General Consultant Discussion

Breaking this off to a separate message so as not to get buried in other topics.

Help me understand. Sage 100c GOLD comes with Sage CRM Base + 1 User, and Sage 100 SILVER comes with JUST Sage CRM Base. How do they take away a user license previously given? And what does it mean by ""Custom Reporting"" related to Sage 100c GOLD?

We explain what the difference is between the two products and what Sage has said about the future development of the product (more for Sage 300) and then give them the current pricing. So far the clients have chosen 100c/300c 50% of the time.

I have a FAQ with about 10 bullet points. I plan to send this along with some type of follow-up. I think most customers should be going 100c for no other reason than Sage is clearly discontinuing Sage 100 active R&D (my assessment - but I don't share that directly with the customer). I am concerned about several areas: - Not interested in becoming Sage's unpaid customer service department to run ""what if"" analysis on 100 vs 100c and possible used/unused 100c benefits - Cautious about not being seen/blamed by customer for potential Y2+ subscription increases (so far Sage says that the EULA rules state no greater than 10% price hike) - Cautious about not being drawn into a spreadsheet computation of 'what is my 100 maintenance, what is my 100c maintenance at SLP, what is the difference, how many years might I see increases for, etc. - Sage has in the past raised their maintenance over 10% despite the EULA restrictions. They have done this during un-grandfather periods of unlimited licenses, etc. So I'm distrustful of Sage's promise of 10%. In most cases Sage relies on the partner and/or customer to spot this increase and then bring it to Sage's attention for possible resolution. - If customer is not presently using SI, Inventory or MFG the benefits of 100c are significantly less obvious

Also, unless they change their mind (odds are), none of the remaining modules that will eventually be moved to framework (PR v2.0, JC, WO, MRP, etc) will be available in ""classic"". Please correct me if I am wrong.

I explain the basic difference and let them decide. About 50% are moving.

I think those on MFG get a strong push. Those leaning toward GLAPAR get a ""it will probably be inevitable some day"". I'm not sure Sage has formally stated that framework will only come to 100c. They most certainly have strongly hinted/implied it.

@WayneSchulz - I believe we are safe to suggest 100c to all of our customers now that Sage has announced only 100c will be sold to new customers starting in January 2017. On every product update call over the past few months, we have heard that all of the R&D will go into the 100c product. There is very little value to stay on 100, but there are definitely business cases to do so. For example, if the customer is fed up with Sage and they want to change products, I say stop paying business care now and start planning to move to something else down the road even if it is 3 to 5 years down the road. Upgrade to v2015.3 and ride it until it breaks. However, if subscription is the issue, most other publishers are moving to subscription as well, and eventually we will see this across the board. I know it is difficult for many customers, and some of us in this group, to accept this shift to a business care is required approach especially since it was sold incorrectly for so many years (large initial purchase price and then annual M&S). If we view it as a license to use someone else's intellectual property, it is easy to understand why I must keep paying a license fee to use it. Otherwise, I need to write my own program.

My main concern is the price differential between 100 and 100c for existing users. I'm just off a 50-minute phone call with an existing Sage 100 v2015 user on Job Ops. Customers look at their renewal of $8,800 and the Sage 100c SLP of $15,000 and you reach ""no decision"". Every one of my customers has asked ""what happens to my price in year 2"". No exceptions. Sage says ""our EULA only allows 10% yearly price hike"". Let's take that at face value and pretend that price only rises 10%. Now the customer wonders what value is there in switching from 100 to 100c that warrants 10% a year. For each customer maybe that's a different answer but Sage 100c still has a problem justifying the value. There simply is nothing materially new (aside from presently crammed features like SI, SIAB - which BTW require a bump up to Gold maintenance which is $$) and customers can use a calculator. The real answer to the above is ""you should move because Sage is going to stop paying attention to the Sage 100 product"". Which if I were a customer and heard that I'd consider riding out a period of 2-3 years without maintenance then re-evaluating subscription.

Sage should be offering existing business care customers a zero dollar increase to move to 100c. Is that not happening? When I first started talking to customers, we had the 15%, 25% and 35% increase to 100c Silver, Gold and Platinum, respectively. I think at Summit they announced a no fee to upgrade to 100c. I have had a couple of customers actually pay less for 100c than they would pay for their standard business care renewal. Obviously, it depends on what modules, add-ons and user licenses the customer has, but my understanding is that moving to 100c should be the same price (or less) than renewing the standard business care plan. As for the annual increases, we have no idea what Sage will do, and you are correct that 10% is the most they can increase them based on the EULA. I suspect that Sage will continue to increase them at 3% to 6% going forward.

The customer that I just spoke with told me their renewal on 100 was $8,800. They did the math on the 100c SLP which they said was $15,000. Sage holds the price on year 1. Sage says no increase over 10% per EULA in year 2 and that they take the increase off what the customer paid to get onto 100c. The larger the price difference between 100 and 100c the more awkward the initial discussion. Yes, there are probably some customers where 100 is almost the same as 100c. Those are easy conversations. The problems are the ones that aren't so close in $$, the problem is that you don't know until you run the computations, the problem is you are not going to bill the customer for these computations and it takes forever to get any info out of Sage and the customer is confused and pushes off a decision until the day the renewal is due. We are going to see a lot of this imo.

Are you saying the customer figured what the SLP for 100c is like they were signing up brand new? Or, did the 100c SLP annual subscription come out to $15,000? Either way, Sage should discount the 100c subscription to $8,800, and that is the number used for future increases. Jeff Scott confirmed this for me, and I believe I have an email somewhere from him on this. My business care rep, Holly Coates, has been very helpful about preparing quotes for me and talking to me about these renewals. Also, the image you posted above shows that 100c is the same price as the standard business care renewal. I had these exact same concerns early on, but now that Sage has clarified some of their language and is now offering same pricing, it should be an easier conversation. Fingers crossed.

I spent part of last week peeling cost to a 7-user 100 Standard customer on Distribution, PR (10 emp) and BOM. The current price lists (.xlsx) on SageSell (1 for 100 and 1 for 100c) are straightforward to use and the results matched up with the reinstatement quotes I got from Sage. The full 100c quote for this customer was slightly less than a Sage 100 subscription (without any reinstatement, since its impossible to reinstate on Sage 100 anyway). My experience here was that it takes ~15 minutes to reproduce the current renewal and the pricing for 100c. Not as onerous as I'd feared. So, I'm ok with doing a 1st pass to set a baseline with customer; anything further than that I push them to Sage.

I believe the way that 100 is made to equal 100c (as per the invoice sent by Sage above) is by virtue of a promotional credit. Sage just doesn't show the credit. The question being whether that credit stays on the 100c renewal in year 2 or if the customer has to content with the price hike. I'll share if I find anything definitive.

@BrianKelly - FYI until 9/30 any Sage 300 customer can move to Sage 300c at the same price as the current renewal. On their renewal invoice for this, they are also showing the estimated renewal price for next year. So far the estimated renewal price is being shown as the same as the current year. It would be interesting to see if they meet that ""estimated"" price.

Update: Just did another (smaller customer) - 5 user Sage 100 Advanced on the basic core GLAPARBR - about $1,300 cheaper on Sage 100c. I suspect that the lower user counts, possible using Advanced and mostly core financials could work out to the end user benefit.

Just trying to place a renewal for 100 to 100c and have further observations: 1. This is a two stepper: - Sage gives a quote plus sign-off for customer (see example) - Sage gives you a payment form that the customer must fax back to Sage (cannot email). - Presently there appear to be problems with Sage receiving faxes (I've never had good luck with faxing anything to Sage mostly because I have no idea how to confirm it was received). OBSERVATION: - **Check the quote that Sage generates - I had a 100 Advanced given a quote to move to 100 Standard** - The quote doesn't include sales tax but does say ""plus tax"" - My suspicion is that the end users who transition to 100c will largely be the low hanging 5 user GLAPARBR and those who are larger will stay on 100 and then Sage will within the next year have to figure out a better plan to move the remainder

^^ In this example there were no credits for perpetual migration as the 100c was actually less than the 100 (I think due to the fact that the existing user was coming from GLAPARBR and on 100 Advanced)