Sage News and Discussion

Sage One North America 1. Cash basis only 2. No check writing 3. Lacks integration to Sage payments 4. No present upgrade migration to any Sage product 5. In a VERY heavily competitive area (online task/project management) I continue to scratch my head about this product and cannot imagine it is more than half done. My opinion is that they've pushed this out quickly to gain a SaaS presence even though I cannot think of one customer I would recommend it to: Me: So we have this new Sage One product that does cash basis only Customer: Great - I write about 100 checks a month - sounds perfect. Me: Uh, oh - it doesn't write checks Sage seems to be trying to position this as an ""all in one"" -- -except they've left out the all. Other project management solutions: Asana Basecamp Teambox Podio Yammer Socialcast Run circles around the project management that's included here. The one exception that I could see is that Sage One integrates billing (though lacks ability for customer to pay via CC as an option direct from mailed invoice). Sage One launches at $29/user per month This is 6 times more expensive than the rack rate for Yammer/Socialcast and just about every other online task/project manager Sage's fatal assumption seems to be that small companies only need simple/basic task and project management. I just do not think that assumption is true. I think that small companies often need simple and basic core accounting (which Sage One lacks with the missing ability to write checks) and a slightly more robust task and project management (see list above). I doubt we will ever see an announcement of the number of paid users. The best we may get is a trial user round number count at some point. If anyone else has done analysis on this I'm all ears

I just posted this to the private area that Sage is using to gather Sage One analysis and review.... I will be interested to see if they have any reply as to what's upcoming or where my analysis is off. I truly would like to be convinced that there's some flaw in my thinking. I believe that the biggest overlooked issue is assuming that at this stage of the game small businesses want to stay with a very dumbed down SaaS product that does very rudimentary task management. Perhaps this is true for companies that don't know the Internet exists and cannot go look around at the competition ... but geez. If I have any updates from Sage I'll post them here

But Wayne ... it's HUGE in Belgium!

It's just so sage NA can put ""SAAS"" and ""Cloud"" in every press release, ad and website. Nothing more than a smoke and mirrors tactic to detract that they are a jumble of mostly 25 year old acquired rotting software assets. Now I'll tell you how I really feel :)

Now that Atlas is ""done"" the developers from that were shifted to SageOne ... they were so good at producing a half-baked product the first time, they could apply their experience to SageOne. Looks like they succeeded. If you analysis holds, Wayne, then it's another example of Sage not understanding when development $$ needs to higher than in other products or lifecycle phases. That deeper misunderstanding is more troublesome than anything -- it won't change.

Another troublesome part of this. If they're so keen on Sage-branding all the products so that people will consider other Sage products because they like their current one, kicking out a half-baked product to heavy advertising will have exactly the opposite effect. I would love to know the real reason why the previous CTO left.

Here's how the re-branding argument evolved: CEO of Sage UK: PASCAL! Stop spending so much money - I want to keep my job. Pascal: Oui monsieur. [30 days later] Sage internal discussions: We can save money by focusing on the Sage brand and we can help promote cross-sell. All we need to do is put some ads in magazines telling people what to think about our brand. So simple - why didn't we do it previously? Pascal (through his puppets on the ""executive"" team): We are getting rid of individual product brands to promote a happy, feel good towards Sage as a whole. Everyone else in the world: Say what you want about your ""brand"" but our feelings towards your company will drive the real brand message. And it has to do with what your offerings are, how you present them and how you treat your customers, prospects and partners. Sage internal discussion: That's ridiculous. Didn't you hear what we said about our new brand? Believe!!!

Berruyer did say in the conference that one of his key KPI is NPS. We'll see how well that works out. I really hate it when accountants try to do marketing. They're worse than engineers.

Speaking of that ... I was amazed that the interim results broadcast had ZERO to do with any products. It was all accounting sleight of hand. I told my wife that Sage might as well be selling kitchen appliances or pet food. It's a sobering realization.

I brought that up earlier in one of these threads, and Wayne pointed out (correctly I think) that the other investor calls he's been on rarely mention product either. Nor competition. Still, I think it's telling none of the critical strategic issues raised by critics were addressed. What is the proper level of R&D vs. Mktg spend? Why? Are we changing it? Sigh ... I sadly think I know where this is going. So I think globally and act locally to deal with it. It could be so much easier ... but that's Life.

I think a better name for Sage One would have been ""Sage One - Projects and Billing"" because so far as I've observed it does not do anything more.

When you are chewing on life's gristle, don't grumble, give a whistle, this'll help things turn out for the best. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlBiLNN1NhQ

@WayneSchulz ..or rather than Sage One - Sage Some.

If they want to advertise that they have a SaaS product why didn't they just mention Billing Boss? hahah... http://www.billingboss.com/?locale=en It even integrates with SPS.

Billing Boss blows (but you knew that already). Tried it out couple years ago.

Yeah...I used it for some quick side work invoicing. I guess that is all you can expect for free...the invoice forms look horrible on it.

From what I could see Sage One is Billing Boss part deux. I think I would have been able to process Sage One a little easier if they'd marketed as more of a niche product.