Sage News and Discussion

Sage Direct Sales begins Feb 6, 2014 - avoid being surprised. Ok I'll go for this. In what way am I going to be surprised? Do they mean that I'll be surprised not to make any money (won't surprise me) or as I believe is more likely --- that I'll be surprised because the customer believes I am the unpaid complain and implementation department for Sage's direct sales?

Both of the above

Time to figure out a price schedule for this type of adhoc consulting.... I presume the rollout will be gradual if Sage 100 ERP 2013 users are the only ones able to buy/integrate.

Saw that roll out and I gotta tell ya, as a reseller I'm not thrilled. As a consumer, I don't know that I would want it any other way. We need to become a consulting firm first and a reseller second (or somewhere further down the list).

And we need to stop providing free consulting and take a page out of every software publisher's book. in order for an end user to get assistance from a local source they need to be under OUR support plan. Otherwise ultimately you are just underbidding Sage - long term the customer will weigh your costs against Sage's and they're going to take you only in the situations where they need a 911 response (nights, weekends, holidays). We cannot keep responding to these types of calls from users who are not on our plan.

I wonder how we are going to be able to maximize our revenue opportunity? Does Sage envision us fully staffing so that the moment a customer has a problem Sage cannot fix that the customer calls us direct and we stop everything and begin working on a problem for a solution which we did not sell and probably paid a minimal role in the acquisition.

I didn't like the tone of the announcement - we're selling this direct, we don't care what you resellers think but you had better sign up for one of these sessions so you're not left in the dark when customers start calling. I have seen very little about these mobile apps (I confess, I don't read everything Sage sends me so I may have missed some) to the point where I felt like it was being kept from us.

Sage is telling us if one our customers buy direct we will be notified and get credit. The big issue we see is that this product is not yet integrated with inventory.

My fear is that the customer will misidentify the capabilities of the solution, buy it, then Sage will refer them back to us. Who knows whether we are going to ultimately receive anything. I certainly have low hopes based on Sage's inability to field a decent portal and/or knowledgebase software.

I do not think sage will have much traction with these products only the bill and payment service will be the big hit. The apps have so many issues not addressed yet in the app. Can't show the customer what their price will be until you submit it as a quote and wait for it to come back. It is a very generic product so it can feed into the various ERPs.

@PamScott where did you hear that inventory items are not integrated. I was on the webinar and did not hear that. It works in SO . I do agree with @JohnnyPabian that it is very generic . I did laugh when they said it is a upgrade opportunity for the partners when the customer buys the service and is not on the right version. Here is 2 slides that give you the pricing and partner commission.

IIRC the service app can only invoice AR slash codes, not inventory items

It will be incumbent upon the @paul Ziliak of the world to develop better apps than what Sage has and to capture the mindshare of the channel so that Sage raises the interest and we close the deals with superior products