General Consultant Discussion

As if anybody needed further confirmation of what we'd already suspected/concluded. @MoiraGoggin stumbled into GlassDoor with reviews by current and past employees: http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Sage-North-America-Reviews-E1150.htm Certainly not objective selection (you're more likely to take the time to post if you are either really happy or really pissed), but the theme is troublesome. First, it's pretty consistent about opportunities, benefits, job growth and attitude towards management. There was a reasonable sampling of reviews in the past 6 months, so it's not ancient history. A lot of smoke there ... probably fire too. Second, this won't change on its own. I know that this site get used a lot by folks interested in a company. So, do you think the good ones will go to work anyway? Wow!

Maybe we'l get the group's former employees to post their thoughts................

I had a conversation recently with a former Sage employee who told me he had bailed because he saw this coming and that current employees he was still in touch with told him it was only getting worse.

Sounds believable. Somewhere on LinkedIn is my post from this past Fall noting that it is very, very rare for a European exec to be successful at a US company. Acceptable and successful traits of ""leadership"" there are too often viewed as ""autocratic"" here. The leader tries to lighten up, but then simply becomes erratic. I really wish that Pascal had turned out to be ""the exception that proves the rule."" But increasingly it is apparent that he is just another data point that reduces the standard deviation of correlation.

My comment as a past Sage employee would only be that it is a large company and it has the management issues that come with that. I personally did not like working for a big company and love working in a much smaller environment.

I concur with Roberta's comment. I have worked for a $1B+ public company, where the headquarters was in Canada and our regional upper management was in a different physical location. Neither corporate nor regional management was really ever in touch with what was happening at the operations level, and decisions were primarily made based on the numbers - revenue and headcount. This is evident with Sage, and these decisions must be coming from Newcastle. I doubt these are all Pascal's decisions.

I dunno, John. Places I've seen have a different attitude when they believe in their management, even though they know he's being overruled by corp masters. the Mary Poppins approach to helping the medicine go down results in different attitudes and results. If nothing else, these comments underscore the reality that just getting data is only part of the mgt challenge; interpreting what the data mean is tricky!

I would also say that what people miss in a large company that they can't always even identify, is the personality, the heart, the passion etc. It always feels like something is missing but you can't always put your finger on it. I used to live in Irvine - it is an absolutely beautiful city - perfectly manicured etc. But I always felt like something was missing. I finally figures it out - it is just a beautiful, cold corporate city with no character. I felt the same way about being at Sage at the end.

When I visited Irvine, I was surprised -- amazed -- at how clean the city is. Roberta is right, perfectly manicured. There is not one piece of trash on the ground and certainly no grafitti. (It's a far cry from Milwaukee.)

Orange County does have that reputation ...

So we can appreciate the non-cleanliness in our Midwest havens, @DawnAnastasi? Minneapolis is a great city but there is no ocean just down the freeway. There is Lake Superior - the inland ocean to us Minnesotans - but it's not quite THE ocean....

My wife is from SE MN. Minneapolis is great place! And St Paul had a certain charm of its own (not sure now). I went to college in Cleveland, and that (contrary to the jokes) is an appealing area (and the revival of the past 20 years is impressive). But you are right: rivers running through town, and lakes nearby aren't The Ocean.

Trust me, not all of Orange County is like Irvine. I moved 20 minutes down the freeway to San Juan Capistrano and it is not at all like Irvine - lots of open space, horses, history, mom and pop businesses and very laid back. No place is perfect but it is nice here. But remember, we have to deal with all the garbage that is California and it's economic problems.

Doesn't Disneyland count for something?

Some of these reviews seem transparently fake. Do internal Sage employees really care that the partner channel is being screwed over? Doubtful. Most folks just want to work for a company that is going somewhere, has a clear strategy and decent compensation. Also I loved all the basic grammar problems from people complaining about not being paid ""there fair worth"". Ok.

Real or fake? I'd say there is a mix of both in those comments. If a large company wants to have a personal touch, then one of the best ways is to have a personal able distribution channel that can take the cold, stark, big business feel away and replace it with warm, personal service. Oh wait, that's the opposite of their newest strategy.

I was skeptical about the comments regarding partners.

Peter, you raise a useful point about all the crowdsourcing we see. It certainly can't replace formal market research. And there are always some ringers in the mix. That said, the general thrust of crowdsourcing results has more than the seeds of truth, especially when there are more than a few entries. One reason for that is the free_form entries: if most of the respondents mention the same handful of issues, good or bad, then those issues are important. The issues that mentioned consistently here have to do with how decisions get made, how talent is rewarded, aging technology, attitude towards customers. Glassdoor allows respondents to identify the part of the organization they are reviewing. Many don't but many do. You can see Irvine vs. Atlanta (I don't recall other locations), and sales vs. tech vs. marketing. I could easily imagine a longer-term channel support employee complaining about how they're treating partners; regardless, that certainly wasn't a consistent theme. Grammar problems have always been a pet peeve for me, too. However, I've come to be a bit more discerning. Grammar problems on a resume are an automatic cut. Problems on anything submitted for consideration for customer exposure, including email responses, are no-no. But informal communication? I've loosened up; I'm more interested in what they're trying to say than whether they double-checked it. I've started seeing minor grammar offenses on postings for major news organizations; the post passes spell check, but they miss ""their"" vs. ""they're.

or your vs. you're...

And, for the record, I don't check my postings on these boards too closely either ...

I do not discount the comments regarding the channel and how we are treated. I complain to the front line people on a weekly basis. This week I told two of them in the same e-mail to send my comments up the line. They actually agreed with me and one made the comment: ""I also will pass on your frustrations. As the resellers have to call us for this information, I can assure you we share your concern."" The situation has started getting to them, so I believe the comments are real.

I was also struck by the several complaints regarding unrealistic/unfair commission goal execution. Especially the couple where they felt they'd been cheated out of what they were due. If if not true, and only a perception, it means there is concern for that. Now, take that concern from their own employees, and apply it to our concerns about how partners will be treated with the new tier rules. It doesn't contradict what we'd already concluded.

Sage has a lot of employees and they are not all the same - they are not just robots. You will find some like it and some don't. Just in support there is a huge difference in attitude etc. among the staff. As far as the partners are concerned, again, some in support were (and still are) very concerned about what we deal with. I used to always suggest that the partners would have their own support line that would go directly to specialists so they wouldn't have to start with an analyst I and then take forever to get a call back. Don't think there are not employees there who care about partners. There are certainly those though who are just collecting a pay check and couldn't care less about anything.

@RobertaFerguson I don't think anyone disagrees with that assessment - what is being questioned is whether a legit review from a legit employee would be so focussed on the treatment of partners. I think of it this way - in all my concerns about Sage, strategy, technology - I do not believe I've ever had a conversation with anyone about how poorly they treat their employees and how that impacts Sage. Not saying that nobody else has ever had those conversations - just my opinion that concern for the employee isn't top of mind for most as we're tuned into radio station WIIFM (what's in it for me). .02

I have not insignificant experience in using market research, so I'm more interested here in teasing out what is useful and not. ""Black and white"" isn't useful with m.r. - ever; there's always a std deviation. The caveats mentioned by others here are all very much worth keeping in mind. As I've said earlier, there is some truth in the glassdoor findings; the challenge is how much, where does it apply, and how is it useful to us as partners? The same questions to ask in assessing our customers' feedback. In addition to the 3 or 4 consistent threads of criticism there, I think it's useful to also note: - people say things on an anonymous survey than they don't f2f or even just in signed response. - If I understand Sage correctly, there essentially two HQ areas: Irvine and Atlanta. It seemed to me that most of the responses came from those locations. I think interpretation of that is worth pondering.