General Consultant Discussion

Did anyone go to the IT Alliance? How many people were at this Sage meeting? I thought last year's was a lot of rehashed material and not their best effort - especially since Sage pushed it as open to all. http://na.sage.com/sage-na/newsroom/details/SNA%20Corporate/2013/04/sage%20thought%20leadership

Nope. I didn't go. The Sage meeting in the Fall was...well...painful.

Bump. I wasn't there but am interested in hearing a recap. @JimWoodhead? @RobertWood? Anyone? Bueller?

Yeah the Sage meeting was the bomb. And not in a good way.

Didn't go. Sessions were disappointing to me last year -- the ones I went to when not pool side. There were panels where people were not prepared at all and the content was essentially thrown to the audience. Probably cutting back my attendance to one a year.

Stephen Blythe was pretty funny at the fall meeting though.

I believe @ShawnSlavin was there but he's not a member of the General Discussion Group.

Even though they locked us out of our room 2x and tried to charge extra for the last few nights the location of that hotel was amazing.

I was there. The Sage meeting was interesting. Brad Smith from Yahoo gave a real interesting talk about listening to the customer and some of his experience at Yahoo and then doing some research on Sage 50. Then him and Mr. Langner tried to associate it with the Sage Inventory product. OMG I almost laughed out loud when the voice of the customer told them to look at 3 existing alternatives on the market. They TOTALLY lost any credibility when the research pointed to exactly what they were doing anyway.

The location was so amazing that Wayne decided to stay an extra night. No the blizzard didn't have anything to do with it regardless of what he told his girlfriend. If you can get Langner into a conversational setting, he seems OK. Maybe you should have laughed.

The problem with Sage is that listening without action is useless.

Dammit! I'm getting as bitter as the rest of you!

Listening while putting your fingers in your ears and humming is also useless.

They take action. It just has very little to do with what was said. I directly asked them if resellers were customers and Brad stated that he would definitely consider us customers but hedged whether Sage would. Very disappointing when 92% of their revenue comes from existing customers (their statistic). Without having the context of previous meetings, it was great networking and good sessions that re-affirmed the actions we have been taking to get me out of the day to day and working on the business instead of in the business. Still not certain if I will join.

I found Brad to be very partner-centric. I don't think he is comfortable with the big message these days that partners are jerks.

Only some of you... I mean us are jerks. The partners who go to President's circle and sell tons of software are just PITAs.

Mmmmm.... Gyros. If 92% of their revenues come from current customers, you'd think they handle the maintenance quotes and renewals better.

Comparing to SAP,administratively Sage handles maintenance and renewals exceptionally. The only part they seem to be falling down on is the value component).

And the part they tour the country, hire ""do nothing EVP Customer Experience"" and give keynotes about (wait for it ... wait for it...) .... Ta .. da.... CUSTOMER VALUE.