General Consultant Discussion

A customer came up for Sage 100 renewal and I thought I would offer 100c as an alternative at that time, as per our training at MOTM. interestingly, for this guy, 100c was cheaper. Also since he uses the manufacturing modules, including WO, he'll get the new stuff next year. So he's all about it! That's one. So I suggest you run the numbers on each renewal and see!

Do you have a sense for exactly what made it cheaper? This might be helpful for guiding existing customers at renewal time. I'd also be sure to clarify to the customer that the manufacturing module is unannounced and we have no information on potential costs.

Also review your customers with Payroll. I have calculated 2 so far where they will pay less by switching to 100c with new Payroll subscription pricing. Both are 5 users or less. It's doubtful this will work with higher user numbers.

I'm finding similar results. Just quoted a platform upgrade from Standard to Advanced, and 100c was $700 for first year (with discounts), while perpetual was $9700. 100c annual fee is approx. 2K more than old Silver plan though.

My guess is the first year would be cheaper. It is the 2nd year and on that hurts.

Based on that quote, break even is 5 years (assuming customer renews maintenance every year).

It was 5 users, complete with WO. Older customer who had bought module-based, rather than user based, like we do now.

Also remember when you are doing breakeven analysis you presume perpetual will stay at the same pricing level and I'm not convinced that will be the case. I can see Sage increasing pricing on the perpetual side so that the ongoing maintenance cost between 100 and 100c is narrower and therefore the decision to go subscription becomes more and more popular.

Cross-post for future search; Please see this thread which contains comments announcing a 3% price hike for 100 and the ""non-grandfathering"" of per module users which appears to force them to pay maintenance on module bundles. https://90minds-com.socialcast.com/messages/29974060?ref=stream

Sage will claim 100c is cheaper by making 100 more expensive. They will slowly price 100 out of being an option so the difference to 100c won't be noticeable. It's all simply a way to change the EULA and avoid the cost of 'selling' renewals and increasing the stock price. And anybody who's upgrade seems cheaper are doing those calculations based on todays published subscription pricing. Try running your computation with the assumption of 5% to 10% annual price increases.

Crazy !!! Sage 100 maint = 11,631.94 Sage 100 C = 20,160.00 - discount 5,376.00 = $14,784.00 With out discount that is $8,500 more and with discount $3,200 more and tell me why the customer should get Sage 100C ??? What am I missing ? They can't even get the quote price total to be on one page..

Diane you should also check on that $11,631.94 and make sure it's not one of the grandfathered maintenance plans that Sage spoke about. I couldn't even tell you what was grandfathered about those but they appear to be user base vs module base and Sage making some type of claim that everyone would need to be priced for maintenance purposes on the user based method. Though really, I think this is just all smoke and mirrors and it's a plain old desperate price hike from North America who is quite possibly under extreme pressure to show revenue growth.

Thanks @WayneSchulz but the maint is not for the Grandfather plans. You know if 100c was out of the park better then maybe those prices but for what you get it is not worth it.

This 100 vs 100c is going to be a mess. It should be career ending for a few people at Sage, however I doubt that it will. The possibility that you're going to run two products (100 vs 100c) against each other with the same code base seems to imply that you're either going to unlock functionality with keys or you are slated for a life of UI differences only. In my opinion Sage will greatly increase 100 pricing over time while leaving 100c stable and continue pointing to 100c as the ""well if you don't like that we increased pricing you can migrate"". In my opinion Sage sometimes is so lacking in imagination and careful thought that I could see them just making 100 maintenance be equal to 100c which would then make the migration decision quite a bit easier.

Sage does not explain the 100C part very well, there are likely additional discounts that do not show on the order form only the excel piece. For many of our conversions, most include an additional number of months at no cost and often 10-20% additional discount.

I agree with almost everything said above, with the exception of Wayne's comment that it probably won't be a career ender for someone. Their career will end shortly we just won't know why they passed through the revolving door.

Sage has stated that they will be adding new features to 100c to give people the incentive to switch. But how much do you want to bet that when they actually come out with some real features that actually differentiate 100c from 100... they'll end up charging extra for those features. Take whatever it is that they are doing/offering with Job Ops. Do you think people will just get that as part of their subscription price that they are currently signing up for with 100c or will this be an additional fee? I would almost bet that they will offer some sort of JO Lite version only available to ""c"" users but that it will come with an additional subscription fee. Sage says that they will be adding bells and whistles to ""c"" as in incentive to switch - but I wouldn't be surprised if this is more of a ""bait and switch"". Just my opinion.

When the difference is just unlocking keys for features, existing customers will eventually see it as another money grab from Sage as we do. After seeing the session for new manufacturing module for 100c, i believe @NicoleRonchetti is right in that users will be excluded from the benefits of their maintenance without going to subscription.

If all the new features are acquisitions of 3rd party enhancements, I think we' know how's footing the bill for those acquisitions.

The fact that I've sat through three (3) 100c presentations, one at MOTM, and none of the presenters appeared to have a clue what future benefit 100c would be getting leads me to believe that Sage is making this up as they go. Ok sorry - I do know one benefit 100c is getting -- it's not having the price hike(s) of 100.

@WayneSchulz - yep, that's the strategy. Keep raising prices on the traditional software to make the subscription look cheaper. With Sage CRM, it's completely skewed already for subscription. I think it's an 8 year break even these days between subscription and perpetual. It's one of the main reasons behind their annual price hikes. (The other reason being they can claim revenue growth because M&S fees go up accordingly.)

Yup, that's what I said a while back. Sage is going to make it impossible to sell perpetual, and by raising hte price, they can make customers that don't switch, keep paying more for maintenance. They know that the majority of erp customers are masochists and will keep paying versus the pain of switching. If they do switch, they sure ain't coming back in our lifetimes. And yet when we propose a few percent price increase in rates (or however you charge) while health insurance and other expenses go up 10% to 20% per year, they look at you with 4 eyes and jump to the next idiot working out of his or her basement for $75/hour

@DianeRuth We were told by our Sage rep that the 100c discounts from the quotes are just for year one. Next years amount will be the Annual Total, yikes!

Subscription pricing is like taking candy from a baby. Especially with ERP which is so hard to switch from. Sage 100c customers have no idea of the long term price increases they are signing up for.

@JennySearl I noticed the Annual Total which I didn't like the looks of. I also saw in small print below that ""Estimated renewal"" and it was a small fraction of that Annual Total, but I'm like you, uneasy having my client sign it with that huge Annual Total even on there.

The other key problem is that I bet Rhonda has been paid $ 0.00 for this analysis and that the customer is now paralyzed and feeling the need to ""run the numbers"" for several additional scenarios. All of which will net Rhonda $ 0.00 in consulting and put her on the potential ""but you told me this was the best way to go"" blame game should maintenance increase dramatically in the next year. I'm going through this now with Sage Intelligence and customers who want to run the numbers every which way but Sunday to see if they're better buying this bundle or switching maintenance. Ultimately I suspect that many of them will do nothing.