Sage News and Discussion

Gary Boddington, EVP & General Manager for Sage Intelligence and co-founder of Alchemex, will be leaving the company at the end of next week (4/26). Stephen Coull is taking on all North American responsibilities for SI to replace Gary. Apparently Gary's contractual responsibilities are completed.

wooohwww take the money and run, yea yea , woo hoo hoo, go on and take the money and run...

That's one explanation I've heard. But didn't Gary recently get a bump up in the organization like 12-18 months ago? I remember seeing that he was EVP and was going to be working to evangelize Sage Intelligence. Prediction: Unless the sales numbers are there it won't be long before Sage starts first hacking away at SI head count then finally sell it off. My impression is they're primarily moving this via price promotion and I get the feeling (perhaps incorrectly) that SI is shelfware for many (not all) buyers.

The release pricing for SI was way too high for Sage 100 clients and even after the price decreases, most Sage 100 clients will forgo it. Combine that with the steep learning curve, and it's a hard sell. I pointed out to Sage last week that after the price decreases on the additional modules, they kept the subscription monthly pricing the same. Connector is still $80 per month, whereas a financials subscription user is $65 per month. Most clients do not yet see the need for BI, so all they need is a flexible financial report writer that's easy to use. They probably also think this function should be a included in the price of the ""accounting system"". Package the Designer with GL and unlimted access and users will possibly embrace it. Or market an optional ""advanced reporting"" bundle with everything in it. I still contend that the flexible, easy to use financial report writing function is F9 and always will be.

I like F9 but: a. The company is impossible to deal with (Infor) b. Franken-spreadsheet c. More difficult for any company who wants to share the financials (though in reality I've had very few want this and those that do are often not F9 candidates) d. People don't design the financials well (see b.) and leave gaps in numbering, etc. This is difficult to catch when a customer has a 30 sheet workbook.

I know about Budget Maestro from Centage that includes integrated financial reporting, but beyond that know nothing about the software. It appears that they approach this from the budgeting angle, which I find is the last function clients think about - but should make it a priority. By doing that, the reporting should fall into place. Is anyone using this package with Sage 100?

a - No argument b - How many of the solutions, including SI, are Franken spreadsheet? c - F9 has really improved their product. They even have a piece that is equivalent to the BizBroadcaster. d - Yeah. That's where the tasers come into play.

Item d opens up a huge consulting area - proper chart of accounts design and report design. Most of our clients that need custom financials - FRx, F9, SI - ask us to do them, primarily because they don't have the time to learn the tools or actually do the reports. I know it's not as exciting as inventory and manufacturing, but it's easy for us and profitable.

As you who attended MOTM know, I've disagreed with Sage's positioning of SI for a while. - Those who wanted to move from FRx have done so. The rest will move only as people turnover at the customer site or FRx stops working. The rest either adopted SI or something else. - People really don't want to pay for something to replace a product that worked adequately just because the vendor policies changed. They will, but they don't want to. - Way too many current Sage 100 customers under utilize the system and the data in it. A chunk of these (the rest will spend the minimum needed to keep doing what's adequate) will eventually wake up to BI as a management tool beyond just past financials. Unless Sage has been actively beating the drum with examples of useful data from Sage 100 BI customers, these customers will simply start looking for a Sage 100 replacement when they do wake up. Simplifying satisfying the customer and producing data to manage the company is what ERP should be all about. Customers like hearing that, and would like it to be true. SI Marketing should be on the bleeding edge of that effort.

I've never been a fan of SI for the reason's previously stated: 1.Financial reporting should be included in a financial product, 2. Too difficult to use as a financial reporting tool 3.Price was too high for the typical 100 user, 4. The BI tools (the primary focus of SI) are not what the customer is looking for, Regarding @john Hoyt's remark about using Budget Mestro as a reporting tool, both Profix and Adaptive Planning have similar capabilities. As John points out, these are intended to be budgeting tools with financial reporting as a secondary capability. However, these reporting platforms have become quite sophisticated. They are not for the cheap-of-heart or casual budgeter. Here at CS3, we have settled on BizInsights as our financial reporting tool of choice. It has the same limitations as F9 when it comes to Frankensheets (I like that term and plan to plagiarize it. I'm just pre-warning the holder of the copyright!) but we work around them as best as possible. When more capabilities are needed, we bring in Adaptive Planning. I believe I understand why Sage brought BI tools into the mix, particularly for up-stream users of 500 and X3. I just don't see the typical 100 being ready to leverage dashboards and KPI's, much less understanding how to leverage the SI tool.

Remember that Sage started by simply OEMing SI. When it wouldn't do what customers and partners expected it to do, and Alchemex wasn't fast enough to address them, then Sage bought them. It is WW, applied to their products (that's the plan as I understand it.) It's possible that Sage also understands that most of Sage 100 won't buy it, because they didn't buy FRx. Not likely, but possible. More likely: they saw its potential for the higher-end customers. Pricing is a problem, but more important is getting the Sage 100 customers to understand the value in it. I think that is the core of what they should be marketing anyway: ""squeeze more value from your current ERP."" They'll try to do this through the connected services, hoping to make the customers more ""sticky."" Might work. More likely: customers will discover that other ERP solutions also have a range of connected services; nothing unique about Sage's technology on that.

We've been somewhat successful packaging SI as the replacement for FRX and alternative to Crystal for non-financial reports. Most customers purchase the connector and designer without too much fuss once they realize they are going to need them for intended use. It was the report designer add-in which opened the door for our sales. I just hope Sage doesn't decide they've developed the product enough. It still has room for improvement.