Sage 100

Anyone else being asked to attend a briefing with Tom Miller Monday via phone? @PeterWolf ? My guess is that it has something to do with ERP X3 cross sell since PR indicated the topic was about cross-sell opportunities.

I spoke with Tom and Sohpie on Friday. Bottom line is that they are finally announcing what I have been warning folks about since February: Sage is going to start calling ERP customers to identify potential interest in Sage CRM. If they uncover the lead, they are going to figure out where it goes and they are withholding margin. In theory if you are a ""true"" Sage CRM partner as well as Sage ERP (Accpac or MAS), the lead will go back to you but don't expect a margin. You will get the service opportunity though. And what does ""true"" mean? Not sure ... I think they want to make sure it will be handle appropriately. They are starting with a limited trial with a limited set of customers. If things go well, they will ramp up quickly. So ... anyone want to talk about joint marketing with me and my team in order to get out in front of this with your clients before Sage comes a-knocking?

Which naturally brings about the question of - what exactly does the certification test mean? http://erplife.com/2012/07/09/sage-crm-cross-sell/

Yes ... well ... regarding the certification tests ... here's a little story about my meeting with Sophie back in February: We were discussing this plan for Sage to call customers direct and uncover Sage CRM interest among the ERP customers and she mentioned that because there aren't many Sage CRM certified partners that Sage would need to align them to partners that were certified. I raised two warning flags on this practice: 1. It would be extremely bad if they aligned ABC Consulting's MAS customer with a Sage CRM var that also does MAS work. She assured me that wouldn't happen but ... there are very few Sage CRM only firms out there so they need to figure something out on this regard. 2. At that point in time, all the MAS and Accpac partners were forced to get certifications in Sage CRM. After a little bit of discussion here, it became clear that she / her group weren't aware of the certification policy changes. After we discussed them, she hinted that it didn't make sense to force ERP partners to pick up CRM if they didn't want to - I agreed with that but the facts were that the new requirements were out there and most people had already done their re-certs. So ... not sure how they are going to dance around that issue. They have subsequently dropped / changed the CRM portion of the certification, haven't they?

I think the CRM free-standing certification was dropped at the 11th hour. If I remember correctly part of the reason they dropped it was because not many partners took the exam.