General Consultant Discussion

Important announcement: Sage 100 and 300 payroll tiering launch delayed for reassessment Based upon valuable feedback we received from our partners following that announcement, we have decided to reassess our go-to-market approach and delay this launch until early 2016. http://tinyurl.com/putosfz

Someone may lose their job over this - right before someone gets fired for the 100c fiasco.

All I have to say is ....What a CusterF*&%.

Thank you for your ""valuable feedback"". Now will you offer me a job?

Well, perhaps the gazillion comments posted during the webinar was too startling for them.. We still should organize an end user letter writing campaign to continue the pressure.

Holy fucus Batman! There might be intelligent life here after all...

Yet Sage continues to blindly charge ahead. I suspect if we ask them about joining our group at MOTM (again) we will (again) get a deer-in-the-headlights look as to why on earth they would ever want to consider such a strange request.

It is somewhat encouraging news. Perhaps some execs there are paying attention. That said, there were lots of detailed ""what if"" questions in the interchanges, and I would not be surprised if they found some technical elements weren't quite ready.

It would be in Sage's best interests to use the BPAC as a sounding board for what they are considering in order to help them to develop the details and to anticipate valid objections. Instead they present what they believe is a fully formed new policy less than a week before announcing it to the remainder of the channel. I would hope someone in management understood this, but history is not on their side.

Pollyanna here. Maybe this will be a ""learning opportunity"" for Spring and his new VP.

10-EE weekly payroll client calls a couple days ago asking about PR with DD. Wants to explore switching from Paychex. Do the demo and she says looks great! I tell her Sage is re-pricing PR and unofficially it will be $1k annually. I ask how much they pay annually for Paychex. She says $400/wk, $20k annually. Gulp! So is proposed payroll pricing still under-priced?

Something like Paychex has more features than doing PR through MAS. First, all the customer need do is upload the employee hours for the period. ALL of the rest is done by Paychex. There is NO knowledge of ""the system"" required by the customer, so losing ""the payroll girl"" is not a big deal. All payments, including government filings are done automatically. So, you must compare that $20k annual amount to Sage fees, plus employee time and expense to generate all of this. What Sage misses, I think, is that their current PR customers have explicitly decided to NOT use a service like Paychex. So to compare Sage costs to a service is a bit of a non-sequitur for the Sage customer, because that is not what the customer is comparing it to.

TruDat Jerry, but there still is time involved to enter in Sage 100 after the fact. Plus they lose some of the dexterity of doing internally themselves. In this client example, time is a push and there is no separate payroll person. Further, in a Job Cost environment, out-sourced payroll would be more time-consuming.

I agree with @JerryNorman regarding what you get for each function - you get what you pay for, but customers fail to include all of the costs when doing comparisons and those costs that are not direct, like more accuracy or security. Those are some of those ""priceless"" items in some cases. And, Jerry, there are probably ""payroll boys"" also.

100% to 1,000% price increases with three months notice are , in my book, not the definition of being ""the champion of small business"".

@JohnHoyt my tongue was firmly in cheek. What is really insane is that too many Controllers are actively engaged in their internal payroll generation. A huge potential opportunity cost.

There are several variables here that contribute to the problem: the message, the delivery, the failure to engage, the failure to make any improvement to the product, and (some place in the mix) the price increase itself but not the price increase alone.

To be very clear, I think there is a good chunk of current PR customers who would ultimately accept the price increase. I also think a significant portion would leave. But that depends very much on how it gets explained, the time frame, the options offered, etc. this first attempt was very much ""we got you. take or leave it."" People will leave in that circumstance, even paying more on the alternative, flipping the bird to Sage on the way. The backing off was a good sign. But my real concern is that I cannot imagine any experienced sales executive signing off on the plan we saw. So either Spring is an idiot or he wasn't consulted, or he was ignored. None of those are good.

Sage has convinced themselves that they understand our customers and what they want. The fact is they aren't even close to understanding. They develop these new policies in a vacuum and then seem surprised when we poke holes in their plans. They would save a great deal of time starting a dialog with the channel or BPAC much earlier in the process.

One of the issues was likely that people who designed (or proposed) these tiers were from the SAGE 50 world and it is obvious that they didn't have a GREAT understanding of the SAGE 100 or the Sage 300 world of payroll.

Good point about Sage 50/Peachtree. There's been a long tradition of those execs sticking around and thriving in Sage. By now the org should have awareness of the potential problem and standing processes to check against it. Oops, right. This is Sage who put accountants and finance guys in charge of the whole thing. Never mind.

Just another reason why having everything named Sage isn't necessarily a good idea. End users are confused by thinking everything is the same and as are the execs...

@JohnHoyt was this anticipated change in Payroll discussed at BPAC earlier this month? Did the ""questions"" regarding Sage 100c cause them to hold back on informing BPAC, maybe?

The Payroll review with BPAC was scheduled during or slightly after the BPAC meeting in Irvine, so I'm not sure what influence the 100c discussions had on it. The Payroll review seemed like an afterthought, however, since the announcement to the channel was the following Monday and the web meeting with the channel was Friday, a week after our review. This had to be planned all along. The feedback they received from BPAC was similar to that in our 90 Minds discussion, so it appears it had little affect on the announcement. It occurs to me that if Sage received reviews from 90 Minds, they wouldn't need the BPAC, and they could get the reactions immediately - all 240+ comments! I'm not sure they could handle that.

I was just thinking that maybe we should send a could of these threads (anonymized) to Sage as a free introductory offer along with a (sizeable) price for a subscription to the 90 Minds Honest Review of Proposed Publisher Changes service.

A small fee, like $500K, so we could hold MOTM on Maui.

We approached Sage last year prior to MOTM with pretty much the same observation that @JohnHoyt made - though I think our offer range was $12,000 to $50,000 which included a wide variety of possible options including creating a tech support area that Sage could throw in some of their senior techs and collaborate directly with us: _It occurs to me that if Sage received reviews from 90 Minds, they wouldn't need the BPAC, and they could get the reactions immediately - all 240+ comments! I'm not sure they could handle that._ While we didn't suggest $500,000 -- our fee options were priced fairly based upon the value we believe a partnership with 90 Minds would bring to Sage and the fact that Sage's attempts at community building have, arguably, been a failure. Much of our interaction with Sage was brought on by Deborah Nelson having asked us at Summit whether there could be a closer working relationship between Sage and 90 Minds. I knew Deborah didn't likely have spend authority yet did not feel that 90 Minds was created to serve Sage and develop a community for them at no cost. In summary, Sage's response was that they weren't going to be ""held up"" for money and typically don't pay that type of fee to get feedback. I'm paraphrasing because I didn't talk to them directly. So ultimately last year we sold Sage a few tickets to MOTM and they attended to what I think were overwhelmingly positive results. In the months following we had numerous 90 Minders give feedback on the VIP program for Sage 100 v2015. I can't say that was ALL because Sage attended MOTM -- but I'm confident a big part was. Ultimately Sage is very customer and publicity (buy off the analysts and web famous personalities) friendly but to my view is only paying lip service to the channel. I also believe strongly that the next year or two will bring much more turmoil - both in Sage NA management and in the Sage product line. As of now it's a confusing ""whos on first"" array of people to talk with. Rich Spring drives new customer revenue, Connie Certusi is overseeing the Sage accounting product lines in NA, Mike Ritchie is overseeing product management of Sage 100, 300 NA, and so is Scott Munro who we think has somewhat the same responsibilities as Mike Ritchie and the same title but is in some way the boss. We don't know who is managing the Sage 100 product line but think it's Linda Cade who also had Sage 500 responsibilities (back to the past when these two lines were managed together? ). One of the things that I've learned is that if you approach Sage with some type of idea regarding collaboration - they either love it - provided it's free - or they want to know exactly what you're proposing including the cost. So prior to discussing the above with Sage we spent more time than we probably should have thinking of the various options that we could offer. Just a little ""inside baseball"" of what we tried to do with Sage in the past. Just as we get a contact to discuss these things with - the contact at Sage disappears.

90 Minds does not represent all facets of Sage business, so I don't think we would replace the BPAC.

Also - the regime that told us to take a hike last year is now gone. We may be better received. I have it on good authority that Sage has embraced the Accpac focused TPAC conference and is providing sponsorship. The winds have changed.

Once the local landfill has been sealed up, it still takes a while for the smell to dissipate, even if the winds have changed.

I agree with Wayne about Sage's likely direction in the next few years with 100/300: using the products as an ""anchor"" is the only technically to keep them alive in the market. If that's the case, then Sage must have 3rd parties with confidence in their investment, and the last regime gave little reason to have any. if anybody there is paying attention, reversing the confidence decline must be high on their lists. I can see how a closer 90 Minds relationship could be justified split between product management and marketing budgets. So, who to approach and what timing. IMO, start high with Jodi; this is an ""above the line"" sale. BUT we don't want to do that if she is not sticking around. We'll be working with Cade and Erickson, but sure would be nice to first have the ball rolling by their boss. Any guesses on when the ""interim"" part of Jodi's title will be resolved?

Assume Jodi will stay Interim - does it change anything?

My understanding of definition of ""Interim"" is ""minding the store while we find someone ""permanent"". Implicit is both short term and limited ability to change course. Until her title changes, I think we should consider her a ""short timer"". It's hard to make strategic deals with one in that position, and I don't think Sage will agree to spend $$$ on this if they don't consider it part of their recovery strategy. That's my thinking behind it. What am I misunderstanding or overthinking?

I don't think it matters as it impacts 90 Minds. I've already stated that they have agreed to sponsor the Accpac focused TPAC - so I think we should focus on the opportunities and not the potential problems. We have a new set of cards at the poker table. The old cards are in the discard pile. If we continue to focus on the hand we used to have, we won't be able to make the most out of what we do have.

Regarding the ""interim"" President NA, Sage on numerous occassions now has stressed that Stephen Kelly is the ""Global"" CEO, although I doubt that is what is on his business card. They have made it clear that all major decisions go through him and his minions. So Jodi then qualifies as another minion, and will be there as long as she does what Stephen wants and as long as she can stand it. I don't want to diminish her abilities or purpose for NA, because I consider her to be very capable and open minded. In terms of BPAC and 90 Minds, there will always be a place and purpose for BPAC, if for no other purpose than for Sage to say ""The BPAC reviewed this and we took this into consideration."" (Note that it is not whether there was agreement or not.) BPAC is very different from 90 Minds in that most of the 90 Minds members and voices are still working in the trenches, so we are very close to the details of what we and the customers have to work with. BPAC has a majority of members that look at this at a higher, strategic level and from the sales point of view. There is a reason for both. Sage needs to recognize the value of both in setting direction. Now we just need to have some assurance that they will seriously listen.