Sage News and Discussion

Sage is going to sell its not-for-profit accounting and fundraising packages via the direct channel. While the company says it will continue to support resellers as the primary channel, ""We will also be adopting alternate sales channels as appropriate,"" according to a notice to resellers from NPS Sales management about changes in sales policy for 2012.

aka ""A little bit pregnant

The slippery slope is getting a bit tougher to walk up..................................

So much for Sage's committment to their business partners....

Pretty sure this is the new world we live in and I would expect the trend to accelerate. Sage needs revenue anywhere it can find it and Houllion has no allegiance to the US channel. Sage is already backing off some of their plans regarding their commitments to the channel on X3.

I agree with Mike. Base your future plans around selling consulting services because I think the days of making margin on software and maintenance are going to come to a close quickly. If Sage re-brand doesn't bump revenue I would look for margin cuts of about 5% in the area of maintenance since that's the most predictable revenue stream.

With respect to Sage and ERP X3 - I remember their launch webcast and they were vague on channel plans. They did state that there would be a mix of direct v indirect. http://erplife.com/2010/01/20/sage-erp-x3-v6-launch-notes/

Mike can you elaborate on he x3 comment?

Can't really get into details, but most important thing I have learned is that with X3, the same person is in charge of both Direct and Channel sales. He gets 100% of revenue when going direct, but gives up 50+ % margin when going through the channel. You do the math.

Along with the direct sales message came a very big jump in the tier level requirements. Some tier level requirements jumped more than 100%. To receive ANY maintenance margin you now need to purchase at least 60k in Fund Accounting product. I think if Sage's plan is to elminate NFP resellers from carrying their Sage's NFP products, this will be a good start.

Just another reason for the small fish to align with the bigger fish. Sage continues to think the problem is the channel. What will they say when they have eliminated the channel and sales continue to suck?

I have said for the last several years that our plight is exactly the same thing that happened with Novell and most networking VARS.

Think about how channel conflict has affected other ERP vendors in the past (Epcior for example).