General Consultant Discussion

Sage Billing and Payment Now Included With ERP Subscription Bundle for Existing U.S.-Based Customers A little over a year ago, we launched our ERP Subscription bundle offerings. Today, we have several hundred customers and are seeing great growth with these product offerings. We recently completed a customer study across all our Sage customers in North America to listen to their business priorities and how we can support them in achieving their goals. Nearly 80 percent of the survey respondents indicated that improving customer experience and earning repeat business are their top priorities. As a result of this research, we decided to enhance the Sage ERP subscription offering by including Sage Billing and Payment at no additional charge. Sage Billing and Payment is one of the connected services that we have been talking about on partner calls and BPAC meetings since Sage Summit 2012. I'm writing to let you know that over the coming few weeks, Sage will be calling on U.S. subscription customers of Sage 100 and 300 ERP. The objective of this call is to communicate the inclusion of the Sage Billing and Payment feature in their ERP subscription bundle, offer to demonstrate the service, and listen to their feedback. We will also be listening for insight on their ERP solution and ways to improve our products and subscription offerings. We see this as a great opportunity to thank customers for their business, introduce an enhancement, and gauge their satisfaction with our products and services. View the communication that Brad Myers, on my team, will be sending to customers regarding this enhancement to their ERP subscription. Based upon what we learn from these conversations, we will determine if the Sage Billing and Payment service should be offered in the Perpetual ERP bundles. At this time, the Sage Billing and Payment service is not included in the Perpetual Bundle. It is available to Perpetual customers for a small monthly subscription. According to our records, you have one or more ERP subscription customers. In the next week or two, a Sage account manager will be calling them to share the news of this included Sage Billing and Payment feature. Should a customer express interest in activating the service, we will inform you of the decision and invite you to join the conversation. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me or your Sage contact. Best regards, Doug LaBahn, Ph.D. SVP, Product Management and Marketing Anyone know what this means? Does this mean that they are giving away the credit card processing module and making it up with fees?

The closest I could find is in this December 2012 Road Ahead PDF where they were referring to the integration as Account Billing & Payment. I think it's for electronic billing where the invoice can be paid online.

My WAG on this is that Sage would like to build up some references and is going to the subscription customers first who might be smaller businesses and easier to implement?

I agree and they are likely less wary of Sage, being short timers.

'free' until you start doing transactions. This is giving away the razor to sell the blades

It's actually quite smart - and I bet all the software companies work hard on this type of cross sell.