General Consultant Discussion

I'm sitting in San Jose doing #Intacct training this week. So far, I like it a lot. Not leaving Sage 100 behind (yet) -- there are some things that aren't quite fully baked -- but there are some things it does that Sage only wishes it could do.

Any chance a comparison list will come out of this? Or does one already exist?

I believe we had a member last year sign up for the product. They recently backed away from it.

We are a 10 minute walk from you. Let us know if you have a lunch break free.

@JohnBroadfoot: Great question. One of the other guys in our group had something where they compared a few of the different products that we sell. I'll see if I can dig that up. @JeffSchwenk: I can see how a Sage 100 person would back away. It's a whole new paradigm, and it will definitely take a major shift in thinking. It's also probably not appropriate (right now) for most of our Sage 100 customers, because distribution hasn't been a focus (no pun intended). Also, you don't get any upgrade revenue. @BobPfahnl: Sounds great. I should be able to make arrangements on Wednesday.

Maybe the member will add their two cents.

We saw limited distribution functionality. Accounting product was good. Leverages dimensions. Marketing was definitely different within Intacct than I originally understood. I really feel that we can customize Sage more but that is a trade off with upgrades. Lots of venture capital raised which is concerning. Several people rumored Intacct would sell around the channel. We had a push come to shove and Taylor treated us with integrity. I questioned some others. I think you need to go into the relationship assuming that you can generate 95% of your leads. Leads will most likely go to the direct team.

After one year we ended our Intacct relationship. Their AICPA deal is too sweet for CPAs and offers no protection for the VAR that makes the initial contact and all the legwork. For example, We drove two hours to meet with a well qualified prospect, only to walk into the meeting to find the prospect's CPA also sitting at the table. After our phone conversation with the prospect, he was so excited about Intacct that he told his CPA about it and the CPA then did some research and found the AICPA offer. So we spent 4 hours in the car and 2 hours in a meeting to so the CPA can sell Intacct to his client. If the client ends up buying the highly discounted Intacct through their CPA firm and their highly discounted AICPA price, the VAR gets nothing. If the CPA's client outgrows the limits of the AICPA model and purchases their own full license, the VAR gets nothing. The VAR is not even guaranteed ROR with the client that was once your prospect. They don't have any alignment model in place for CPA firms so you could at least benefit from any subsequent sales from the CPA firm. At least Sage has the SAN so you can benefit from any future sales from your relationship. Taylor doesn't see a problem with this model. Note: This was over a year ago, so things may have changed.

@ScottHickman and @BillPfahnl -- those are good things to know. Thanks for sharing.

Good information from @BillPfahnl and @ScottHickman - thanks for sharing guys. I always wonder about how integral the channel is to these cloud solution providers.