Sage News and Discussion

I just received an interesting call from Sean Munsert from Sage who has a MAS/Accpac lead for a customer currently using Sage PRO. I probably missed the announcement but Sage PRO is being dissolved and the Sage Investment Protection Program offers basically a free migration (user for user). @PeterWolf , weren't you just dealing with a Sage PRO customer in St. Cloud?

I was working with ProcessPro - a maker of a process manufacturing add-on for Pro Series. We are helping them with their CRM integration. You are right that Pro is going away and there is a migration plan. The problem is that it's not quite ""free"" because a lot of Pro folks have customizations so there is a lot of work to move their functionality over.

The word ""free"" seems to be coming up a lot lately... You're right, of course, it's not free. This lead knows there will be costs involved - ""they are willing to spend whatever it takes to make their business run efficiently"" is how the lead qualification reads.

LOL -- oops sorry -- you hit on one of the funny areas of lead generation (whatever it takes) --- I also am a fan of ""Will spend the money if the software does what we need"".... Of course they never can decide what it is they need -- other than pretty much the same system Amazon.com uses. I seem to also find that with ""run efficiently"" in that it usually means - ""our business process improves without any change whatsoever on our part"" .... Just makes me chuckle to read those lead sheets..

I agree completely, Wayne. There are two references in the lead to the propect's budget - one says $50k and the other $25, neither of which is likely accurate.

The program Sage is running allows the Sage Pro customer to get a replacement product free (Accpac, MAS 90, maybe MAS 500) but they have to pay at least 1 year of maintenance on the new product (actually might be 2 or 3). The services are clearly not free and there currently are some very rudimentary data conversion options. And as Peter says, most Pro installs had heavy customizations, so there are likely going to be costs for recustomizing or for pre-existing 3rd party apps to cover the functionality. On services side, move to Pro is virtually like any conversion to a new system, so in the end, the free software is at best maybe 30% of the entire budget. On the other hand, if Pro customer has made decision that they have to move off, 30% off total cost is better than nothing. We have a lot of Pro customers and have a fair amount of success moving some of them to X3 (not free but Sage will deal) and Accpac.

What I wouldn't give for the days when 1/2 the prospects we saw were on RealWorld... talk about an easy system to convert. Usually I didn't need to do any type of analysis because I was confident MAS did all of RW plus more...

Peter and Mike, it's free like a puppy is free.

So there's free as in speech, free as in beer, and free as in puppy?

So M&S is dog food? And we're the vet and obedience school?