Sage 100

I'm wondering what experience others are having in terms of Sage 100c Mfg. pricing and trying to sell new systems to prospects. I have encountered 4 opportunities since JO became Sage 100c Mfg. Some of these opportunities stemmed from Sage leads, and some not. In one case, the prospect contact previously worked at one of our clients that used JO so she has come back to us for recommendations. These opportunities have ranged from a low of 6 users to a high of upper 30's users. In each case, I have provided 1 - 10 year TCO projections for the prospect as requested so that they have a clear understanding of the investment. I'm finding in each case that the Sage package is now 2 - 4x more than it was before the JO to Sage 100c Mfg. transition. And the longer I run out the analysis, the worse it gets. We also sell Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Job Manager. Job Manager (JM) is a product with a similar design target as JO, however with significantly stronger functionality. And it is at least only half the cost or better of a Sage package. The solution is simple if the opportunity did not come from Sage. However if the lead was provided by Sage, I'm suddenly having a real challenge gaining much traction with these prospects due to the price/value concerns. Have you noticed a hiccup in your Sage 100c Mfg. close rates due to pricing concerns, or is it just me with an internal bias that is suddenly Sabotaging my own deals? FWIW - I have forwarded the analysis on each of these opportunities to Sage so they can see for themselves how out of step they are with the market, but so far it has not netted anything.

Very interesting, for a long time now I've only been looking at Job Ops as an opportunity for people who already own Sage 100, it is in no way functionally or price-wise competitive with other Solutions even higher end ones like Epicor. Part of this is because of the cost of a license for time entry only users which can often be a large number in manufacturing operations companies

Mark - I would tend to agree with you in terms of product positioning. This past October, we had a current client running Sage 100 with WO and MRP, and a 50 user license. They wanted to add JO Base and Time Tracker with Data Collector to the mix. Prior to the JO-Sage 100c license transition, their 5 year cost would have been $51.3K. After the transition, they would now need to convert to Sage 100c Complete Plus Bundle and then add the Sage 100c Mfg. pieces. In doing so, their 5 year cost is now $197.5K instead of $51.3K. Needless to say, that deal is DOA.

The Sage pricing definitely seems on the high side, but I don't believe it is as high as what Synergistic had on their price list for JobOps subscription pricing. That was probably why Synergistic did not sell more than perhaps one subscription. I advised Mike Ritchie and his people on Sage Manufacturing, including pricing. The end result of the pricing was higher than what I recommended, which was probably decided between Synergistic and Sage. By the way, JobOps was not the only solution we reviewed, but it ended up being the most logical due to its tight integration with Sage 100. I have not had any push back on the Sage Manufacturing pricing. We have one sale in process of implementation and will close another this month with 3-4 others in process. It works fine when quoting the 100c and Sage Manufacturing is part of that, because it is not as high as the 100c subscription. The value proposition needs to be developed based on the true benefit of features such as the seamless integration with Sage 100c, replacement of external systems, etc. The value of those benefits may be more than what we imagine. The large numbers over 5 years are not necessarily high if the value is realized. The market space for Sage 100 is part of the problem, because these people think too small. If you look at other ERP systems with manufacturing - Epicor, X3 and others - the numbers are much higher.