General Consultant Discussion

Does anyone else find it disturbing that the tab for the Sage Partner Portal reads ""SAP Product Resources""?

Or as one of my clients said, ""You're telling me to use Sage products when Sage is using SAP?"".

Also the Favicon is an SAP logo.

What about Crystal Reports? SAP

I have also gotten questions from clients about why Sage doesn't use a Sage product. I'm not sure how to answer.

You could say, so does Microsoft

@DawnAnastasi - you give the same answer that Sage employees gave me years ago when I confronted them on the idiocy of this move. Sheepishly avert your eyes, stare at the floor and mutter something about ""well Sage is a global business with 6,000+ employees ... not a rinky-dink operation like yours.

The honest answer is : ""If you needed an ERP system for 32 countries and over 1000 users and 3,000 partners, Sage nor any sage partner would claim a Sage solution is appropriate for you company. Only Oracle and SAP and software and support for such a large global enterprise. Even Microsoft needs to run SAP.

@MarkChinsky - Holding up Microsoft as an example of something going right is like saying the Titantic was a great boat.

?_? You are taking all the fun out of bitching about using SAP, Mark...

That assumes you need one system for 32 countries, 1,000 employees and 3,000 partners. I understand there are some inefficiencies with multiple systems handling different countries/regions, but more than one company has learned the hard way that the pain, overhead and cost of SAP/Oracle is not the answer either.

Every company I've ever heard of that's implemented SAP -- it takes years not months, and is more expensive than originally budgeted, and is extremely complex to use. It just doesn't make sense.

Sage operates globally but other than CRM and recently x3, most of their products are regional. Perhaps smaller regional systems matching their natural product regions (ie North America) would have been more appropriate with roll up at financial level. Might still require SAP, but it might have been a smaller bite.

You know me, I'm no fan of Sage, but I'm just being realistic. SAP always does take longer and cost more than expected (so do most ERP solutions that aren't cookie cutter), but what would you have a company the likes of Microsoft and Exxon run, a bunch of quickbooks and spreadsheets?

Maybe they wanted to cross market so badly that their only option was SAP........................

@MarkChinsky - lot of options between SAP and Quickbooks. Just saying I (and guessing others here)have had customers over the years with companies in multiple industries across multiple countries who approached us about consolidating onto one system. However after further discussion/research it become clear that they operate very locally and have very diverse needs. All they needed was consolidated financial reporting and the ability to access systems from HQ and the cost, overhead and lost functionality from consolidating onto one system was not worth it. However, it would be very hard for a CEO/CIO/CFO of a company like Sage to make that kind of recommendation. It would be real interesting to find a statistic that shows what % of people who made decision on implementing SAP are still there at the conclusion of the implementation. I am guessing low.