Sage News and Discussion

Here is my suggestion for Sage 100c pricing. Comments and critiques please. - Sage's ""new"" pricing always seems to begin with a committee designing a spreadsheet where the primary question is **""how do we keep our price change revenue neutral - or positive - for Sage""?** - Let's **put the customer first**, introduce a difficult dose of reality about the market our product occupies, and **ask how we deliver a fair price where the customer would be insane to leave or consider any other product**. - Begin this by **selling a one price per user ""all in"" bundle of Sage Intelligence (SI). No more confusing options.** At most create two flavors - (a) single company and (b) multi-company. **If the SI team doesn't go along with this, hire a new SI leader.** This all-in bundle comes with Sage 100c license which keeps the customer even more reliant on Sage for both accounting and reporting. - **Sage 100c is all in pricing. Every module is included for the highest level (complete).** Get ride of extra add-ons since these are mostly price list clutter modules that fewer users are buying anyhow. Sell 100c in the present three segments. These are not cloud apps which remove maintenance costs so you can't price them with a premium. All per user prepaid: Small (Essentials): $40/mo, Medium (Advanced): $ 65/mo, Large( Complete - plus all added modules): $125/mo. - **User pricing for 100c changes from concurrent to named.** Each active user in the system has a named license subscription. - A **customer can mix and match types of users** (Essential, Advanced, Complete) - figure out a way to let them with licensing restrictions. - **Any user on an expired Sage 100 perpetual plan who wants to renew may only return to 100c.** Perpetual is not available for winback or new. - **Registration keys no longer work for new version releases.** New release. New key. All patches and fixes test for a valid plan before installation. - **At a pre-determined time (2-3 years) Sage proclaims 100c as the go forward product, existing Sage 100 perpetual can upgrade for a 15% discount off subscription provided it's done by mm/dd/yy.** - **Open Sage 100 integration to other web based apps - CRM, HRMS, Fixed Assets.** If Sage internal teams leading these groups have an issue with this, remind them they had about five years to perfect their integrations. Then find other leaders. - **If resistance to these ideas is at the upper management, start searching for a VC buyout.** Repeating the mistakes of the last several leadership teams with different spreadsheet models is not going to create material change. - **Throw out any product pricing concept which requires a spreadsheet** to compute price. - **Throw out any Sage based integration which requires a separate certification** for the channel to understand (""If it requires a certification, we blew it"", ""If we have to force adoption by throwing the integration onto the menu, we blew it"", ""If channel partners hire third party contractors to perform the integrations for them, we blew it"").

Who exactly are you submitting this to? I particularly like the first two points - they address the fact that all these pricing changes are made for the benefit of Sage - very little thought seems to be given to the customers.

Regarding your point about opening integration - I had an idea that Doug LaBahn thought was crazy: If we can create integrations with ERP Data Cloud, why not give customers the option to set up a personal ERP Data Cloud on their local servers if they want? Then they can have all the integrations that are supposedly available to ERP Data Cloud through SData but on a local level. Doug wanted the public ERP Data Cloud because that was his idea on how Sage could participate in the buzzword bingo of ""Big Data"".

Technically this is more of a refinement of the Sage 100c pricing. Why not roll out a Sage100 offer that could be as inexpensive as Sage 50 if the company only needed a single user. Wouldn't there at least be an option that the user would implement credit cards or maybe even payroll or other integrations? Sage has put forth their golden triangle: Payments, Payroll, Accounting. Sage 100c is presumably the accounting in that formula. Without accounting I guess you can only hope for a golden teepee? I'm just trying to find the flaws in my logic. At the very least - simplify this damn pricing and let people get out in the field communication with customers and/or prospects rather than generating endless paperwork for price quotes.

I agree with all your points. Here's an anecdote that might be relevant: At the President's Circle event last week, we had the opportunity to meet with the Sage execs. While I was outside the room waiting for my meeting, Partner A and Partner B were there waiting as well. Partner A asked me ""what are you going to ask them to change?"" I said ""Nothing. I'm just going to say hi and thank them for their efforts."" He said ""Don't you want to take this opportunity to give them feedback and make changes?"" I replied ""I've been down this road before. Nothing I do or explain will make any difference to what they do and, even if they do, the next round will be here in a few years and start over again. So it's best to just relax and enjoy the day."" Partner B busted out laughing and I asked him ""Do you think I'm wrong?"" and he shook his head and said ""No - why do you think I'm laughing so hard?"" Edited to remove names.

Similar story, sitting at ITA with a Sage partner during dinner. ""Don't worry Wayne, you know both you and I will probably outlast the present executive team"".

Boil it all down to the basic concept of SIMPLE IS BETTER! Why did Peachtree lose to QB? QB was easier to use, plain and simple. - Sage 100c should be Sage 100. You do not need two versions. Much simpler. - Multiple user types... SAP had to simplify theirs recently to Full (Professional) or Limited where the formerly 3 or 4 limitations were put into the licensing mechanism where the user can just apply the limited license type to a feature set. MUCH SIMPLER and no administration from SAP (which is a nightmare). - Subscription can be revenue positive after a 3-4 year period, but it should not be the only option. You eliminate a potential customer base and that is the LAST thing Sage needs now.

I don't think Sage has any intention of running Sage 100 and Sage 100c simultaneously for an indefinite period of time. They should focus on transitioning their installed base and the first step in that is to win back the mindshare of their channel. Get the channel enthusiastic about the abilities of 100c as well as the pricing model. I remember when Sage came out with EES and they offered MAS90/200 users the ability to ""upgrade"". I think I sold 3 or 4 of those just because it was a great customer deal. Unfortunately it also seems like it was a pricing mistake and Sage rolled back the pricing pretty quickly. Point being, when your channel is enthusiastic, confident and confident they tend to sell.

Everything and anything Sage does now going forward will all be about recurring revenue. This is the only way they will see their share price increase and that is the ONLY thing they are interested in. It may backfire. Customers may be like 'if I'm paying sage all this annual money, why shouldn't I look at other options like Accumatica or Intacct?

Exactly @MarkChinsky - ""Customer For Life"" is a great philosophy as we all know getting new customers is harder than keeping existing customers. So why would a Company with a product which is no where near considered leading and creating no buzz in the market place take actions that would risk alienating their customers? If the plan is to have only 100c and only subscription, this roll out will achieve that purpose but fail as a business strategy for maximizing shareholder value. Slightly hidden agenda's with poorly thought out consequences seem to be the mode of operations for Sage (see new payroll costs for example).

I bet dollars to donuts that 100c pricing goes up materially in 3 to 5,years once they move a large percentage of customers Sent from my Android phone using Symantec TouchDown (www.symantec.com)

It is already going up for ""regular"" Sage 100 - two renewals we sent out today had 10% year-over-year price increases. Sage doesn't send the detail so we have to make a judgement call as to why the pricing is higher and whether to bother calling Sage for the detail behind it.

That's probably because they want to turn up the heat on 100 customers to 'incent' them to move to c (should be called P for profit or V for valuation). I bet they eventually start offering promotions on C to make it the same price or less than Sage 100 regular, but only guarantee price for < 3 years.

It's all about @WayneSchulz statement for years that Sage wishes they had expiring locking keys except for that annoying EULA