General Consultant Discussion

MOTM 2018 - Now that we know that Jennifer Warawa, Executive Vice President - Partners, Accountants & Alliances and Matt Muldoon, VP, Product Management are attending, let's develop a list of questions to ask them. The moderators (Jim and Moira?) could ask them on the group's behalf. By asking questions in an organized manner, we could get more of them asked (and answered). Please post your question here. Hopefully, we will get a couple. Here is mine. Jennifer and Matt - Welcome to MOTM 2018, our 7th annual conference. What started as a small group of 20 or so resellers meeting in DSD's training room has now grown to over 1xx reseller and affiliate attendees. We are committed to the Sage 100 product, we are passionate about what we do and we strive to make our client's business run better through the use of Sage products. The average Sage tenure of our members is over 20 (?) years. Change has been a constant for us. One area of change that we do NOT like is with the leadership of Sage. It is constant and never ending. For the past three or four years, someone from Sage has stood in front of this group and talked about change, talked about the mistakes made, talked about how things were going to be better and improved in the coming year. The year goes bringing new leadership at Sage, rinse, repeat. Please tell us how YOU are going to make a difference?

Unfortunately, I will not be attending MOTM this year. I will be attending Sage Intacct training the same week. The training is here, in Chicago, so I have to take advantage of it. Please submit the following absentee question on my behalf: There are several competing ERP products that were developed to run efficiently on a web server, in the cloud, and are accordingly marketed as cloud products. How does the underlying technology of Sage 100c justify a name change to Sage 100Cloud? Sage 100c is clearly not a cloud product, even in the broadest definition of ""cloud"". Is there an underlying platform change, and complete code re-write that will be announced shortly?

What @DougHiggs? NOT attending? Who is buying the tequila?

I really wish I could. The next time I see you Jeff we'll throw back a few, on me.

If a company is shopping for cloud-based ERP software, and they would like a demonstration of Sage 100Cloud, what cloud features should we emphasize? What are the specific cloud features where Sage 100Cloud has an advantage over cloud products such as NetSuite and Acumatica?

Great questions. Keep them coming

Could you elaborate on sales department improvements? We still can't get quotes for mid year changes, direct communication with the end user is poor at best and we have to be very vigilant regarding our commissions (that they are correct or we even receive them). It has been two years (?) since the move to Atlanta. We are looking for a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

Before everyone gets all worked up

Not getting worked up, just want them to look us in the eye and tell us straight to our face. It could be the only (last) year that Warwara is with us if past history holds up.

Could it be that we force the attendees' eyes open and then they leave?

Update - Matt Muldoon's trip to the US was cancelled, we may have Mike Ritchie instead, waiting on confirm. @WayneSchulz cartoon doubly appropriate.

Question - why does Sage have the BPAC group and then not float changes by them for their thoughts/opinions?

Do any of the BPAC members care to comment? @KayleyBell @BobKohlmeyer @CarlaBrown @JohnHoyt

When I first started serving on the BPAC in 2015, Rich Spring was in charge, enthusiastically welcomed all of us, and promised this would be a new BPAC. It would not be like those in the past where Sage acted as if they were interested. He delivered on that promise - until he was gone. I looked at the agenda from that initial meeting in September 2015, and the only people still with Sage are Jennifer Warawa, Scott Munro, Jim Emerick and Joo Sohn. 10+ others who spoke or attended are no longer with Sage. Through 2016 Rich's promise was kept by the successive Sage management, many who are also gone now. We did have a significant influence on the final roll-out pricing of Payroll and 100c. We did get advance notice on almost everything - albeit perhaps only 1 day to 1 week in advance. This new BPAC, which had its first meeting October 2017, includes mostly new players from Sage, and they have not been on top of things in terms of informing us in advance or seeking our opinions as we experienced previously. I'd like to say it is by design, but that would be giving management too much credit. In reality, they are as out of control as sales operations continues to be. My personal opinion of the issue is that Stephen Kelly set himself up as Global CEO making all other business unit Presidents subservient to him and resulting in a lack of strong leadership, specifically in North America, where this is critical. So we end up with a collection of Keystone Cops in the US with no real direction except to increase revenue. The single exception is Jennifer Warawa, for whom I continue to have great respect, but she is not in a functional position that allows her to take charge.

Rich Spring and Jody Uecker spinning that exit door so quickly was a big foreshadowing of what was to come in North America.

I can't tell you who is in charge in North America. Whomever it is, it appears they don't have much authority to make a decision. If Sage 100 is a US product only, then someone in the US should have responsibility for marketing. Based on the current marketing strategy, it seems Sage 100 is lumped in with the global products and decision making is in the UK.

While a number of issues are discussed at BPAC meeting, the rebranding decision was not. Perhaps the timing didn't allow for it, but my guess is it was a U.K. decision already made so its just been North Americas job of communicating it. If that is the case North America didn't have much say in the matter which meant BPAC input would not have mattered anyway in this case. I'm sure the feedback all partners are giving to Sage is being notice since it's been so .... uh less than positive. My understanding is there have been some frank discussions at Sage this past week with this being a major topic. There is another all hands meeting February 21 to discuss this among other things. While I think it's probably too late, wouldn't it be nice to hear news that Sage has rethought the rebranding of 100/300. But not holding my breath. We should all be thankful we work for small companies that can adapt fairly quickly and fix things that need fixed.

It goes without saying that we'll want to see an updated roadmap because the deliverables continue to not be in the updates the were slated for. Sage Contacts, Plaid integration, eInvoicing with click to pay, 3-way match for AP Automation. And during the Payroll 2.0 launch, there were a few Payroll 2.0 wish list items like Garnishments that we were hoping would be in an upcoming release, so I would like an update on that. I haven't watch the all hands recording yet. I could have missed answers to these.

Time to bring this back up to the top so we can get questions asked and answered in a productive manner. Now that Sage has ""clouded up"" the water, the meeting should be even more interesting. Are keys being updated on the partner portal?

I would like to know what the process is at Sage for responding to web site inquiries. I now have THREE stories where people interested in Sage left NUMEROUS web inquiries and phone calls before someone finally reached out to ONE of them. Of the other two, Sage never contacted one of them (BTW, it was a 100 lead sent to me by Sage. Turned out, they really wanted Sage 50) and the other was a CPA trying to get the Accountant's Network attention. Finally Ed Kless was able to arrange a phone call. What are we to do when Sage doesn't return queries?

Why does the tribe have to ""vote"" via Sage Idea Web site for simple fixes? For example, the date field in bank reconciliation report does NOT format in the same manner of all other date fields. Being able to access invoice history in vendor maintenance/inquiry the same manner that you can in customer maintenance/inquiry, auto numbering in vendor maintenance. These seem to be ""simple"" fixes that should have been remedied long ago.

Can you provide an update on the Atlanta sales department operations? Simple quotes, commission credits, customer follow up, the entire shebang!

If Sage 100 Cloud is the new name, will Sage develop a program for hosting companies to offer it in the cloud? Is there any desire for control, certification or at least a listing of providers who offer it in the cloud? At least 4 of us will be in attendance at the meeting!