Sage News and Discussion

For those curious as to what SAP's own partner portal looks like , here are some screenshots

Screenshots without functional context don't really tell the story. Yes, it looks pretty but is it less clunky?

Yes it is. They are using alot of their UI elements they developed for Business ByDesign and it runs smoothly like you would expect a real SAAS application to run like. Not the 1990's SAP UI that Sage's version is running on.

Thank you for rubbing it in @MarkChinsky :)

Thanks for the screen shots @MarkChinsky. What's the response time like once logged into the site? Does it support multiple browsers? Do you have to fiddle with all the settings in your browser to get it to work?

Supports all 4 browsers. Main 'info' areas are very responsive. Application areas (managing your MDF funds, placing orders etc), are reasonable, but not blazing. Their place your order function still sucks. If you want to order a single additional license, it asks 90% of the information about the client they already should know plus a whole suite of revenue recognition questions due to them being public. Quite painful.. Then you have to send them a spreadsheet with credit card info since they can't take it online. Kind of funny when you think of the old 'the best run businesses run SAP' tag line

Oh, that is ugly, emailing credit card info via a speadsheet. Maybe Sage Payment Solutions can team up with them to accept online payments :).

The best run business run [into the ground on] SAP."" What century is PCI Compliance on the SAP Roadmap?

We have never sent credit card information in the spreadsheet. SAP internally is not very good with CC because their systems are global. Locally in the US there are several PCI compliant solutions for Business One as there are for all of their products in the US. The portal supports browsers but I find IE is the only one that stores your Passport (Certificate) properly so you don't have to enter your credentials every fricking screen. Managing MDF funds is a complete and utter nightmare when compared to Sage. Ordering is a complete and utter nightmare when compared to Sage. Many of their policies suck. However; the SBO product is very good and getting better. SAP is not interested in taking over services from the VAR and does not provide support to SBO end customers or provide upgrade assistance.

@GaryFeldman so how do you pay SAP if you want to pay buy credit card for license orders if you don't send them their credit card spreadsheet? When I was talking about credit cards, I'm referring to their partner portal, not integrated options for SAP Business One. The MDF funds process is a nightmare because of their policies, not because of how their portal works (it used to suck big time but not since the last major revamp) That being said, SAP stands behind their partners, which you wouldn't never think, way better than Sage now. They convinced us to go for BYD back in 2007 when it was not ready for primetime and we wasted time and money. They could have said, tough luck (like SOTA did in the early days of 90w) instead they dumped $17,000 of MDF funds into our account for our troubles. In addition, their annual maintenance is 17% (not the 22% or so sage charges now). And the var keeps 7% and SAP keeps 10%. That's a massively higher maintenance margin than Sage and a way to build real recurring revenue if you have a large practice That's how you build loyalty

Oh, and although its slow, they are actually improving their product from within, both in features and general technology. Sage 100 is now only getting 3rd party boltons that add subscription revenue to sage, nothing material in terms of product improvements

@MarkChinsky, Thanks to you and others for posting about the other products you are involved with. I'm usually stuck looking through a Sage lens (even that is myopic) and get to see little else. Your posts help me broaden my view and maintain a more accurate perspective.

@MarkChinsky - Ben places the orders and the only CC orders we place are for our Extended Business Members who want to pay by Amex for the points. I thought the new AR portal will allow you to pay online with a CC or he calls our contact in billing. With respect to maintenance we offer 17% and 22% options. Thanks to Sage we will probably offer 17%, 22% and now 25% options to match the gold offering. We still pay the 10%. We had a battle with them because we did not properly cancel maintenance for a couple of customers who are either out of business or chose not to pay. SAP is still trying to hold us liable for some of it, but finally we have escalated high enough. They have the absolute worst accounting department and maintenance cancellation policies...