General Consultant Discussion

How many of you are selling Sage 300? Are there enough differences (multi-company/currency/lingual) to pick it up and compliment rather than just compete directly against Sage 100? Anyone pick it up in the last year or two?

Isn't Sage 300 the fair haired middle child of the future???

@Sage300Technical Another reason I think would be the integration to Sage CRM - which is reportedly many times better than the link Sage offers for Sage 100 (Disclaimer: Not a CRM guy - so passing along discussions I've heard rather than first hand experience).

@EricAnderson your query is quite timely for me. With the coming retirement of 500, we are actively looking for another ERP to carry to supplement our 100 business. While 100 Premium introduces MS SQL into the picture, it's still not a SQL native product and 500 has been a tremendous revenue generator for us because of the inherent data reporting and analysis provided by SQL and the extensibility of the product.. We considered 300 and I would love to hear other peoples opinions and thoughts, particularly from those carrying the product for a while.

My personal opinion is if you are going to go through the massive retraining effort (don't underestimate it), go with the horse the publisher favors and do X3. I can't vouch for it as a product, but I've learned from experience with SAP and MIcrosoft (and sage), if you are selling the solution your publisher doesn't really believe in, you'll be very dissapointed

There's something to be said about diversifying if you set aside the issue of making an arbitrary annual tier with one publisher. The future of our business is services. The commission or margin on sales of new and existing product/maintenance are only going to continue to trend downward. A future promise of high/steady margin has little attraction to me since margins can be slashed overnight. What the publisher(s) can't slash is our consulting and personal services --- provided we've planned wisely to select a product where we add more value than the publisher does.

@WayneSchulz, I stared in this business as a consultant on several products from multiple vendors and did not sell any of them. I only became a reseller when the reseller I was working with went out of business due to mismanagement and I didn't trust the reseller out of Dallas that I would have had to work with. The point being, been there and done that. Early on I recognized that the value we bring comes from our knowledge, experience, and a very unique skill. As we always tell prospective customers, when you have a piece of furniture created, the choice of wood is really important but the craftsman makes the difference between a utility bench and a work of art.

@MarkChinsky, regardless of what product we choose, it's going to be a lot of work and money to bringing up a new ERP product. We expect an learning curve of about 2 years and an investment of around $200,000. That's about what it took to get comfortable with 500. I also agree that X3 is probably the better option within the Sage family. The bigger question do we stay in the Sage family? The changes over the past 3 to 4 years have been disconcerting to say the least. We have ridden this horse for a long time and it has paid well. However, past performance does not predict future outcomes and X3 is really concerning for me personally. There are a number of other solutions available to work with but non of them seem to be a golden child. It's more like looking for a date in a mad house; more than a little scary what you might take home.

I would think the investment and learning curve of X3 would be double that of Sage 300. And we'll run across X3 prospects much less frequently than Sage 300 prospects. The deals will be bigger with X3, yes. Will they be successful? That's where I get worried. We're in the middle of selling Sage 100 Premium to an old MAS 90 customer that purchased X3 a little over a year ago (from another partner). The partner is one of the largest and probably one of the best X3 partners in the west, which is why they were chosen - but somehow they just couldn't get it up and running. They've never been live on X3. I know Sage wants us to sell X3, but do any of the Sage 100 partners that have picked it up have positive things to say? I know plenty of partners that will sing the acollades of Sage 300. @ShawnSlavin we have/had a very successful 500 practice as well, just not sure X3 is the right direction. We did pick up NetSuite at the beginning of this year which has been great so far. We also picked up SAP by Design a few years back, which has been not so great.... @MarkChinsky - SAP definitely pushed SAP by Design and believed in it (2-3 yrs ago), so I'm not sure listening to the publisher is always the best choice.

@EricAnderson we signed up for SAP BYD 3 years ago as well but took a wait and see approach working in conjunction with another reseller. We weren't sure how committed SAP was to moving downstream. I gut instinct proved correct as they pulled back out after having their toe in the SMB market for less than a year. I think the solution had too much structure and complexity built into it for the average small shop, much like X3. I agree with you on the learning curve for X3 but I doubt it will be a lot these than that needed for NetSuite, Epicor, SysPro, or Accumatica if you embrace the entire offering from each publisher. However, X3 has the added ""advantage"" of still have a lot of French roots that are completely foreign to the US market (no language puns intended). I would like to talk with you about your experience with NetSuite, both from a product and a publisher perspective sometime if you are willing. BTW, I have a golfing acquaintance here in town who recently implemented X3 with a large national VAR and they are having troubles as well. To be fair, they moved from Peachtree (Sage 50) to X3 and rarely those kinds of large transitions to be smooth. Going from little structure to Uber structure is very difficult from an end user perspective.

@EricAnderson We are in the process of merging in a former PFW reseller who is completing all certs for Sage 300. These are not nearly as difficult as X3, but just take time. Most of his PFW customers will convert nicely to 300, and for those on Batchmaster, there is a very tight integration with 300, so he is also certified in Batchmaster. Only one PFW customer fits X3 - the remainder in 300.

@ShawnSlavin If there are enough of us attending ITA in Salt Lake City this would make an awesome small group open discussion type meeting.

Regardless of the numbers, I am in. This is a critical moment in our business at CS3; changing a major product offering. I have a lot of respect for the members of this group and your thoughts are very helpful. As the social chairman, I am getting in really early and staying late for a Board meeting after the event so I am pretty open. We can work something in on Saturday night, Sunday morning, Sunday night or Monday night. If your staying late and returning on Wednesday, Tuesday afternoon after the conference closes or evening are a great time to meet as well.

I'm there Saturday afternoon to Wednesday. In addition to any 90 Minders who are there - any chance you could get Gaby or Cieslak to join us to chat? They seem as if they could have the most experience.

Interested in meeting as well. I am going through same decision process on selecting which horse to ride going forward, within the Sage product line or outside. Netsuite and X3 are probably two favorites, but I'm not sure we are ready to take either of them on as our 100 business has been tremendous last 3 years. I don't think 300 is as favored as it once was when we had a Canadian based management team heading mid market a few years ago. From my research at that time, 300 is much more popular in Canada, not so much in U.S. There are pluses and minuses compared to 100 from what I've been told, 100 is deeper feature wise, but multi currency and database are two big positives for 300.

Of the products I'm familiar with, as long as you don't need functionality depth much deeper than ERP 100 (but native SQL, multilingual multicurrency is included), SAP B1 is a great choice. FAR shorter learning curve than the others discussed, great online training resources, and so far hands down the most channel friendly vendor of the bunch. We too jumped in on BYD very early, 2007, and it was a disaster. Around the same time they started treating B1 like Sage treats 100 and it was disconcerting but after realizing the grass was definitely not greener in the cloud, they came to their senses and turned it around. If you are

Choosing 300 because 'its easier to learn' is like saying, choose an ERP system because it works on your existing hardware. The extra 3-6 months learning cycle is small compared to the long term grief of selling a solution that will get little R&D investment, and over time will look less & less competitive in deals due to that. If you aren't 'in bed' with Sage, the strong competitors to consider of SAP B1, Syspro (I've lost multiple times and they have strong manufacturing), Netsuite due to hype and PR, can't talk about the actual product or real business opportunity. I really like the Epicor product, but the business case as a var is very challenging. If you like being a 'service shop' epicor has alot of opportunity from poor Epicor direct implementations, but if you are looking to profit and sell with Net new, I'd say Syspro or SAP B1 are the best. Microsoft is a behemouth to work with and they treat AX like Sage treats X3. AX has an extremely steep learning curve and you had better be a serious developer and hire a full time person to manage the Microsoft relationship If you join the national Clients First family, we can help you ramp up into B1 or Epicor and be productive much faster than if you were on your own and with a very low additional cost. We feel what you get in return is far greater than the costs to be part of the organization.

Not to be in competition with Mark, as we are currently working with 2 Clients First offices, and think extremely highly of Ryan Howe and the Client's First SAP team. But... If anyone is considering the SAP B1 product, I-BN is one of 3 Master VARs in North America. This is the SAP formal program for people to use the SAP logo, get trained in the product and get their teeth wet without having to pay any fees or deal with the administrivia of another publisher. You operate under your own name and deal with SAP through us. For more information, you can contact me or Art Abbey at 678-627-0646 x238.

We aren't really in competition with @GaryFeldman , its a different model. If you want to stay independent and reduce your ramp up speed and certification requirements, go with Gary. If you want to join an organization where you pay a monthly fee, but get merged top tier margins, highly SEO'd website presence and leads, the ability to subcontract resources for as little or as much of your projects as you need under one common brand to your end customer. We also include 40+ hours/month of telemarketing from a team who's been doing mid-market ERP telemarketing for almost 20 years.

If the investment for X3 is twice as much, there would have to be a much greater potential return to select it. And that's what I'm questioning. We definitely didn't get that return with BYD - even though it could do a lot more and the R&D was promised by SAP. My question about X3 would be - is it another BYD or are partners having success? And in particular, are 500 customers moving on to X3 and happy with the end result.

@WayneSchulz and @ShawnSlavin - we might be able to host something, we have two newly acquired offices in Salt Lake and our office in South Ogden (about a 35 minute drive north from SLC).

@EricAnderson - can you make it to the ITA meeting? I'm thinking Shawn might be able to grab us a small conference room right on-site that we could use for a few hours and would save having to shuttle people. If we could gather up 1/2 dozen or more to discuss experiences and thoughts around potential new products I think it would be an interesting conversation.

@Wayne - I can definitely get there, not sure if I will be a registered attendee, but I know we'll have at least a few people from our office there. one of our new offices is right downtown though, so I though I'd throw it out there - but at the ITA conference would be ideal.

I'm a slow-brain day, so I might be completely off the mark here. But ... I don't see any market-served consideration in this thread. Which customer types are you looking to serve over the next 5-10 yrs? Sage won't fess up to it, but it has put the writing on the wall for Sage 100.; so a straight replacement for that makes some sense to consider. But there are significant differences if you want mfg focus vs. distribution vs. services. Size of customer. etc. If you want to push mfg, Phil has great things to say about xTuple. 300 could replace 100 in distribution ability for small- & mid- customers. The level of CRM integration and consideration with any replacement is important to project over the next 5-10 yrs. My addled brain today thinks that the focus of this thread would sound much different if we were actually trying to move our companies in the direction of consulting, with software secondary. Of course, Mark's approach of essentially picking up the pieces of a product's failed implementation and making the customer see him as a hero is also a valid strategy - which is quite vendor-centric.

Obviously CS3 is not the only firm here in 90 Minds going through change and addressing product portfolio challenges. Nice to know I'm not alone but when your surrounded by alligators, neither being the main course nor a dish on the smorgasbord feels any less uncomfortable. You just get company while getting eaten! I suggest we start a new discussion string in the Business of Consulting and offer a meeting at ITA, either before or after. For those interested in attending and not part of ITA or planning to attend, they would still have the opportunity to participate. Thoughts?

@JerryNorman, addled minds aside, target market positioning is a very significant component of our product select process. One of the vendors we are considering is Infor. After my initial conversation with Walt Goodfield, we had to know industries we were going to target as Infor has a stable of products targeted at micro verticals and can tell you by product, what SIC codes they market to.

http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1KCKKCN&ct=130913&st=sg Gartner didn't sound very good about Infor, but I know Gartner is very questionable. Still it sounds like the promises of a 'new' screen scraper UI & BI tool are a long way from reality

Also, I believe Infor is like Epicor with this nasty direct/indirect sales model which never ends well

@MarkChinsky I don't think that really matters in a decision. Wayne has beat the drum quite a while on the idea of designing the business model to be neutral about vendor marketing and sales policies. They all have deteriorating channel models for a number of reasons, none of which will self-reverse.

@JerryNorman Since Socialcast doesn't have threaded comments, I'm not sure which of mine you are referring to. The fact that epicor sells direct? The big problem with Epicor is if I pick up an orphan that was originally sold by epicor (about 85% of the install base) I can NEVER get any cut on maintenance which adds up. Yet at the same time, Epicor often low balls their hourly rates to make software sales polluting the aftermarket for service. My average hourly rate is higher for MAS90 than Epicor which is hard to believe considering the difference in complexity

The real problem is that most of our VAR competitors don't realize this and with some having minimal overhead, they will continue under charging for what they do leaving us an uphill battle to explain why we are more expensive. You can't just lose all that 'gravy' we use to make on software & maintenance and not make it up elsewhere and have this be a business worth being in given how stressful it is. However, we could freely jack up our prices and be priced out of the market. I don't care if its fixed fee, hourly or whatever, in the end, there is still a number an owner has to decide on

When you look at the cost of adding a new product, one should assume it is approximately $250,000 for a lower end product like Sage 100 up to close to $1 million for a high end product like X3 or AX (fully loaded). Costs include the fees, training costs, salary for people on the bench, marketing costs, sales salaries, etc. help When evaluating whether to pick one up I try to ascertain what it will do for my practice. How is it different than what I sell so it will capture a larger potential customer base? Is it at least as good or better than what I am selling now for my current target market? Do I believe the developer has a the where with all, strategy and leadership that can be successful? Is X3 as good as AX? Does Sage have a strategy or leadership that makes you think it will be successful long term? I spent an hour with the head of SAP B1 Global 2 weeks ago and I can say for certain that this new leader understands the SMB market. SAP has the where with all to invest whatever it will take to deliver on its strategy. They are no where near a ""partner I can trust,"" but they are a horse I can ride.

Two words that should be at the top of the evaluation pyramid. Recurring Revenue. And I am talking about revenue that you control and NOT revenue that some third party promises they are going to continue to pay you (until they decide not to continue to pay you).

In the SAP Model, the VAR has the contract with the end customer and determines the price for the subscription. SAP has a price it contracts with you for the licenses for each end customer. You control the revenue, but you take some of the credit and collection risk.

I concur with @GaryFeldman , Obviously like @WayneSchulz says, the vendor can always change the deal, but the big difference with sap is this. Say you sell a $50k SLP software sale. Maintenance to the end customer is 17% or $8,500/year. However, SAP charges you $5,000/year (10%) so you keep $3,500/year (7%). That's 7% of the SLP NOT some meager percentage of the maintenance percentage like Sage & microsoft.. That's like a 41% margin on maintenance where most others are 15% to 20% margin. That being said, SAP tends to be less expensive than other systems (other than erp 100), so the dollars may be smaller. The other problem with B1 is its relatively easy to upgrade. But you all should be used to this with how small ERP 100's upgrade engagements typically are. Back to Wayne's statement on recurring revenue. The IT world has pushed very heavily into MSP (Managed Service Providers) where they charge per month per workstation fees for monitoring and support. Probably 80% work that way now. Unfortunately us bozos in the ERP world still mostly work on break/fix and thus as long as a high percentage of us do, it makes it hard for the minority to work differently. Shameless plug, if you want to add some nice recurring revenue to your business our EverSafe! solution does just that. Even if you just want us to do everything, including calling your clients on your behalf, we'll do it and still share a meaningful portion of the margin with you. New landing page: http://disaster-recovery-services.net/linkland1

I also agree with Mark that SAP is relatively easy to run and easy to upgrade. However, the costs/revenue involved in an SAP implementation, support and upgrade lifecycle is highly dependent upon how you structure the relationship with your client. A @JohnShaver KTA agreement could work very well in a B1 world. We never quote less than a day for an upgrade and a typical 10 user system for us is a 3 day engagement with testing and upgrade training where I know others who just do a technical upgrade overnight. With an X3 or AX there is no such thing as a simple upgrade and I would venture a guess that there isn't for NAV or Epicor as well. Has anyone looked at Accumatica closely?

To give you some idea of scale here, most NAV customers (and AX customers) have customizations. Most only upgrade every 4-5 years because of this and when they do its typically no less than a $100k project

@MarkChinsky to add a voice to your choir on upgrades, on half of our 500 implementation, there are a number of customizations and integrations involved. For these customers, upgrade range between $20,000 and $50,000. We keep the customers on a supported version but typically skip one to two major releases between upgrades unless there is a compelling feature. Going forward, I don't see new compelling features being an issue for 500. Most will upgrade once, maybe twice more before migrating to another solution.

So from the perspective of a MAS 500 VAR, I would look at my install base and determine the feature/function inventory required in the product that would create a relatively easy migration path (not too much 3rd party or custom development required - unless that is your gig). I would also consider ERP culture. Where MAS is a batch and transaction oriented system, other products are more real-time online oriented. What would your customer base prefer? I would also look at customer size and price of the new products. Sage 100 can do so much for companies at a relatively low price. NAV can do so much more, but clearly carries a higher price tag. B1 is somewhere in the middle. It may be that picking up 2 product alternatives is best (ableit more expensive for you). Having a customer base to migrate to a new product will get you tier quickly in the new product if you can make the process repeatable and customer friendly. I have never repped a product at End of Life, but I have seen this work well for others. Moving up to tier quickly typically gets you new leads from the publisher. Anyone know anything about Accumatica?

@GaryFeldman Acumatica is one of the products under consideration in our discovery project. I have gotten a lot of information through Dawn Jaeger regarding the VAR program, margins, marketing, etc. I have also done a little delving into the product and the completion. However, we haven't really gotten under the hood of any of the products. We are looking at companies and VAR programs first, and using that as our first cut exclusion basis. We will then do a review of the product at a mid-level and trim the list to two. We will then do a deep dive on the remaining products to determine where to put our resources and commitment. Customer migrations for 500 and 100 customers are a component of our go-to market. However, new sales will be the key to success for us on the new product. Of all the publisher I have personally looked at so far, Acumatica is the only group with out a direct sales force, they relay solely on a VAR channel. That may be why they have a slower growth slope.

My understanding is Acumatica is sort of in a niche around core accounting, revenue recognition etc. Sort of good for software companies etc. I've never thought of it as a powerhouse in distribution or manufacturing. So unless you guys are based in a hub of .com development (which might collapse), it seems too nichy to me.

I think one of Acumatica's selling points is that they offer unlimited users? I remember looking at Acumatica many years ago for a review thinking it looked several years behind UI-wise. I think there are some Solomon roots here - either through code, former execs or perhaps both. I however don't have any firsthand knowledge to share on it.