Sage News and Discussion

@RobertWood we're counting on you for a full summary of today's Symposium in Atlanta

Perhaps post some video with your hidden webcam....

I'm thinking some of these guys in sports coats may be security.

@ToddMartin is here too. I saw @GaryFeldman and @PhilMcIntosh last night.

A lot of duh mobile data. Also Sage is going to be mining their customer DB and profiling all of their customers in order to cross sell.

Sage is going all big data.

Business priorities of your peers: 94% of customers investing to increase sales 42% of customers investing to improve customer service. 32% investing to increase profitability

eg customers buying CRM more than buying ERP

According to Avalara?

Sales Tax compliance and nexus is very complicated.

Which segment of your customers are the most profitable? It sounds like Sage is looking to get into the Big Data business.

MySage? www.MySageOnline.com

They're still using the 3 Pillars graphic. Enhance (I thought Pascal said customers were paying to remove features), Extend, Cloud (Integrated Services).

Globally Sage has a huge footprint in the mining industry.

Safe Integrated I novation: Trying to create a common experience(Common PR, Common HR, Common CRM) and when you outgrow your current product, you move up to X3.

Painting a fantasy picture of customs starting on Sage 50, then they grow and migrate to Sage 300 (he's Canadian), and then they move up to X3.

Providing a common interface (workflow mapping).

Cloud Today: Sage CRM, Sage Exchange, Sage eFiling, Sage Sales Tax, Sage Shipping. Sage is using CRM internally. Their server is in Dublin.

Cloud (Real) Soon: Sage Inventory Advisor - it's a subscription based cloud service that helps monitor and analyzing inventory levels etc.

Sage 100 session is the one from earlier this week.

I would say Robert covered it all. Showed the same cheesy movie they had at summit. I swear the owner has a thing going on with the saleswoman. You pick up on it as they leave the office.... Late..... Together.... Really close to each other.... Just saying

I'd be interested to know if at some point Sage has plans to mine customer data (with permission ) to compile general financial statistics such as sales growth, # of employees by SIC, etc - and then either sell it or provide that to other customers as part of some intelligence type plan. I am pretty sure Langner said this is in the cards but Sage have been silent on this since.

They've already used common mining techniques to match Sage customers to SIC. They're cross referencing with a lot of commercial / public sources.

@RobertWood - who said Sage CRM server is in Dublin. I don't believe that is the case.

@ToddMartin - Oh, be-have!

I missed his name. He was the opening guy. I'll see if I can find it.

I'm pretty sure @ToddMartin is right.

How else does he explain leaving the office mid afternoon and getting home after dark?

This CRM session is definitely customer focused.

Right now in the Budgeting and Forecasting session she is describing what the screens will look like if they come up eventually.

Budgeting & Forecasting will connect to any of the ERP packages.

Multi dimensional planning? #WillINeedMyTARDIS?

BTW it pulls your data into a screen that looks like a spreadsheet.

Not a good demo so far.

If they only integrated Active Planner to Sage 100 without any other changes, then it will be as difficult to work with as it always was with 500. I never liked the package.

That's basically how it looks. I think spreadsheet modeling is probably easier.

No plans to add Sage 100 Vendor info to SageCRM, but Sage is thinking about it. Vote early and often.

I could have sworn that last August we were told it was in the works..... So much for delivering value to the client. EVERY purchasing department worth its salt relies HEAVILY on a VRM (vendor relationship module). Would be so much easier to sell if we could deliver value to two departments......

@JeffSchwenk You are correct about what was said last August at Summit. At that time they were not ""thinking about it"". and it was part of the planned enhancements. Perhaps our learned CRM member @PeterWolf can shed some light on this inconsistency.

How do you tell a Sage employee is liying????? Watch their lips move...... Maybe they are just trying to get their list ov ideas over the 2,000 mark.....

@JeffSchwenk I'm not sure the left hand not knowing what the right is doing is technically lying.

I'm actually in Irvine right today and tomorrow. I met with Joe Langner this morning about Sage CRM sales and, naturally, the integration piece came up. I am 100% convinced that Joe understands the frustrations that the current integration creates and he realizes that it will impede sales and services. He told me this is something that he is pressing for immediate attention (read weeks, not months or years). That being said ... the development team has 100s of initiatives that they are juggling so my faith isn't so high. FWIW, my team has already begun designing our own integration layer between Sage CRM and 100 with a target delivery of mid-Summer. It's too important to leave in Sage's hands. ;)

Again, how do you tell that a Sage employee is lying............... @PeterWolf - If I had a nickle for every statement that hasn't panned out, I wouldn't be in the group right now.....

Sage Roadshow Cross-Sell presentation spoke of the great opportunity of selling SageCRM to Sage100 customers - maybe spend more $$ on development?

I wouldn't mind more $$ on development but honestly ... I've never had a problem selling the sofware because of features (or lack of features).

@PeterWolf - Easier to say when you are selling a product that has not reached market saturation or maturity. When they are still investing R & D dollars and when the first thing that comes to management's mind is NOT ""I wonder how much more milk I can get from that cow"".

100% agree Mr. Schwenk! I was specifically responding to Lee about cross-selling Sage CRM. I think we all can agree that not enough R&D $$$ go into the ERP products (except X3).

@PeterWolf The issue I keep hearing about is not really Sage CRM itself but its integration to Sage 100 ERP. That's where I start to hear ""grown men crying"". And it's from multiple sources who've continuously hit brick walls with Sage.

According to David Beard VP of Something to do with CRM, the integrations just work. Instantly even.

The issues that I keep hearing of may all be very specific to customers but I know in several cases there have been showstoppers. It's similar to Sage bugs. If they don't impact you then no big deal. But when a bug impacts your company it can become serious very quickly.

@WayneSchulz - that's what's happening ... it doesn't impact everyone. We support about 25 (maybe more ... need to check) customers using Sage CRM and 100 and, of those, the problems are limited to a handful. The rest are smooth sailing. Like I said previously, I'm moving forward with creating our own integration layer with a target release of early Summer (sooner for a more basic feature set). I'll let the group know when we are further along.

Sage may be putting R&D $ into X3, but even with the Standard version, it was released too soon in the US. The underlying technology is also not clean. Right now it appears they are just trying to catch all the remaining French that pops up.

@WayneSchulz I was being sarcastic. Shocker I know! Rich, one of Peter's employees almost fell out of his chair when David Beard said that.

And I believe Peter is correct where it works it's fine / OK. Where it doesn't work you're screwed. Also not being able to link to vendors is a huge shortsight.