Sage News and Discussion

I'm not sure exactly what this means: Lorcan Malone, the current WW GM of Sage CRM, will be the new SVP/GM of SalesLogix. (He is moving to Scottsdale.) I am sad to see Dan Wilzoch (who also spent a couple yrs as a sr. exec in Ireland ~5 yrs ago) go. I think he's done a great job in really tough circumsances. I suspect that he is simply exhausted from the past year. But why would the VP/GM of Sage CRM jump to SalesLogix?? I have no inside knowledge, but I suspect that he is unhappy with Sage CRM's future prospects under Sage: he wanted to build a major ww competitor to mid-market CRM's and Sage just wants a CRM Module for its ERP's. I suspect that, and I take this as confirmation. Swiftpage did 3 very encouraging things in this announcment: - they did NOT put a Swiftpage exec in charge of SLX. This confirms their stated intention of further building SLX into a robust CRM. - They brought in an exec who has been living with this product space for some time, understands the competitive environment, and knows how important channel is to the game. - They brought in an exec who is steeped in web-only CRM. SLX now has an excellent web product; in many ways it is at least as good as its competitors. But it still has a ways to go. Lorcan should already know many of the issues involved. Now if SwiftPage can increase SLX's engineering and marketing funding to a level that lets move as fast as the market is going, things will be very good indeed. You have 14 minutes

With all due respect - you're whistling past the graveyard to think Swiftpage is going to do much with this.

What are you seeing here? I'm really curious.

What development experience does Swiftpage have that would lead a reasonable person to believe that they will develop the product any better than Sage. Also is there a separate release on Wilzoch? I didn't see where they announced that he'd be leaving (though I saw Seth at AT indicate that Dan was expected to lead Saleslogix at Swiftpage).

I had expect Wilzoch to stay, too. I don't know what the full story is there, and I've not seen a Sage announcement either. I'll probably get some insight to this over the next week. I think you have the development question wrong. Scottsdale has a very competent development team, but Sage has underfunded that for a couple years now. They know what to do in many areas, but they need some more bodies. Swiftpage is strategically trapped in the low end of the marketing automation market. They are about to be squeezed out by full-package offerings like SalesFusion and Zift. They need SLX CRM more than SLX needs them. The development pushes in the CRM market is in: 1) mobile. SLX has a very, very strong entrant there, which Sage is essentially licensing for its other mobile initiatives. 2) Social marketing. SLX and Sage CRM have initiatives into tapping into this, but the whole area is moving pretty fluidly. 3) marketing automation (this includes social). salesforce and Oracle have captive marketing automation functionality now. Hubspot and Infusionsoft have significant growth offering essentially turnkey marketing-CRM results. Contact and opportunity mgt are still important, but the marketing integration is where a lot of the new evaluations are including. For anybody curious as to what this MA-CRM integration is about, take a close look at Hubspot. In 3) we could see melding of of development expertise between SP and SLX. My ideal world would include a merger with SaleFusion, but that's not gonna happen. The characterization of the deal announcement was pretty clear that R&D $$ was part of the VC funding. It will also be interesting to see if any of this new development is pulled into Sage CRM through Sage's ongoing ownership of the venture.

I have suspicions that the move for Lorcan was part of the overall deal. Who knows what else wasn't divulged?

Peter, you might be right. But so far Sage is treating this as a defection (no announcement from Sage). And why announce it with 2 weeks left to closing if it were prearranged?

@peter Was Lorcan the main force behind SAGECRM? What was his role?.. Was he the Steve Job of SAGECRM?

Lorcan is a good guy. He was no Steve Jobs. I look forward to some new blood. BTW - this was part of the transition plan - it's not a defection.

Lorcan's LinkedIn profile is interesting: until Sage CRM, his entire career was with EDS until HP bought it. He has a BS CS. He's been with Sage CRM only a couple years.