Sage News and Discussion

Sage 100 ERP What's New PDF - useful for sending to customers

Wow, Page 7 is all that's really new. Everything else is 3rd party bolt on subscription upsell revenue for Sage

Hate it when they hide the ""meat"" so far below the ""fluff"". Good to see the Idea Web site finally paying dividends.....

Sage 100 ERP 2014: It's all about the in-app purchases

Meat""? You mean that scrawny fatty piece of bacon that people are paying 22% for?

Bacon???? I have seen better looking meat in the cans of cat food I open every day..........

Seriously ... Why do customers renew? Is it mainly to buy additional seats? They should look at their renewal bill next time they get one and just use the money to buy extra seats and drop M and S.

And what happens when OS's change and they need to add newer workstations/servers?

People are still using Windows XP.

We've had two customers drop their M&S in the last 30 days. One was running 4.3 and didn't want to pay to upgrade. They moved to our hosted xTuple Postbooks (core financials with a growth path towards manufacturing). Instead of the 10% margin we got from their Business Care, we now get 100% and they get an application with on a modern release. The second customer is evaluating xTuple Distribution.

I have to imagine the turnip is getting dry for quite a few folks. I wonder if Sage understands that their strategies are running at cross purposes? For connected services to work, you need as many fish as possible in your bucket because only a certain amount will bite and you are only fishing in the one bucket (your customer base). But the ""grow through reaching maximum arpac"" (aka squeeze the customers for every dime they have) results in fish jumping out of the bucket. I don't have a PhD though so what do I know?

The key to extending the life of off maintenance software is to put all the clients on Terminal Server. So put in Terminal Server 2012 R2 (virtualized you can upgrade the hardware easily, dump maintenance and upgrade your workstations for the next 10 years. Eventually MS will stop supporting Windows 2012, but thats a long way off. in that time you could easily have bought 2 new ERP systems with the maintenance you saved. Then you contract with 90minds MAS90 support who will support your existing (non-source code modified) MAS90 for say 12% of the software value and your are set & secure

The majority of the ""surprises"" I've seen with off-maintenance customers is that something suddenly changes (acquisition, merger) and they need to purchase licenses, modules, etc.

It all comes down to the alternative options a customer has available. Remember the adoption curve is at work here, too. I will guess that over the next couple years the ""early adopters"" who who don't like the Sage 100 policies will leave, or adopt a solution similar to Mark's. So we need to be ready for them. Some who leave will leave for a larger package such as X3 or Epicor. Sage will be very nice to them. Some will leave for a similar package such as Xtuple; Sage won't sweat them because Sage can't really do anything about them. But I suspect the bulk of the remaining customers will look around and decide the Devil They Know is preferable to The Unknown when their business needs are being met. They will be OK with paying an annual tax and focus on getting the most out of that Fact of Life. We help them too. I don't know if Sage will end up net-net further ahead in 5 or 10 years. I don't really care. I think there is a useful strategy for us to make the most of Sage's policy.

I don't see much need for new modules. Espcially with the 'all in one' pricing. If a client goes off maintenance though, they really should buy enough users to cover reasonable expected future growth. It is kind of bullcrap that you can't buy more users for your older version if you are off maintenance. That would be like an auto dealer not selling you proprietary tires for your car unless you pay an annual service contract.

Agreed @MarkChinsky Another thing that is bullcrap is that customers off-plan with Sage 100 cannot buy Sage CRM. It's freaking stupid. That same customer can buy Salesforce, Sugar, MS CRM, etc. but not Sage CRM. I have been told that if Sage allows that, it is a dis-incentive to staying on plan with ERP. Of course, that's balderdash as CRM and ERP serve different purposes and should have different upgrade / maintenance schedules. The Sage mentality is ""we have a 90% retention rate on M&S and want to keep it that way!"" Well ... 90% retention equals 10% attrition. 10% attrition means you completely turn over / lose all your customers every seven years. (Do the math if you don't believe) Of course, back in the day, new sales to replace drop offs were fast and furious but those days are gone. So the 90% retention is nothing to crow about as a core business strategy.

The more I look at what they are doing the more I think, like peter, they are killing the goose. This years Insights is going to be like nothing we've seen before. It's practically given away at $199 in order to flood the attendance numbers. However, I think this will be the last big hurrah as the majority of attendees are going to come home and realize they just spent 3 days at a giant upsell commercial for Sage's bolt on subscription products. The majority are going to come back feeling that they got little value or insight from this conference. The only ones who return will be those who see it as a free mini-vacation from their employer. You will also never see it held again at a non-destination location. No more Tennessee etc.

Also, I don't see what VAR's are going to get out of it. 4000 to 5000 people of which only maybe 15% use the product you support. The 'coming attractions' for Sage ERP 100 2015 should take about 5 minutes and will be posted on the web within hours of the session. I wonder if there will be a running bet as to the number of times 'cloud' and 'connected' will be used during the keynotes. Better off with our own private networking events like San Diego.

I agree Mark. (It's a bit scary how right your opinions have been lately. Keep up the good work.) I'm in wait and see mode right now but I feel strongly that there could be a vacancy opening up for all of us to have a more product focused event of our own - for customers. It would be a ton of work, but from what I can see, the customers are hungry for the old school type of conference with meaty sessions that are relevant to their needs. Reporting, scripting, new features, sharing war stories, etc. In some ways, it's almost essential to consider this as Sage continues to move to strengthen the Sage brand and the Sage-customer relationship. Sage is like a rhino here. They are slow to move but they are going to keep coming and picking up speed.