Sage News and Discussion

I really hate when Dennis has completely valid points.

Infor is in a similar situation, trying to knit their disparate apps together in a way the stimulates growth. They have a different approach, which gets some good press. The harvest/sunset, while good from an MBA view, has some problems in a market like this: it isn't consumer, and customers are mostly buying for an expected long-term. So, EVERY deal involving one of those products will have a competitor pointing out Sage's ""commitment issue."" And, I thought part of Sage's strategy is developing the connected services revenue stream to all product - these seem good for that too. I have mixed feelings about the CRM decision, having been with SalesLogix since it started. I've long been troubled by Sage having 2 very similar products. Sage CRM has matured in the past couple years, so the decision to concentrate on is not obviously crazy. However, I get the distinct feeling that the bulk Sage's marketing for it will be as part of ERP. The CRM market is growing far faster than ERP, and Sage has never known how to aggressively participate in it. I think the move to some sort of Master VAR will turn out to be a fool's errand. They won't gain any significant efficiency, the selling effectiveness will drop, and Sage's risk to channel power increases.

Well, the next time MIP is in the new sale mix, I certainly am going to lob this one in there. Have lost several deals to its ""non profit"" abilities.

I'm not and expert on non-profit. But I do think this is an area where Sage is badly losing in the Cloud War; if so it's decision to exit makes some sense. Non-Profits and Associations are naturals for the user access features of cloud. I know several SaaS CRM/Fundraising grew from nothing to Very Big over the past decade. I suspect that as a result, other cloud-based back office offerings developed.

Like @RobertWood, I hate it when Dennis is on the mark. Sage should have the really hard conversation with the stockholders and lower the dividends. Suck it up to protect future ROI. Microsoft pays a little more than dick-all in dividends and their stock growth has been mediocre over the last 10 years. They have amassed a huge pile of money with this strategy and invested in R&D. One thing that Dennis is missing the mark on is that their efforts to cross-sell are not going to be timid. If you haven't yet, put a call to your Regional Growth Manager for your territory. They are making an aggressive play here.

The aggressive cross-sell is good. But it's essentially triggered because Sage has been miserable at marketing to larger market. We'll see how well it translates to the larger marketing issue -- which I think will be torpedoed by their proposed partner changes.

They have done a great job of making the partners their enemy in that effort.

If Sage concentrates all their 'eggs' in one basket, appealing to only the larger resellers, the bottom will drop out of their nest and leave them in a scramble.

I'm not sure they're appealing to the larger partners either.

Robert has the nub of the issue: They've pissed off the Blytheco's. They are making the smaller partners look to covering their bets (at best). Presumably to become a master VAR one would have to meet significant requirements in marketing support for those VAR's. (else why bother?). It looks to me like they'll end up in the worst of all worlds. We are entering a decade of serious churn in the channel for demographic and technical reasons. To me, it would make way more sense to focus on medium-sized partners, and continue to recruit new partners to Sage (so, multi-product) and train/develop those new ones into the mid-tier. I think it is all fundamentally a strategy that sounds good to investors - but is internally inconsistent to those experienced in the area.

For whatever reason (I think because of my Sage CRM expertise), I was asked to attend the BPAC meeting the last few days as a guest. One of the messages that clearly resonated was that Sage was reaching back out to the partners and changing some of their stances. Most of the long-time partners were saying in the hallways and in the meetings to Sage that the new tone was refreshing and appreciated. Who knows what the future will bring but it sounds like they are making some course corrections.

That's an encouraging data point.

Talk is cheap! Can't wait for the keynote next month.

@JeffSchwenk - I hesitated to even say anything because I agree that talk is cheap. It sounded like some policies were going to be reversed or strongly considered for reversal. It sounded like the other long term partners were encouraged though and they have been sitting through the last year of abuse in these meetings and would know better than I would. Someone specifically said to Sage execs that it was nice to get back to a place where it sounded like their opinions were being sought instead of being lectured to. Overall, it seemed encouraging. On the flip side, there is no doubt that Sage wants to get more aggressive with cross-sell and they see that as their opportunity. Partners that are marketing CRM, SPS, Intelligence, etc. will be fine but the ones that aren't will need to either affiliate with another partner to do so or be aware that Sage will be handling the calls.