General Consultant Discussion

Just saw this - Summit's Agenda posted so far. Thought Monday was going to be a full day for partners. But It does say it can change...

Yep there you go to the partner portion of Summit is now four hours long!

Actually it looks like an hour and a half.

Lol, yeah I was giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Another reason to sigh up for the scripting and SI educational classes being presented by the 90Minds. But then, this is Vegas, so there are OTHER ways to spend your week!!!

The era of hoping Sage is going to change is over. Unless that change is to embrace the customer in a more direct fashion.

My guess is, once the conference is over, if you look back at the Sage sponsored sessions, you could have gained the same new knowledge in 1-2 hours of webinars. Now its really just a place industry buddies go to drink and gamble while telling the significant other 'they have to go to an important business conference' ...

I'm guessing that in planning for Summit there was a big conference room of Sage execs, event people, and outside event consultants. Bottom line was that in order to put bodies in the seats Sage had to hold it at an attractive location at an attractive price. Check. Check. Now comes the hard part. In order to monetize this you have to deliver an agenda that not only sells to the attendees but is good enough that they want to come back on year 2+. I'm not sure if any of us can tell whether this will happen. There's a lot riding on the conference and I'm pretty sure that Sage is more nervous about it than anyone. Just looking at the speakers and the entertainment has me scratching my head. As someone pointed out - for $99 you are basically getting free meals covered for a trip to Vegas. My expectations are that this is a customer conference, I expect to be underwhelmed and I'm going to hang out with the group from 90 Minds and other VARS that I know.

I probably have 10 - 15 clients taking advantage of the $99 deal, so I will be tour director, pointing the clients to various vendors that have solutions to their problems and introducing the more vocal ones to Sage exec so they can chew on their ears, not that they will be listening in the slightest.

I can't go as I'll be going to Vegas the week after next for Epicor where they will Announce Epicor 10. A culmination of 5 years, 800,000 manhours, a 18,000,000 lines of code reviewed to pull their already butt kicking solution far ahead of most competitors, including in many areas, X3. All written in the good ol' USA with an American workflow, terminology and data dictionary and built on more Microsoft technology than any Microsoft ERP system. A few years back, Epicor 9 was released and had more new functionality and modules (all written by Epicor in their code base, database & UI) than MAS90 had seen in the prior 20 years or so. I'm not cheer-leading for Epicor or saying I'm thrilled with their partner model, but just saying that just assuming that vendors no longer need to write any new code to justify 20+% maintenance is a crock. Epicor charges the same 20% that Sage does, delivers massive functionality and technology improvements, and also includes unlimited phone support in that 20%. Epicor 10 is 3-4 times FASTER than Epicor 9 and runs on 75% less hardware. When was the last time you saw a comprehensive ERP system move in that direction?

I noticed that everyday of this agenda has a Keynote. Really? 4 keynotes, 1 partner rest for both customers and partners. My gosh what are they going to talk about in 4 keynotes?

How great thou Sage art! Blah, Blah, blah. Remember, it isn't about the nail....