General Consultant Discussion

Not a good sign for Sage.

Do they have a revolving door???

They appear to. Losing top people is never a good thing. I think Paige was brought in by Rich so let's see if there is more coming.

And the ""interim CEO"" says they'll be choosing a ""new leader"" soon?

Maybe 90 Minds needs to form a subsidiary called TempC and hire out each of us in turn to run Sage NA for 3-6 months at a time...

I have heard from several sources that Sage sales are really hurting.

All product lines???

Marc Scheipe isn't even worth listening to, because he's a placeholder. Stephen Kelly needs to step up and explain what's going on. Perhaps he'll be at President's Circle and I can have an afternoon Amontillado with him. Meanwhile it will be happy times in Orlando at the Acumatica Summit in February!

It's not like we needed any validation for what we (resellers) collectively believe Sage has become, but when someone in Rich's position tells the channel ""Sage made mistakes in the past, and I am working to fix those mistakes"" and then leaves without fixing anything, that speaks volumes. Sage (maybe just North America) is sinking faster than I thought, and Stephen Kelly won't be there much longer either. There is far too much PR praising him for *whatever* that he will certainly move on to a much better organization than this cancer of a company.

We expect to announce a new leader in the coming weeks. We thank Rich for his time at Sage and wish him all the best."" = seems to be words you'd use if someone was shown the door.

Stephen Kelly is transforming the company to a Salesforce app maker with all the ups and downs contained within that role. Wait 3 - 5 years from now when Salesforce announces they are buying Financial Force and the Sage app is no longer shown at their conferences. It will be all over then except the mopping up.

I don't think Sage has 3-5 years of runway. I tend to think more like @BrianKelly - Stephen Kelly is going to assess whether this company is going to take off within the time he has, and if he gets a whiff it won't then I would not be surprised if he makes a swift move to another position. Would not be surprised if VC bought up one or more NA product lines within 18 months.

Would not be surprised if VC bought up one or more NA product lines within 18 months"" For all of our sakes, I hope you are correct @WayneSchulz . @PeterWolf ""I have heard from several sources that Sage sales are really hurting."" None of us should be surprised by this.. This is quite sad because it seems to me the demise of Sage could have been avoided if it never went public. There has been such a short term mindset communicated from the top, Rich Spring being the most recent example. ""Sales are slow this quarter so get rid of him."" The guy didn't have any time for his programs to have an impact. Very sad for all of us. Time to make some time this weekend for more Acumatica training.

Regarding slow Sage sales. There is NO effective marketing out of Sage NA. None. Nada. They can't even arrange to make intro videos of 100c. My RAM has thrown up his hands about it.

My son sells for Financial Force. It is a good company and getting better. I don't see how Sage's culture can adapt to a startup market.

Spring came in as Pascal was leaving, and Jodi then started her evaluation. She left. Spring is no dummy, and I suspect he started preparing his parachute about the time Jodi left and he was not appointed her replacement. Also, I've been told that the pricing and policies around 100c were done despite his objections.

The truth is that 100c, its pricing and the fact that it isn't made available to existing customers at no additional cost have been a huge mistake, along with the Payroll pricing changes, and just about everything else they are doing with Sage 100 have been red flags that Rich apparently had no influence over.

Does anyone know who vetoed Rich Spring's decisions?

You are right @JohnHoyt . Customers don't live in a bubble. They know when they are being ripped off. They may not be able to change software immediately but they will certainly begin looking at other options. It doesn't make sense to change to a subscription only pricing model just because that is what other software publishers are doing. If Sage isn't spending the Sage 100 maintenance on relevant R&D the least they can do is freeze the price for a while. Why not differentiate your software and pricing from your competitors? It may create some customer loyalty.

It's my opinion that sales is 90% psychology and depends greatly on the belief system of the salesperson. Sage has eroded that belief system internally and within the channel. Many in the channel have low confidence in Sage and feel that Sage is no longer treating them as partners. Very bad move.

The 7 failure points for Sage (in no particular order) 1. Losing the CPA mindset/referral source 2. Failing to improve JC, MFG and believing those users would stay 3. Not implementing expiring registration keys 4. Losing the confidence of the channel (aka - you can't treat them like morons when they've been in the business for 15 +years) 5. Pouring attention and money into other product lines and wondering why your legacy products tank 6. Relying on spreadsheet forecasts and not common sense 7. Hiring executives without relevant software company / channel experience

Number 2, failing to improve manufacturing modules is particularly aggravating. Sage had a Summit keynote address (6 or 7 years ago) detailing the road ahead for Sage 100 included a marketing emphasis (fucus) on distribution and light manufacturing. A year later they announce that JC, BM, WO, and MRP won't be upgraded. The reasoning: Not enough end users / maintenance revenue / projected new sales revenue. In this case, the value of the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. Many prospects won't even look at Sage 100 because it hasn't touched its manufacturing modules in years. In addition, they aren't compatible with any modern relational database such as SQL. Further, the users that do have the manufacturing modules that never would have considered moving to another system are now window shopping and will leave eventually, and definitely won't be paying maintenance. Again, short-sited, public company, what were sales this quarter mentality.

Sage 100 is targeted at distribution companies, yet 30 years after version 1.0 there still isn't a multi-bin feature, and drop ship history doesn't exist. Do you think these features might be important to a distribution company? It is probably the first two questions a prospect will ask, other than what .NET language is it written in (ha ha) and what database options are available (SQL, Oracle, or DB2?).

I don't mean to offend anyone here, but IMO Sage UK set this in motion by NOT replacing its CPA execs with technology/marketing execs in ~2003. I don't think UK ever really thought of itself as a tech company, and it never really paid attention to what it would take to be really successful in the States. Then it put a foreigner, an ESL foreigner at that, in charge of the US and 40% of its WW business. (Of course, Pascal was after putting a telecom (!?) exec in charge for a few years ...). Sage's founders overstayed their effectiveness by ~7 yrs, and had no idea how to deal with evolving technology. Sage treated its CRM assets as if they were in mature markets, and insisted that they be run with same margins as mature businesses. As a result, when sold Saleslogix's revenue was under 20% of the level when Sage originally bought it; how do you do that in an exploding market? I think the current strategy is a Hail Mary that the salesforce platform magically produce the revenue to replace that lost by exiting customers. I see absolutely no strategic advantage that Sage has over Financial Force or anybody else in that environment. Sage might have had a chance if it had put 2 American business-tech execs in charge instead of the 2 Frogs 6 years ago. This insistence that European accountants can run a US tech-business is European arrogance at its most destructive. With the exception of Richard Branson, I can't think of any European company with significant success in America, and especially in tech.

Sage needs the CPA community on board to promote and recommend the solutions. The CPA is generally the most trusted business advisor and having the CPA endorsement can open doors and close sales for us. However, CPAs are not technology experts. CPAs are great at processes and number crunching, but they (most) don't understand databases, coding, and network infrastructure. In 1990 many small accounting firms were MAS90 business partners. These CPAs offered accounting, taxes, AND MAS90. As technology became more complex, the smart ones turned over the MAS90 business to full-time MAS90 consultants. They realized they couldn't be an expert in everything. Sage didn't adapt to these technological changes.

Speaking of Richard Branson. He is one of my heroes. No college education yet one of the world's best businessmen..... Too bad Sage doesn't value their talented employees.

I would like to Edit Wayne's post above (still in no particular order): 1. Losing the CPA mindset/referral source 2. Failing to have a product strategy for improvement. Did not understand that thier key product differntiators were ease of use and stability. **improve JC, MFG and believing those users would stay** 3. Not keeping the relationship between maintenance and value in alignment. You can't keep raising maintenance and not providing value. If you stop providing value, stop providing support for those not paying. Not implementing expiring registration keys 4. **Losing the confidence of the channel (aka - you can't treat them like morons when they've been in the business for 15 +years)** 5. Not having a product strategy other than milking existing products. When the going gets tough, Sage stops investing. Pouring attention and money into other product lines and wondering why your legacy products tank. 6. Relying on spreadsheet forecasts and not common sense. Make the numbers say the messages you are spouting instead or listening to the numbers and adjusting your strategy. 7. Hiring executives without relevant software company / channel experience Similar thoughts with some different spins Add another: 8. Losing your feeder products that promoted sales of your up-market products. Peachtree lost the war with QuickBooks, but Sage lost the Data Migrator and never made it any easier to capture the QuickBooks market. Same with CRM and ACT!

On a related matter (I was thinking about this over the weekend): all parties going to the President's Circle event later this month should live it up. Next year it will be back to 2 extra drink coupons at Summit to ""thank"" the top partners.

I agree with you Peter - it will be interesting to see if there are any additional changes between now and January 21st, when President's Circle begins. I did get a call from Marc Scheipe after e-mailing him with some of my concerns about Sage being able to sustain quality leadership for more than just months at a time. Marc will be at Sage 3 years this March. He is a stable, CFO type who seems to be growing into a more operational role. I don't know what Stephen Kelly has in store for him but he's sure to find out soon. It is a travesty that Sage continues to stumble on several fronts, but since most of us have our wagons attached to the Sage hitching post, it is imperative that they figure things out immediately. I stressed this to Scheipe. Meanwhile, our Acumatica and NetSuite practices continue to grow nicely and I will admit, despite some obstacles that we have had with Sage X3 over the past 6 years, the product is in a better place and our X3 practice is strong. Sage 100 still remains our bedrock though.