September sees the release of Evolution 6.5.

The upgrade is based on a complete overhaul of software and it’s been billed as the most significant change to the mid-market Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution ever.

Seven year’s good luck

In the seven years since Pastel Evolution was launched, it’s attracted over 6 000 businesses from 52 countries. But in that time, the program has not undergone the fundamental changes that are now presented in version 6.5. Two new modules really elevate Evolution to compete head-to-head with the functionality of other ‘imported’ ERP systems. The program now also offers more comprehensive customisation than ever before.

So, what’s new?

Branch Accounting is probably the most exciting new module. It’s been designed specifically for companies with more than just a head office and simply put; it introduces scheduled bi-directional synchronisation and consolidation of data. This two-way data streaming comes with many benefits. In particular, information is now shared, consolidated and saved on both the centralised system at head office as well as at branch level. The benefits of this include the ongoing ability to transact at a local level even if the ADSL lines or virtual private network goes down. Also, any potential loss of data due to fire, theft, etc. can be kept to a minimum because of the regular consolidation and replication of data.

The other change is Evolution Retail Point of Sale which offers a fully integrated end-to-end retail management solution. It’s an easy to use, robust, keyboard driven application that generates sales orders, invoices and credit notes from a single simple interface. When bolted onto the Evolution ERP offering, control of inventory, pricing, inter-branch transfers and purchases are all maintained from a single area at head office.

Other significant enhancements in Evolution 6.5 include the system audit manager, ageing per customer and supplier; Business Intelligence Genie; user defined fields on inventory document transaction lines and improvements on the Manufacturing and CRM modules.

More customisation than ever before

Pastel Evolution has always been customisable. Its locally-based development team of 20 people is constantly developing specific features and making adaptations to the existing system. Because this service comes with significant time and cost benefits, user demand has become overwhelming. Pastel now also has a second R&D team of programmers based in India in order to meet client customisation needs.

Some of the more exciting customised applications that have been built to date are based on smart phone integration.

But Evolution also comes with its own software developers kit (SDK) so users with in-house expertise can customise the system themselves.

Overall, Evolution 6.5 won’t disappoint! It’s the perfect solution for a larger business that has out-grown its standard accounting software and is looking for more insight and control over its affairs.