Sage News and Discussion

Sage Partner Recognition call in 5 minutes 1/30/13 - 12 ET

speaker phone, Joe?

Funny - Joe's going to drop off the phone half way through....

Let's see if it makes any difference...

The comment drops, always remind me of tears.

Look at all that growth ... where's Sage CRM though????

Still an ERP company at heart.

How did they come up with those no's

the fucus will continue...

New Channel Org Chart

Bpac meeting February - anyone here on BPAC?

I'm on BPAC.

A few people - I think Doug Deane and Peter Wolf. They would invariably be under NDA for all BPAC.

Expected that, but was hoping we had like minded people on BPAC. Good to hear.

don't ever give up"" - WORST. SALES STRATEGY. EVER.

Pretty weak top deals?

@WayneSchulz - Those are just winbacks. So it's just M&S and late fees.

But these are off plan deals, so perhaps they ""forgave"" a year or two of M&S?

Notice that the sales wins are scattered all over - different VARS.

Are those SLP or tier dollars, new license and installed base deals?

In 2000 this would have been called ""a good month"" for many of our members. Now it's across all of the Sage channel.

I think that's intentional - they want to spread the recognition and get people excited.

Geez ... great quarter by Manny.

Does anyone else find it interesting that they announce the customers for these deals? Most partners would not like that ...

True @PeterWolf.

Congrats @PeterWolf on Life Alert!

Yeah Peter

SKW is missing from top 5...interesting.

Thanks all.

Yeah I don't get these slides - DSD charts but isn't called out.

Yeah ... I had a new license Sage CRM sale that was higher too. Wasn't listed. Weird.

Focus on making them all referenceable ... as many as possible""... um, ok.

I hate referenceable clients. They always want to buy more...

I would agree - when you have a directly referenceable customer in a niche area you can slam the door closed on competitors in these types of sales.

What does the ""No Resources from SE Team"" mean on the X3 deal of Mantralogix?

Meaning that they didn't use any Sales Engineers from Sage? So ... the takeaway is the partner did it all themselves?

But Brendan Dorney, of Sage, ran with the RFP from the banker?

I've never heard someone say ""we're very excited"" in such a deadpan voice. :)

@MoiraGoggin - No clue. Maybe Brendan is not a SE? He might be a different role?

Guess so @PeterWolf

I love these statistics - without reference they're meaningless. What if the goal was $ 1? How can you judge the growth (and yeah all the other ERP providers play this same game)...

here's SWK, on the X3 slide

SWK is really killing it with X3. The deal sizes with X3 are crazy...

Sage can't send me accurate maintenance renewals. I have ZERO point ZERO faith that they can track my referral commissions. I mean Zero.

So far this is a snoozer

A conference in Berlin for a French product from a British company...

Agreed Wayne. On Joe's slide, he called out growth with all products but Sage CRM was missing. I was just emailed the reason for this: they can't break out Sage CRM year over year numbers with their current reporting. This will be fixed going forward. Yay.

Anyone get the feeling that soon Sage Summit will be overseas and X3 focussed?

Doug LaBahn cross sell rates

Sage Mobility = ""Beta in March"" ... LOL that they fooled all the partners at Sage Summit with the renders of their mobile app and made it seem like something shipping today. I bet they get two years out of that video.

I don't get this - is Doug saying that smaller partners are cross selling better or implying the rate is higher because the partner is smaller?

Looks like small portfolio partners get the highest attach rates. Hmmm maybe small partners are worth the effort?

Best in class... Hmm wonder what the average is?

It's ridiculous. The smaller partners have tighter relationships with their customers so it makes sense the cross-sell is better in those companies. Why can't Sage connect the dots on this?

A ton of news announced April 8 for Sage ERPX3. I presume that's with the Berlin conference.

I guess the math goes 25% of 40 customers is 10 but 6% of 1000 customers is 60 so ... QED large partners are where the money is.

At the partner meeting before the Customer Symposium their slide claimed the small VARs had lower CRM attach rates and no one had over 8%

Doug LaBahn LOVES his data. He needs somone to help him focus the message behind it into bite sized chunks.

Extremely confusing slide

That's interesting @PhilMcIntosh. I wonder how that happened. Can you put a question in to the chat?

Is the Sage Inventory Advisor an add on? Probably no MRP in it right?

Sage loves Inventory Advisor right now. They feel that it is a quick win (sale) for distribution and wholesalers.

Here is son of Business Insights Explorer. As soon as the customer says ""can we see it a different way"" ... run for the hills

@MoiraGoggin don't know but it looks like it.

Wow! Look at that work. ;)

Now about that product Sage Mobile Sales. YeahWeBlewSmokeUpAllYourAsses at Summit. .... did we imply it was actually shipping? Uh, no come on back in September.... IT's going to be awesome for your kitchen faucet customers...

Inventory Advisor is subscription based so little up front required. If it doesn't tickle your fancy, stop paying and it stops working.

Gosh how long does it take to setup the Mobile Sales program? Images, associated products...what would a fixed fee for that look like? it's hard enough to get two marketing people to agree on an image shot.

Great, no tickee no laundry @PaulZiliak?

Inventory Advisor looks like a poor man's Valogix.

I would love to see Inventory Advisor work well - however Sage's track record on highly customizable add-ons is not great.

What does that even mean ""we're going to have several new great subscription launches""?

What other products are they purchasing?

Can't everything in Sage Account Billing and Payment all be accomplished today with 100 and paperless office?

Inventory Advisor is from a 3rd party ISV in South Africa. Not a Sage developed product.

Is anyone else getting the feeling that X3 is the future of Sage? :)

Just like Accpac was...

@PeterWolf I was just about to say that. All roads lead to ERP X3.

Pretty pig X3 is... Plenty of lipstick

Just like MAS 500 was....

Here's an alarming thought: Joe Langner is excited to take on new channel roles ... and yet this very channel oriented call was a secondary priority. This is not a slam on Joe but rather a reality check for Sage. Their management is stretched too thinly.

A focus on Sage ERP X3 is the least risky strategy for Sage UK. If they need to ditch Sage NA operations there's very little wasted R&D. The legacy products have clearly slowed in their share of R&D. No talk of Sage One on this call. Must not be close to releasing their promised mid-market version.

Too many VPs, not enough developers

But @WayneSchulz there's a MySage promotion in Feb!

X3 is a whole new animal and in my opinion could be learned by all/any good Sage 100 consultant, but you need to be surrounded by technical consultants. We're banking on it being Sage's future.

Don't diss X3 until you have done a deep dive.

It sure seems like a lot of smart people are selling a lot of X3 these days.

What I'm dissing is Sage's ability to actually make a long term commitment to anything...

Expand on your ""surrounded by technical consultants"" please @PaulZiliak

@GaryFeldman - how many people would you estimate were at the Atlanta show?

I had forgotten how much I love listening to Kevin Rooker

Symposiums

I'm sorry ... I don't believe the subscription numbers. They only make sense for off-plan re-ups. The partners have no choice but to recommend subscription because no one wants to pay the fees to get back on plan. Also ... Sage is driving the off-plan re-ups, not partners. So there's that.

There's DSD! Congrats!

One mobile sales app won't do it. Sage / anyone will need multiple different types of mobile apps to serve different industry needs and end user preferences. There will be a whole mobile app marketplace - I think Sage knows that, but I doubt they will invest heavily in it. They hope to build / own the marketplace (like iTunes / app store) but I am skeptical as to whether that will work.

People who take a deep dive on X3 see Adonix

@MoiraGoggin X3 allows for building rules for about anything. Want to sell to a customer and provide them a Note Receivable payable in, say 18 months at 5% interest? Done! But done by consultants who have SQL scripting skill and the uniquely organized type of mind that programmers tend to have. X3 can do about anything through the tool set and without custom programming per se, but we won't see the traditional functional consultant doing those kinds of things.

That was a fast slide on trade-ins - did you get a shot of it @WayneSchulz?

@GaryFeldman I don't have an Adonix so I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Yes

Adonix was the precursor to ERP X3. Sage bought Adonix and rebadged it to ERP X3.

Looks like FOTF is cut way back - Three times this year

Thanks @PaulZiliak - agree, X3 has terrific workflow setups but I didn't find it that difficult to setup, at least from the X3 classes I took at last summit.

Filtered Q&A is so much fun. And so interesting. So, tell me how I can sell more Sage...

Product Agnostic"" Remember, an add-on built for any product = an add-on not for any product. Mobile apps are not immune from that.

OMG - ASAP is not a product it is a program for the SAP A1 product.

So what did we learn today ....

Sales are slow, but not as slow as they used to be.

Pickup X3, mobile apps and sell subscriptions to lapsed M&S clients...and get your passport ready to attend future events...

It's easy to have good year over year numbers when last year sucked...

- Sage ERP X3 is the future - Add-ons are the future - Subscription sales are important - There's no real plan to replace Tom Miller - Joe Langner is taking on the Tom role - My guess is that there's a separate X3 channel infrastructure - probably managed overseas as evidenced by the conference in Berlin

I learned that Inventory Advisor is being launched. And I predict that one year from now Sage will have about 50 companies running it and Sage partners will have netted about $1,000 total for the effort.

Riding on the Metro..."" :)

@PaulZiliak Wish I had more likes to give that thought. Also the idea of combatting Sage on commissions is not at all appealing. They've clearly been unable to straighten out their maintenance billing. Can you imagine what a nightmare these commissions will be. I don't even know if we are still getting SPS based commissions - I'm too afraid to look and really there's very little I can do to verify the accuracy. Sage could change their terms/rate paid and I'd have zero say in the matter. Most consultants with half a brain should awaken to this concept soon (the concept being that earning only a commission sucks because the payment is all subject to staying in Sage's good graces and Sage keeping the rates stable).

We never got a single SPS commission. We have been getting our subscription revenues though.

Check your bank account. My appeared two days ago.

One of our customers bought it and is setting it up now ... we'll see.