Speaking of Sage showing respect:
- Their presentation incorporated significant advice from 90 Minds regarding how to get the most from their presence. I don't think we've been able to do this before. Certainly, Anne made a significant effort to herd those cats, but it also shows their improved attitude.
- Dianna Lane pointed out that Sage sending Luc Mathiot to our event was a Big Deal. He is the global head of BMS products (Sage 100, 300, X3, etc.) He is French (so imagine my initial reaction when I first heard him -- "Is he the second coming of 'Fuck Us'?"), but he was pretty good! His presence was more a show of support than any big presentation.
- I talked with Dianna for a bit (she also lives in Austin -- we've had lunch together here). She made it pretty clear Sage now intends to route almost all Sage 100 partner attention through 90 Minds. The Partner Summit in Dallas has nothing on Sage 100 (except migrating to Intacct), and Sage thinks working with 90 Minds is the best way to support Sage 100 customers.
- I do think that Sage has come to realize that they must do some active marketing of Sage 100 to new customers. They MUST keep their current installed base long enough to improve Intacct enough to offer distribution and mfg functionality to those customers. This will take years (whether it's 2 or 10 is anybody's guess), and unless current customers can see obvious evidence that Sage is behind their product, many won't stick around for Intacct to be ready for them. I don't think Sage saw this need for NCA marketing until a few months ago. While Sage at MOTM was not ready to explicitly state that Sage 100 is the current product to meet dist and mfg customers, they didn't argue that such a conclusion is wrong. IMO, that is significant. This would be a tactical, not strategic, development, but would be very good 90 Minds and our members.
In years before 2020-21, Sage was decidedly ambivalent about supporting MOTM and 90 Minds.
@Moira Goggin did a great job of wrestling them to the ground and spending significant money on us, but it seemed like we were swimming upstream. It seems to me that Sage NA now has a far more productive attitude now that they see we have a significant potential to help them meet their Sage 100 customer retention goals.
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Jerry Norman
At-Large BOD Member, 90 Minds
Smartbridge Partners
(512) 653-7498
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-15-2022 10:52
From: Wayne Schulz
Subject: MOTM 2022
We missed you.
TL;DR:
- Based on the APP for the conference we had about 125 people - and this seemed to be broken out almost equally between consultants and affiliates
- Sage brought 12 people including a couple relevant higher level folks ( Possibly the best Sage presentation in years ). - they're still limping through PM so the presentation did not have much "meat" as to future development plans. The fact that Sage brought 12 relevant representatives sent a message to me that they are still dedicated to this product.
- Sage Partner Cloud was presented on one Sage slide as Native Cloud
- I went to Alnoor's scripting which was amazing and every Sage 100 consultant should attend even if they never want to write a script after the class. Just having the understanding of what can be done as well as about 100 sample scripts was well worth the time. For me this is something that justified the entire trip.
- Lots of talk about Production Management - Jane Scanlon and Gil Ponte held a great session comparing and contrasting WO, PM, OM. Very interactive with lots of members asking questions. Just like the good old days.
- Affiliate presentations were well received and kept to the allotted time
- New(ish) Product Marketing Manager Dianetta King was impressive during her presentation - it's not easy to get up in front of our group for the first few times and I thought she did a really good job and came across as very bright.
- The Sage engineering people ( Elliott, Steve, John Nichols ) were at the conference almost the entire time. Ronnie Aspe also attended. I may have unintentionally missed a few others. Being in Newport Beach CA definitely made it easier for some of the local Sage people to attend for a longer period of time than they would have in prior years.
- I roomed with Jim Woodhead - he is a Sage Partner Cloud evangelist and big believer in that platform. If you have questions about SPC - he is a good resource.
- I think the ROI for this conference was probably different for each person depending on what they were looking to get out of it
- Production Management still seems to be consuming a lot of development attention which means there was not much of a roadmap that was shared
- The Mod Squad had a great presentation on the items that they are compiling in a spreadsheet for possible future development. I had a chance to ask Sage why we couldn't get an unattended rebuild sort files. I think Alnoor has previously explained the issue which as best I understand rolls down to (a) Sage may not have full access to rebuilt sorts in protected software programs - which replace standard rebuild sorts code with custom code that includes the base rebuilt sorts plus custom secret code to rebuild their own program(s) ( think Scanco WMS as an example ) and (2) Rebuild sorts is old non-framework code and probably a project to rewrite ( and test/debug ). Possibly something could be done that's not a full rebuild but is more of a recallcuation on SO, WO, PO, LOT/Serial recalc. Nothing for sure here but just the general chit chat around this topic. I would like to see this list of mods being considered shared as a read-only to the group ( perhaps it already is and I missed it )
- I asked engineering whether Sage could somehow prompt when an update of data files is required after installing a PU or Payroll update. Elliott had a good point that f Sage kicked off an update of data that it could negatively impact a company that has a bunch of old archive company data flies ( think about what a pain that would be if Sage automatically started updating Payroll 1.x archive companies ). So maybe a good middle ground is a notification at the end of the update to remind the consultant/user to go in an manually convert the companies that need converting ( this seems like a good option ).
- My .02 - the path forward for easily managing Sage 100 is the cloud - which I see as either Cloud hosting ( SPC or external ) - or for companies that have the staff Terminal Services. Almost all the annoying inherent problems in Sage 100 ( Workstation Synch, managing user workstation setups ) . I do not think Sage will be able to materially improve the process to setup and configure workstations in a "regular" network environment however that process is quite a bit easier in a Cloud/Terminal Server environment.
Overall a good conference given that there's not much non-PM related to be discussed by Sage. Hopefully they cross the PM hurdle within the next two releases and we can get back on track with a more normal development schedule with features designed for non-MFG customers.
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Wayne Schulz
wayne@s-consult.com
Schulz Consulting
(860) 516-8990
Moodus, CT
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