Sage CRM

Does Sage's myriad of CRM packages help or hurt them? With a solution like Salesforce gaining mindshare -- I cannot help to think it's because there's ONE Salesforce. There's not a company out in Salesforce, USA (or wherever they're located) -- that has regular meetings for the divisions to slug it out over the love of their parents (Sage). One Salesforce. Slash some features and throw a free price tag on it. The beauty is that the freebie model is just as usable as the full model. There's no squadron of technical geeks that have to show up and analyze your server... I get off track a little but I think you get my question. Is Sage really doing itself any favors by carrying on as if splitting three different CRM packages is a wise long term market growing move? At best this would seem to allow Sage to ""stay the course"" and collect maintenance, grow modestly but probably won't result in any breakout hits outside the core users of Sage. Why? There's simply too much attention that has to be divided three ways. Every since Sage grew through acquisitions it seems that the myriad of divisions and different brands have been a huge draw on the central resources. If it were me I'd love to see Sage go forward with one CRM and put all their marketing muscle behind it with integration to their own products as well as appeal outside the Sage family. I plan to have this conversation with Pascal but would like to be told if there's something I'm missing here. Oh, and this same rationale applies to ERP as well. I won't begin to argue that all the various flavors are materially different (save for non-profit/healthcare/construction niches). I think the days of trying to be all things to all people have evolved Sage to a very difficult position of having to drag along a bunch of acquired software with updates, marketing and integration plans....

@WayneSchulz - man oh man... there is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that have led to Salesforce's success. Here's some of them: 1. Salesforce was one of the first-movers for web-based sales automation solutions. This is a huge advantage as, over time, their gospel has spread as people move jobs. 2. Salesforce stayed focused on doing what they do - selling sales automation solutions (MS used to do this very well - don't get distracted when your competition does). 3. Salesforce sold directly to sales managers who could use their discretionary budgets to bypass approval processes with IT and accounting. This is huge. Their on-premise compeittion had sales cycles measured in 3, 6, 12+ months, Salesforce had a go - no go decision in weeks. 4. Salesforce, for a long period of time, spent roughly 50% of every revenue dollar on marketing and sales. 5. Salesforce still spends a ton on marketing and sales. 6. Salesforce doesn't have a channel and uses the extra margin for their marketing and sales. I'm all for focusing on a single solution and have built my company on it. But I wouldn't attribute Salesforce's success to that fact. The interesting thing is that now Salesforce has gotten so large, it will take amazing strength of character by their upper management to stay focused on what they do. My guess is... because they are a public company and will need to answer the shareholder mentality, they will start to slowly unravel. There are a lot of things wrong with Salesforce already. I'm not suggesting that they are going to lose their top dog status in the next few years but it will be interesting to see what happens.

Some really big companies use SalesLogix, Wells Fargo, NYSE, Seattle Sun Times. Many on the CAB with me do not interface it with their accounting package at all. It's a stand alone powerhouse. I think you will see SageCRM be the integration package if you want one integrated. I will say that Sage is totally clueless on their own customer base. They had this big web session for SalesLogix integration with MAS500 and none of the resellers in attendance had any MAS500 installs using SLX, all their clients used MAS200 with SLX but of course Sage has no plans work on that integration.

Oh - and if you can get Sage to focus on a solution <cough> SageCRM <cough> that would be great. See if they will focus on a single ERP as well. The challenge Sage (or any other large vendor) faces with product line consolidation is that competition will tear them up the second that they announce it. Remember Project Green? I used to love talking to people looking at Microsoft accounting systems back in the day and letting them know that the vendor had already guaranteed obsoletion of their product. The best way to merge product lines is to shore up technology and do it on the sly - kind of like Sage is doing know with MAS and Accpac by creating a common technology services layer. And back to the main point... good luck convincing Sage to give up their cash cow of M&S dollars on any of their products. That kind of thinking takes deep in the balls courage of conviction. Public companies never seem able to find that kind of courage.

Would Sage have been able to achieve similar recognition (let's just assume that Salesforce is on the right path for now) if they weren't simultaneously trying to juggle two channels (does Act! count as a third mini-channel?), integrate the main CRM products to various ERP, answer to the different islands at Sage (isn't Saleslogix in Arizona and SageCRM in Ireland?). Here's a couple for examples: A. I always thought it was crazy that Sage didn't put their VARS all on one CRM. Probably a far fetched dream to think that every VAR would tie back to Sage -- but imagine in our dreams if every VAR was familiar with SageCRM because their pipeline reporting to Sage had to be in a SageCRM format.... B. There was until recently (and let's be kind and call it 10 years) really no direction on CRM integration to the Sage ERP MAS user base (a based BTW that Sage pegs at 45,000 customers). How sick is that to leave 45,000 potential customers out for the picking by competitors. The reason in my opinion that Sage never did this? Too many little islands if acquired companies fighting over who would be integrated and if they were integrated how would they slice up the costs/revenues to know which division got credit. I bet I'm pretty damn close on this but admittedly there's no way to know and this is mostly a WAG on my part. C. Certification requirements are just a farce. I think for a while it was big bucks for SageCRM. Now I see from recent emails they're begging former SageCRM folks who used to be authorized - to come back for free. This is just in my opinion crazy mis-management. For the average public (non Sage customer or VAR) Sage went from what should have been a market leading position in CRM to a ""oh Sage sells CRM?

This conversation is difficult to have in this format as there are a myriad of issues and points. Your original posting was about Salesforce's dominance and that came about because of the points I listed + a whole bunch of others + some luck and good timing. Now we are discussing where to from here? which is a favorite topic of mine. I agonize over this stuff all the time wondering how to grow SageCRM market. That's my mission at Azamba after all: to help as many organizations as possible become more profitable through the effective and efficient usage of SageCRM. All my agonizing has led to this conclusion: you are right on all your points. A. Channel usage of CRM. Accpac used to use SageCRM internally. The Accpac channel used SageCRM for lead management. Now we using a f**king compeittor's product for the channel? Good lord. I am slowly and steadily building out my CRM as I juggle growing workloads. My intention is to offer it up to the channel - most likely for free or as part of a partnering agreement with Azamba. Right now we have Project Management, Time and Expense Tracking, Proposal Creation and Management, Customer Service Portal and by the end of the year we will have locked down the remaining bits and improved all the previous stuff. B. Integrated CRM. Add another 30 - 45K Accpac customers into that mix and you have a HUGE integrated market to tap into. This is happening and the integrated sales are growing. The problem is the MAS and Accpac partners are busy making money doing their thing and CRM is a distraction. So the real challenge here is that Sage needs to grease these wheels so partners can partner easily, profitably and successfully. They are making strides here. SageCRM's install base has grown 400% in the last four years and the rate is continuing to grow. I'm doing my part: http://azambapartners.com/2011/05/12/hello-world/ C. Certifications are a farce. This more than anything gets me going. It's a quick win to tap into the channel market by providing easy certification but - over the long run - it kills the quality of experience for the client and the partner and ensures difficulty of future sales. Bah.