General Consultant Discussion

Partnering With Sage Webinar

I got on late and was surprised there was no sage bashing thread going on. I came in for the Sage Live pitch

I did not register for that Webinar... Maybe give us a recap when it is finished?

I just got on. Missed the SL piece. now talkign about sage people.

Sage Live is a joke, and Sage is more of a joke for asking for an investment of $7,200 to clean up their messes for selling Sage Live direct to customers who have no idea what they are buying.

We all need a cloud solution and thanks to Salesforce, I mean Sage Live, and other acquisitions we know nothing about we are a cloud company. Anyone here in 90 minds have cloud solutions? Beuhler

So Sage People is a Salesforce app too! Is sage becoming a master developer for Salesforce or a middleman who is buying apps for Salesforce that they want us to sell so they can make more money?

We have all been here before...we have all been here before...

I joined late. Doesn't seem like I missed much.

I got in on time and dont get the Sage Live market.... no invenotry or distribution???

A good time to catch up on filing and other tasks while your calendar looks like you are busy

Don't be fooled again...don't be fooled again...

Neither does Sage, @LourdesSobrino

no w I feel like if I am listening to a recording.....

Sage People has a common Sage look and feel. But the BS they are pitching about it being a place that is sticky for the emplyees is punch nobody will drink

Awe who doesn't love puppies!

Pictre of time off view.

You can push csv payroll files in or out. What a powerful system...

So it is really built on top of Fairsale with a skin on top of it

oops, only 14 minutes for Q&A -- let me pad the comments so I can get the Q&A time down....

Sage Live - 10 to 200 employee companies

My Q&A - 10-200 is not a target it is a company size. What industries or submarkets does Sage Live win deals in? Let's see if they answer.

Gary, I will answer this in a minute. But we've been successful with high growth services, non-profit, financial services, accounting/accoutants, etc.

That's 84 minutes we'll never get back.

Yep, that was definitely worth 1.5 hours of my time. They must think we are all stupid.

Did they talk about Sage 100 at all?

Sage Live and Sage People, @WayneSchulz - that is all you get to work with if you want to partner with Sage in 2017

If you didn't like the silos before now, hang on to your heads people, we goin' on a ride!

I am implementing a Sage Live sale now. The implementation help Sage provides is not sufficient and a consultant like us is definitely required. It was an easy fit for my client who was about to set up a new company file (in Sage 50) that would have had thousands and thousands of GL accounts that can be easily replaced by tags. All this customer has is expenses for all their properties and revenue from all their services. Inventory not needed here. Their partner programs have been in constant flux and not too appealing so far.

I believe the MOTM 2017 committee is working on a Sage Live presentation for exactly this reason. Sage will keep the sale dollars but as a consultant, you get all the consulting fees!

Don't forget to register if you haven't already!! Password: motm2017 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/meeting-of-the-minds-2017-connections-tickets-28568047800

We just completed the Salesforce Admin course and will be doing the Sage Live Implementation cert class in early January. There is not a lot of money in the software sale, but huge potential in consulting.

I question the optimistic projections that Sage makes. Globally Sage just revealed they have sold 600 Sage Live licenses - yet they project you'll sell 2x per month which would be 4% of the global total.

BTW, here's the pitch deck.

I would like some clarity on who, exactly, would buy this. My son sells for FinancialForce, which is a direct competitor. In his division, 2/3 of their customers come off of QB. They typically spend $25k PER YR on FF, and implementation is $25-50k. So, $100k over 3 yrs is ""typical,"" Definitely not typical Sage 100. FF sells direct, but work with partners to do the implementation. Implementation is typically more than 6 months. FF has a pretty robust PSA portion native to the tool, and considers Kimble (Sage's PSA parther) significantly less feature rich. The risks of this are significant, even if Sage manages to accidentally create a sane NA management team.

I think Sage is still working to build out features.

- Salesforce customers - 10 to 200 employees - Service industry - consulting, non-profits - Mobile access to data

OK, so if you are going to pick up a completely new product, and learn a new platform from scratch, would an immature ERP backed by Sage be your choice? If all you could do was pure financials, why would you choose Sage Live over Intacct? If you were going to choose a Salesforce Platform, why would you not go with Financial Force or Accounting Seed which are both more mature and feature rich? If you are going purely to get a cloud platform you have Netsuite, Acumatica, or even SAP with browser access applications? What has Sage done for you lately that you would blindly follow them? Are they holding Sage 100 leads over your head? I am completely lost on the appeal of Sage Live at this point, someone please help me find my way!

Those are good data, Wayne. Glad to see they include FF as competition. However, be aware that FF pricing is single, all-in. You can't avoid the PSA portion of the product. So Sage is essentially saying that customers will have a better financial deal only if they don't the services piece; if you include Kimble in the product, pricing is at least similar. I think that means that Sage Live essentially competes against Intacct which has a very robust sf integration. I'm with Gary. This is a ""me too"" product without a clear competitive advantage. For the size customer its aimed at, the international ""one code base to rule them all"" has no appeal, and could get in the way.

I have kept quiet because I knew I'd have to hear all the Sage bashing, but here goes. We haven't decided if we'll do Intaact, Sage Live, Financial Force, Accumatica or Dynamics 365. Our customers are on the smaller side. They rely on us for alot of consulting, as opposed to selling product to them. We don't want to learn a whole other manufacturing system, that ties up our best talent to ramp them up. So something with less, but growing functionality is perfect. We like the idea of a program built on salesforce because we do CRM and might want to consult on SF. We like the idea of having an online offering that's in the Sage family since we're heavily invested in that ecosystem. And frankly, the fewer people that support Sage Live, the better for us, as early adopters. But, I hope we'll be in a position to help others when we get a few under our belt, too.

I apologize for any Sage bashing. Like many of you, I have great nostalgic love for Sage. But I have found a better way to serve the smaller customers https://youtu.be/ERDW3d8n0ZY It is a little longer than I had planned, but we have a partner that lets us control our prices, white label if we want to, and has more functionality than most of our competition, especially at the lower end of the market.

@GaryFeldman didn't Accenture have a different name back then? :laughing:

Well, it was Eisner & Lubin, then BDO, and here in Atlanta Windham Brannon before Anderson Consulting. Yes I am that old...