K3 McGuffie Brunton, enterprise business solutions provider, has announced the release of a significant upgrade to the latest version of its flagship product, SYSPRO 6.0 ERP. This upgrade will deliver exciting new functionality and enhancements to the user interface and includes new modules that will extend the benefit of the system throughout the user's business - regardless of whether or not they have direct access to the ERP system.

The upgrade is the result of talking to customers and continual investment in developing SYSPRO ERP as a solution that is easy to use, easy to deploy and easy to maintain. It provides all the key functions that users need in any given environment and delivers maximum benefits today and into the future. 

Today, business software users are looking for commonality in the applications they use, hence the reason why SYSPRO has been developed along the familiar lines of Microsoft products. This makes the learning curve simpler for users and enables them to gain greater benefits from the system. The new modules include:

- SYSPRO Office Integration, giving users secure access to SYSPRO data using Microsoft Word and Excel

- Trade Promotions for managing prices, promotions and rebates

- Contact Management, which integrates with Outlook and other Microsoft applications, such as MapPoint

- Factory Scheduling based on the Preactor scheduler product

- Families and Groupings enabling forecasters to optimize inventory

- The new SYSPRO Office Integration module is a major highlight of this release, allowing anyone within the user organisation to have remote access to SYSPRO data using Microsoft Office applications. 

Howard Joseph, Managing Director of K3 McGuffie Brunton, said: "Continual investment in SYSPRO ERP is allowing us to keep in step with our customers' needs as well as enabling us to lead the market by example with innovative solutions. By adopting standard Microsoft technology, we have not only made it much easier for customers to gain full benefit of their SYSPRO ERP investment, we can now also give them access to SYSPRO information, using secure web services through very familiar spreadsheet and word processing applications. The new calendar, styled on Outlook, is an example where we are introducing a common user interface, thereby enabling users to become quickly proficient in its use."