90 Minds Community

FAQ about why Sage is using Salesforce instead of Sage CRM. http://s216551651.t.en25.com/e/es.aspx?s=216551651&e=1709&elq=45a48552bd704e60ae7d0a428889fa39

Love this sentence: This announcement does not change, in any way, the commitment of Sage in relation to Sage CRM, which remains our global, integrated CRM solution.

There is no immediate impact on our SDC strategy. Where's the question ""Why not use Sage CRM to improve your internal operations?"" This is just a lot of tap dancing - they restate the same answer that Sage CRM is the integrated solution and integrated solutions are better so Sage CRM. Yeah.

Come on now. I thought you said that they were ripping out Sage CRM and throwing it in the trash. This announcement doesn't say that. Logistically speaking the average Sage CRM customer has between 8 - 20 seats. We have some clients with hundreds of seats but those are outliers. Sage internally needs a thousand+ seats per OpCo so it is outside the sweet spot for the product so it is somewhat understandable why they are using SFDC. Why they announced it ...

In my opinion this is a super negative for Sage's CRM strategy and I think it will hurt Sage almost immediately.

You assume they have a strategy besides ""let's hope someone calls us about our CRM."" I'm not sure they do. Either way, you bet it's not great. It's particularly not great in larger, standalone CRM RFP situations. I've already seen a few of these go pear shaped with partners that I work with. The SFDC reps were kind enough to forward the original press release out. For the typical Sage 100 / 300 customer looking for a decent CRM application, Sage CRM is still the way to go and has all the benefits that it did a month ago: integration out of the box, more affordable, one throat to choke, good SMB feature set. None of that has changed and we will still whip Salesforce in 90 out of 100 deals. SFDC is just too expensive for our typical client.

Peter's comments about the functional and cost appropriateness of Sage CRM for SMB is quite correct. However, I don't see how this sfdc arrangement does NOT become a marketing and messaging nightmare for Sage. At best it will always mean that a SCRM prospect conversation starts with claiming why an ""obvious"" impression is not true. And it absolutely dilutes any appeal that SCRM would have for the X3 customers that Sage is betting its future on. Wayne's note about SDC is a sleeper: ""there is no *immediate* impact ..."" . It really sounds like Sage is seriously contemplating an explicit partnership with Salesforce1 for cloud integration. Sage has officially lost its way now: it has never really understood marketing (at least in NA), and now it doesn't understand cloud technology implications on product growth.

??? They already announced an explicit partnership with Salesforce1. Also, Salesforce.com is only in one out of every 5 prospect situations right now (regarding integrated opportunities).

If I ruled the Sage world, the Press Release would have been, ""Our SAP sucks. You know it, we know it. We are replacing it with SF."" End of story.

Was the salesforce1 announcement prior to the sfdc announcment? If so I missed it. Here is one take on the platform element from an industry observer: http://bit.ly/17WwPWz

@JerryNorman - It was in the original press release. Paragraph 2. http://www.sage.com/media/press-releases/2015/02/26/the-sage-group-plc-announces-global-agreement-with-salesforce

Thanks Peter. What I meant was whether it was announced earlier that that, but I'm not communicating very clearly today ...

Well the partnership also implies bringing salesforce to the small and med size biz with the help of Sage who implies they are the leader of small and med size ERP. I guess get knowledgeable on the Greytrix integrations as they already have Sage 100 and SF integrated. I am just not sure Sage really needs a global CRM solution - do they really need to have all the customers world wide in one CRM or just have regional CRM solutions? Will a north america person be messing with a French customer. Most importantly I think the biggest question not being answered is the cost to Sage for going down this road. The 1,000s of users they will need to buy licenses for SF. This will I bet trigger price increases on Sage products when they have to start paying these fees. If they are truly looking to connect with its customers then I think this is will ""lead"" to sage having a more direct communication with our customers as I think Sage is planning to go more direct in various ways to try and improve profit. I think the SPS chaos is just the beginning of these type of decisions that are beginning to come. CEO Kelly will be annoucing more changes before Summit. I guess they did not want to come out and say they use SAP internally and Salesforce. Did they even try using SAP CRM? this statement might even raise more questions - Sage is not using X3? And the word ""Global"" - Having information sharing between your ERP and CRM is vital for end-to-end business visibility, and we were pleased to announce Sage CRM integration to Sage ERP X3 in early February. We are committed to Sage CRM, and it remains our global, integrated CRM solution.

This will trigger price increases down the road"" ... if you go out and buy a new laptop, does that trigger price increases for your customers?

A little trivia - the FAQ had 13 questions and 7 answers had ""we are committed"" or ""we remain committed"".

A wise person once said, ""never say bang bang bang when bang will do"". Sage, take note.

True and yet ... I think they were trying to drive home a point. From conversations in this very thread, it doesn't seem like they repeated it enough.

At the end of the day, we can't do anything about this except to adjust our own business practices take into account the changes implied by Sage's decisions. I'd love to see Kelly makes some strong marketing changes, but I doubt it. Unless something really disruptive comes out of UK in the next 3 months, I see no reason to think Sage's slow slide to irrelevance won't continue and then accelerate.

Peter, I do agree that Sage CRM will continue to be quite viable for several more years, at least. 7.3 is really pretty cool.

I'm sorry, if Sage invested in a strategy that would benefit its products rather than short term earnings boosts for management with stock options they would be better off. We are committed sounds like, trust me...

I think step 1 for any Sage strategy would be for Sage to look strategy up in a dictionary.

The Salesforce1 part of this bothers me most. Looking back over the past 3-4 years, I am struck by how much Sage underestimates the difficulty of executing on these strategies aimed at making their numbers largely through the installed base. The technical strategy of enabling legacy apps to take advantage of Cloud functionality is not crazy. However, I do not think they understand how hard it is to get current customers, who have already decided NOT to change horses for newer tech, to consume these products. NOR has Sage understood the difficulty involved in making say, Mobile Sales, actually valuable to customers. The insider remark about Pascal's preferred ""European model"" (call centers) really, really underlines my judgment. It is that blindness to the challenge of actually connecting a 30k-foot technical strategy to a ground-level customer-conversion result that ensures their failure at this. Part of this is reinforced by their insistence in putting Europeans in charge of NA ops. Now, if there were to be a serious shakeup in that area, I might reconsider. Seeing as how the new Grand Pooh Bah fired the top-ranking American in the NA operation, I don't think there's much hope anybody in the UK boardroom agrees my analysis.

Most people inside and outside of Sage realize that both elements of the original press release are stupid and the thing was poorly executed. It doesn't matter. The head guy is going to do what he wants. The rest of us (inside Sage and outside) have to try to dodge the fallout or move on.

Peter, your comment crystallized the rest of my doubts: of course this is the 1st significant change made by Kelly. Sadly, he owns both substance and spin of the decision. Neither indicate any significant change from past trajectory. Do you ever wonder if Kelly was Sage's 1st choice for CEO? At some point a company can't attract the best. I wonder.

I don't know why I keep hearing Homer Simpson in my head?

Doh!