Sage 100

Anyone listening to the Partner Hand-ons call?

Certainly!

Yes - but I've determined that a lot of us ""older"" resellers are not the right audience for Sage. How about you?

yeap.....

Do they listen to the BPAC or just tell them what they decided?

is it SIRIUS decisions of SERIUS ones....

In the Product Advisory Council for Sage 100, they tell us what they've decided...

Who on the BPAC actually approved?

Uh oh - new threshold changes...

No 3 years to subscription is not necesarily > perpetual license.

So now subscription sales are the same regardless of when you sell, which is similar to what perpetual has always been. Sounds goo!!!

What Sage fails to recognize with all this margin improvement chatter is all the extra effort required to sell a product that is no longer relative or competitive.

DOn't place orders this week as effective immediately = Monday

Ok, so on Mid Market BPAC we don't necessary approve, but we do voice. And they have adjusted based on our feedback. It was worse. And one thing that's hard to argue with is Sage has traditionally paid some of the highest renewal percentages of all the longstanding ERP providers.

And they have raised the cost of maintenance so much the value to resellers has increased...

Sage has also charged much higher renewal rates to customers than most competitors with modern products.

So IF you can find a way to sell new subscription you can retain your margins. I understand that's a challenging IF.

@BobKohlmeyer I would also argue that Sage is putting in a lower percent of R&D to those products.

@WayneSchulz - everything seems to be a third party add...

I agree and wish they would put more back into the product. We can keep asking/begging but it's their call.

If you want a great laugh - go look at the global partner marketing hub. I am not exagerating.

Someone created that 18 months ago and it gives the appearance on the Sage 100 side of being forgotten

completely agree....nothing about improving the product!!!!! selling the same for 20 years!!!!!

And no new technology. Sage keeps talking about our customer challenges - but we're THEIR customer, and we need technology to be able to sell Sage 100. But alas...

With the new and ""compelling cloud story "", it appears we will all need to become experts at ""Spin"" selling.

Its Sage Summit, but not really. Just like Sage 100Cloud is not really cloud

I am still waiting for the What's new slide!!!!!

What? What 100Cloud isn't cloud?

Loved the Space Shuttle slide. The last Space Shuttle flight was 7/8/2011 - around the last time they invested into Sage100

Who will ask ""if you make a mistake implementing these tiers will the commission be clawed back again?

i guess not....they transfered the individual who wrote the excel formula to Atlanta!!!!!

Dang, I missed the meat (baloney) of it. What was the tier change? (If it's not too complicated.)

And just like that the call ends with us all thinking ""That's 60 minutes of my life that I won't get back"".

When did they make this announcement for the Partner call? I didn't even know it was happening. From the sounds of it, I don't think that I missed much.

Here's the screen shots I took, basically to better serve us partners, they are going to give us less money for margin and really less margin if you have customers that hold on to the belief that ownership is better than leasing or being on subscription.

@JimSteele - Or for those customers that keep their perpetual software so if nothing new comes out and they decide to not pay their annual maintenance, they can still use the software. It won't be turned into Read Only mode.

Ditto @KathyPurkiss - On the positive side, I was able to use the past hour adding value to my client's installation. I feel good about it as does my client. Can the poor folks who invested an hour of their time listening to Sage even come close to having a High Satisfaction Hour???? To paraphrase a tree falling in the woods, if no one showed up to these calls, would Sage make any noise???

I'm just disappointed that Sage keeps changing our margins - and while I certainly don't like it, it was good to know that is happening in the next 6 months. When Sage first came out with ""the Cloud"", I wrote an article titled ""Why Would You Rent The House You Already Own?"" I still feel that way - but based on how many resellers have converted their clients to Sage 100Cloud, I must be in the minority. I just can't get behind the fact that Sage can ""turn off"" the software that some of our clients have invested thousands of dollars in. If they were putting real features into the product? Well, okay then. If it was a technology product where we could easily attach backup documents to Invoices/Purchase Orders/GL Journal Entries - you betcha. But we don't have those things...we have 3rd party add-ons, mostly in a trial mode where you still have to pay if you want the full feature. Sage 100 Cloud just doesn't have the value that some of our competitors have - who truly are Cloud. I believe Sage is banking on the fact that it is just too difficult (and expensive) for clients to change software systems - so they can change policies and they're expecting all of us to get in line and salute.

Blog article: ""Switch to subscription or stop paying maintenance and bank it to move to a modern product in a couple of years

Sage 100cloud is a pretty good deal $$ for two types of customers (A) <3 user accounting or (B) wholesale distribution with 10+ users and 3+ integrations and adv/prem. Beyond that it's debatable because other niche packages probably do better at a better price. So the argument many times is an argument not about price so much as about the value for a customer that doesn't fit the new Sage 100cloud directly (wholesale distribution). I""ve had retailers, architects, doctors, trash haulers. Those companies are all long gone from Sage primarily because they didn't have a strong enough need for what Sage 100cloud is truly great at - wholesale distribution with 10+ users.

I am disappointed with the changes in tier as well, but I guess I've had a little time to adjust to the change. Some background: Sage first presented a 'refresh' to the partner program a year and a half ago to the BPAC. Sage was attempting to align the U.S. partner program to the Global Partner program, which was not good for U.S. partners at all. It was going to go into affect last October 2017. However, it was met with such negative feedback from the BPAC, they ultimately deferred it. This version of the refresh is much less disruptive to our businesses than the direction they were initially heading (as in way, way better). So while not great, it could have been much worse for all of us. At least they've given us the opportunity to still earn higher margins, we just have to follow and support their initiatives to do it. And also I give them credit for announcing this and giving us all some time to adapt before it's implemented. Remember about 4 years ago when they made this kind of change and it was effective almost immediately. Scott Ehman has really tried to be as accommodating as he can with partners, but ultimately they have to answer to UK/shareholders so they have to strike a balance. @SueBennett I had the same dilemma in trying to determine what is in the best interest for our clients given the choices available. As we discussed internally, we ultimately came to the conclusion that Sage was going to force our customers to subscription one way or another over the next few years so we might as well help them cut their best deal early and the side benefit was a few additional features. Once we all got past that we were ok selling Sage 100c/cloud and just did our best to fully inform clients of the advantages/disadvantages of each and let them make the call. I think there is still a 'good deal' available for clients to switch to 100cloud, but at some point it is going to cost them more and I've heard that is coming soon. So unless they plan on just going off plan, I think it make sense to look for a time when they can lock in the lowest annual price available and make the move. Just my opinion.

About 2 years ago I floated an idea to several members of the group about keeping a cloud designed for older versions of the software that 90 Minders could keep going for legacy customers who don't want or need maintenance. A got a roaring silence except for the thud as the idea was dropped. I have pleaded to deaf ears at Sage that if Sage 100 Cloud was going to be a product name, they should have a cloud program where the at least 4 cloud providers in the channel could get listed... crickets... The cloud has left the station and Sage is leaving 100 behind for now... very sad as the product with relatively minimal investment could still be a great contender with all of the features and functions it posesses.

I guess I'm not the only one not getting these notices @KathyPurkiss. @MoiraGoggin could someone please post the link when they know one is coming up? TIA.

After posting comments on this thread that actually make me sound like I am defending Sage, my equilibrium has been off. So: Changing the name to Sage 100cloud was ridiculous. Sage raising prices without significant reinvestment in the product is dishearten. Sage's inability to process orders and tier timely and correctly is disruptive. And, sending us a large Debit memo for mistakes made more than a year ago, well that's just irrational. Ok, I think I'm back in balance.

@BobKohlmeyer - thank you! I read your earlier comments and was wondering if you had been replaced with a pod person. LOL Seriously though, I think we all know the truth is in the middle. Sage is in a fight for their lives too and they need to evolve. Unfortunately they spent the last three years under a snake oil salesman and now we all pay the price. Things are going to get very ugly. I was talking with someone at Sage - I'm not sure if this is already public knowledge - but he let it slip that Sage is pretty much mothballing Sage Live after spending countless millions of dollars and shifting company focus away from legacy products to this glamorous, new, sexy, cloudy product. I think we all kind of knew that - particularly with the purchase of Intacct - but to hear it outright was a splash of cold water. Expect more cost cutting and reduction of services for the channel and the customers. I would also not be shocked to see some products parceled up for resale.

PS. My content guy tells me that when I say things like ""Things are going to get very ugly"" that ""very"" isn't a powerful adverb so I need to be careful with it. So let me rephrase: Things are going to get very, very, very ugly. There. Better.

Note to self: Get a content guy.

It really helps. Sorry. I meant ""it really, really, really helps"". Better. My content guy is paying off!

@PeterWolf - Using too many superlatives. Might start confusing you with another CEO of a very large, very beautiful, the most powerful company in the universe......

So things are going to get even more extremely hugely fucus?

I disagree Kelly was a snake oil salesman. He operated under board guidance and someone was watching his every move with a scorecard. That's partly why he went out on the traditional 3 year turnaround timeframe. I never met the guy, never had any discussion other than one brief email early on. I think his main downfall was not having a strong executive team in place and as Mark Chinsky says -- trying to ""boil the ocean"". If I were to sum up the one thing that brought Sage Group PLC to part ways with Kelly it's the push to operate on a global scale despite all evidence that it wasn't working to materially increase NEW sales. Instead Sage was forced to rely on what seems like a never-ending series of price hikes and/or tier/margin changes. Before you get too upset about the future of Sage 100 recall that when Sage bought Sage 300 (then Accpac) many years ago that product was in a similar doldrums. The software was owned by Computer Associates who was going through a similar funk. My feeling does match Peters in that I expect Steve Hare is around because we are more likely to see sell-offs (probably to private equity) than we are to see another run at ""boiling the ocean"". There's a lot of things Sage could do - most obviously they could sell a bunch of products and use that money to buy an established growing SaaS player (maybe someone like xero). Notably all these software companies seem to have issues when they try to expand quickly outside of their home turf. Intuit doesn't seem to be that successful at doing so. Xero keeps pushing at the US but doesn't seem overly successful. It's not a matter of gross incompetence for Sage. Expanding like this is really really hard. That being said - naming Sage 100c as Sage 100cloud was **one of the dumbest moves I can recall.** It has caused Sage's customers untold amounts of confusion. Forces the channel into explaining something that's unexplainable. It's what you get when you bring in executives from outside the industry who don't realize selling consumer goods is different from selling software.

Quick things that are now great about 100cloud - Very affordable for low user counts (under 5) - Premium (SQL) = no premium price and vastly improve reporting speed - A very robust ISV ecosystem in the wholesale/distribution market - It's relatively stable (just neglected feature and R&D wise) - we don't take tons of calls on ""my system keeps crashing"" What is bad about 100cloud - Everyone that's not primarily wholesale distribution and is 5+ user site - it's typically too expensive - The name is misleading to everyone - Actually running it on hosted cloud is expensive unless the customer has a defined use case (I quote cloud hosting often / few bites)

@WayneSchulz - Two more negatives: 1) The expense of going through the sales process, with not enough money from the sale of the software to pay for the salesfolks involved in the sale. And 2) Providex/lack of technology We went through a lot of pains to learn how to host Sage - we have many Sage 100 and Sage 100Cloud clients running on our hosted servers, and by far the majority of new clients buying Sage 100Cloud automatically pick up our hosting. It's about the only way we can sell Sage 100Cloud - to put it in our Cloud.

Ha! I said ""by far the majority of new Sage clients"". All 3 of them is what I meant.

I agree with Sue. About 80% of new prospects we see are looking for cloud and we historically add 40-50 customers per year in our cloud. - With our SAP practice we see a 5-6 year breakeven on perpetual vs. subscription where I am incented to sell perpetual and customers are increasingly asking for subscription. - Sage is forcing subscription and until now were not compensating appropriately. The new comp model for subscriptin is at least in allignment with the corporate mandate, The current trend is cloud, and Sage is trying to allign itself to the market. Allignement does not come with branding alone. There needs to be substance and Intacct provides that faster than retrofit. Retrofit takes investment and more importantly the mandate from a management team that understands the value in the product.

Totally agree Gary! Remember Dave Butler's ""Lipstick on a pig"" saying?

@SueBennett some of this sales process problem (expense) is we collectively all want to live in 1986 and use (and pay) sales the same way. Who says we should be doing on-site free demos and free consulting (these are they ""hey does Sage work for restaurant changes). WRT Sage 100cloud if the prospect is wholesale/dist that seems to be a lot less time consuming sale. It's when we collectively try to color outside the lines we complain about how costly that is. Reality today is 100cloud is for wholesale distribution. Outside that you need other offerings to service different industries. We are all guilty of this so I'm not directing my comments to you but expanding on your feedback.

@WayneSchulz - Ha! I didn't take it personally. It is, in fact, why we picked up Acumatica 6 years ago, and why we started gearing up on a white-labeled Kronos product for HR/PR/Time and Labor Management 2 years ago. So - I agree with you! My issue is that Sage doesn't understand that increasing tier requirements and decreasing margins is not compatible with the limited ability to sell a product that is no longer competitive in the marketplace.

A harvest strategy is a plan in which investments in a product or product line are reduced or terminated in order to reap maximum profits."" - Investopedia. Reducing margins is part of this strategy.

@WayneSchulz - As discussed in the meeting, Sage is recommending that all partners specialize into specific industry verticals and market based upon creating outcomes for the customer. All ISV's have been saying this for years, but they rarely help partners make the transition. To truly verticalize you either need to be big, effective at working remotely, or find a way to get customers to pay the travel costs. We have been going a little horizontal within the distribution world, picking similar verticals with like requirements to increase the market size and reduce the investment (and likely results). Most customers are looking for solutions which are or appear tailored to thier industry without the need for multiple add ons. Sage is trying to fake it with endorsed solutions, but when the technology stack is broadly diverse the illusion is quickly seen. That is why they are again throwing it on the partners. I do agree that Sage 100 is strongest in wholesale distribtion and why we have seen the Scanforce vs. Scanco battles to try and win the vertical strategy battle in that space. You also need credit card and shipping in the space, and ecommerce is often the cherry on top that wins for NetSuite, so here we are again with multiple vendors and a higher loss rate when competing with Sage 100. I have seen some partners setup a complete solution in our cloud where they don't differentiate the products included in their stack and just sell it as Sage 100 Cloud, SAP Distribution, or with some unique branding (which I personally think is a losing battle as we can't expect to create our own brand recognition). It is easier to hide the technology in the cloud when all the user really cares about is outcome and ease of use. Of course, the issue then arises when the customer needs to go outside the stack, which happens quite frequently.

Sage is grabbing onto buzzwords in order to fool the stock market into thinking they have value going forward. Raising prices didn't get the results they wanted so now they are looking at hacking away at costs, and trying to bully us into forcing customers into what works for buzzwords and Sage shareholders and not our customers.

@WayneSchulz Yes, the ""snake oil salesman"" was a bit over the top by me to describe Stephen Kelly. I don't think my assessment is off the mark by much though. Whether he had board approval or not is beside the point. The board may also approve of snake oil sales tactics if it increases share price so they benefit. In this case, Kelly's message was ""Sage is now an innovative cloud company"" and he sold that just like old timey snake oils salesmen selling dreams and promises as if they were real. Kelly did just that. He claimed Sage was a cloud company, using Sage Live as the poster child, and went on a mission to make it seem like it was all substantial and real when, in actuality, it wasn't real, wasn't substantial, and ultimately has proven to be as effective as snake oil (ie; not at all). I think that the metaphor is solid. Great article if you have some time: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/26/215761377/a-history-of-snake-oil-salesmen

Focusing on image over substance is building a house of cards. Prospect: Cloud? Does that mean it has a web portal with full functionality, and I don't have to manage the data? Honest reply: Err. No. It's an on-premise system which can be hosted, with some optional web plug-ins (and rumors of more on the way). Ex-prospect: Oh.

Or: What internet browsers are compatible with Sage 100 Cloud? It's Cloud -- what do you mean I have to have a server? All the backups are done automatically, right? In the Cloud? And of course, the software is automatically updated with new releases since it is in the Cloud, right?

What would help is if Sage invoiced the partner directly for the licenses and in turn the partner billed their customer for license + hosting + ongoing service (upgrade, support) all as one number. Instead the customer is forced to deal with invoices from Sage - often with little detail on what is included plus additional hosting costs. I am not all that certain what Sage gained from invoicing the customer directly for subscription. I suspect in Sage's grand plan they see an environment where they have the customer credit card and in turn the customer clicks and turns on a $25,000 EDI integration. Sage's internal administrative capabilities seem perpetually 1 to 1.5 years behind what is announced to customers.

When I asked about the partners invoicing subscriptions, there was a convoluted answer regarding revenue recognition issues. It wasn't that exactly, but the fact that they would only be posting the net amount as revenue, rather than the gross amount and then posting the partner margin as commissions. They want to show the gross revenue on their financials. That was my interpretation of their answer. As I stated, the answer was convoluted, and there was no specific reference to any accounting standard. The closest I got to controlling the billing from one entity was a discussion at MOTM between Rob Larsh, Mark Grimes, Gary Feldman and myself about how we could provide a way for the customer to write one check to a single entity. Obviously hosting was included. Rob's answer was use a 3-year subscription bundled with the hosting and consulting over 3 years and financed by Dimension Funding who pays Sage the gross amount of the subscription. The reseller still has to wait for the commission from Sage. I suppose Sage just wants their money, so the partner could pay Sage the gross amount of the subscription and wait for the commission paid by Sage and it accomplishes what they need for reporting. Sage has not offered that option, so now I'm thinking they just want to control the process. As in: the credit card has expired, they follow up once, if at all, and then it gets dropped for months until the partner discovers there was no commission.

I firmly believe the ""one bill to the customer"" is an important step forward because customers want simplicity. The easier we make it for them to go forward, the quicker our sales cycles become and the more we can focus on value creation and not operational nonsense. Sage missed an important opportunity with ""one bill to the customer"" by demanding that they take the lead. Apart from the fact that they are incompetent at it, by allowing the partner to be the primary biller, it allows more innovation in the channel. A partner could bundle licenses, hosting fees, service plans, add-on products, and more in creative ways and provide the customer with a single billing solution. Five years back, I had an idea to build a bundle around Sage CRM with an industry solution and a set of services and present it as turnkey pricing to the customer. I explained the benefits to the head of Sage CRM Dublin at the time and was told that it was a great idea but Sage would never allow it. I asked why and was told because Sage had to be the primary biller. I asked why and was told because that was what the customer wanted. I asked for some sort of evidence behind this declaration because I found it odd when the customer deals primarily with the reseller, not the publisher, and I was treated to a red-faced shouting down of ""this is the way it has to be and you don't have a choice so let it drop."" I looked him in the eye and said ""wow, you don't understand how the channel works. I do have a choice because there are other solutions out there. You seem to think I'm a prisoner with Sage? I can assure you that I am not and no partner is. If you limit our ability to innovate, you are killing our businesses and you will soon find yourself with no channel."" He seemed startled by my declaration of independence, calmed down, and softened his approach a bit after that but it made me realize that Sage was led by lunatics who think they own us and own the customers - we were no partners to them and innovation would be met with resistance - and I had to diversify. That led me to Microsoft as a partner-friendly company. With Microsoft, I can do everything I want with creating bundles and a single price to the customer. And boy is it glorious. Yeah, Microsoft craps the bed just like Sage but my control over the customer relationship is high and it's on me to deliver high value services at a reasonable price in a simple manner to escalate sales and deliver ROI. Sage has had generous margins for years. They still do in many regards. Other than that, their channel mentality is mostly broken. Tom Miller was the last great hope that I saw and Houlion and Langner tied his arms behind his back for the most part.

Now that I've heard the recording, let me get this straight. If I sell a new module or additional user to an existing client, Sage is going to **keep track** of that PORTION of the subscription or M&S renewal and pay me more on it for two years. And if I sell them new stuff a few times a year, they'll break that allll out and pay differently on it. 5% commission for this renewal, except 32% on the last user and the Job Cost module and next year, not so much. And I guess if I bill my own client for perpetual renewals, I get to keep track of that. :-D