agreed upon, it will be used as the basis for a custom quote.

Customization Development

Once the quote has been accepted and the deposit placed, development work will begin. All customizations are developed using extools and distributed using Customization Manager.

Testing

All development is done using the SAMINC database that is distributed with the current version of Sage 300. Once the development has been completed with the sample data, the customization must be tested in an environment representative of the customer environment before deployment in production.

Testing is conducted by a Business Analyst using a Test database that contains data representative of the production environment.

It is the responsibility of the Business Partner or Client to provide remote access to a representative test environment.

Testing of the installation procedure, the customization logic, and usability are then conducted in the representative environment.

Production Implementation

The implementation of the customization in production is carried out by the same Business Analyst responsible for the testing.

Armed with a strong understanding of the customization and the environment, as well as a clear and practiced deployment procedure that includes provisions for rollback, the Business Analyst performs the implementation and any required training.

That’s it! If you have any questions regarding our approach or would like to discuss some custom development work, please contact us!