Sage 100

Client got a mas200 maintenance renewal from sage, which automatically has it as a gold plan. They were silver last year. I'm getting rusty in my old age. I though they were pushing people from bronze to silver. Are they now mandating gold (and killing all support options for us) or is this an overly aggressive sales rep? They have jobops so good luck with that sage

They usually try pushing for Gold first. You'd be surprised how many clients don't even notice it.

@MarkChinsky I think when good old Atlas re-did support it moved everyone up a level. Sage just wants to see how many customers are paying attention ...

Everyone is pitched gold. Those who pay attention renew at Silver.

I am not so sure - I thought Silver used to include support as well (not a limited # of cases) -- and I could swear that when I asked Sage they said they moved them to Gold to ""keep them comparable"" to what they used to have for support with Sage. And, no, I'm not buying that. It's all BS.

@MarkChinsky my understanding is that 1) they dropped the Bronze option completely and 2) the send out renewal notices at Gold in an attempt to up-sell the customer. The customer then must call Sage to renew under the Silver plan. It screams snake-oil salesman to me but it is what it is. We get at least one call per month from disgruntled customers about the increase in costs and have to talk them down. It's pretty frustrating as we didn't send the invoice but it comes with the partnership with Sage. I'm sure there are things we do or don't do that rubs Sage wrong as well.

We have also had Sage send us renewals where the level of service was marked Gold. We invoice the customer as Gold. Then two weeks before renewal date (and the customer happened to have just paid us) Sage sends an ""update"" and suddenly the level of service is Silver with no change in price. Sage's explanation was they made a mistake and that we would have to re-invoice the customer because Sage was not making any exceptions. Clearly this is a problem area for Sage as we all are reporting very similar experiences with the renewals. Personally I believe Sage would like to just cut us out of the mix altogether and invoice the customer directly.

@WayneSchulz we stopped billing maintenance 2 years ago. We had dedicated account managers where 50% or more of their time was spent billing and collecting maintenance renewals. We had an over 80% renewal rate. When Sage contracted this out-of-house, the contractors butted heads with our team constantly. I used to have the ladies in my office once a week in tears out of frustration created by the contractor. We would have things lined out with the client and then Sage would call, get the customer confused over who to pay, what to pay, who are these people, why are they calling me, etc. Sage pays us the same weather we do the work or they do the work. As such, we quit swimming up stream. We let some of the account managers go and let Sage do all the leg work. Our revenues fell off 20% to 30% from maintenance but our costs when down much more. In the end Sage has higher costs, only renewal rate dropped to 55%, and I make more money. Go figure.

Until Sage decides to change the rules and if your not involved in renewals, maintenance revenue goes all to Sage. I have a great relationship with my customers and about 95% renew through me and just ignore what Sage sends them. The other thing I learned is that I have developed a good relationship with the clientcare reps and Sage and they don't step on my toes or much of my clients. My renewal rate is about 98%. Food for thought!

@AngieMarquez we are getting maintenance margins every month, regardless of who places the order. We still maintain contact with our clients on a regular basis, we just don't work the maintenance sales. That means not sending quotes, not confirming prices with Sage, not filling our orders, not updating the client on why it's taking so long, not managing the payment pass-through (though I miss the 30 to 60 day float. We were moving A LOT of month through maintenance.)

We received maintenance renewals with Silver price on page one, Gold on page 2.