Sage News and Discussion

Sage Payment Authorization Form I was led to believe (a scary situation when dealing with Sage) by Sage that the data on the Payment Authorization form that is sent in with either credit card or ACH data for subscriptions is stored somewhere for access for multiple subscription orders (100c, SI Bundle, etc.). In fact this has been done between people in Atlanta and Irvine. Now I find out the form is shredded after use and it is not stored. I am not convinced this is true, because for monthly subscriptions that information must be accessed to make the charge.

It's true. Sage takes the PCI compliance very seriously. One of the requirements is not to retain any document with CC info and to shred it as soon as that information is used.

I am sure they shred the document, but I would think they have the payment information stored securely for recurring payments. If they don't know how to do that, they may want to contact American Payment Services.

Um, don't they have their own payment service??

Sage has lots of software products and services, but I don't see them using any of them for their own operations. Maybe if they did, things would operate more efficiently. (Where did I get this negative attitude?)

I had a customer upgrade from Silver to Gold support for 100c. They were required to fill out another payment form. I'm not sure how other companies are able to sell upgraded services to existing customers without taking payment all over again -- but Sage does not presently seem to be able to do that.

Sage's inefficient processes must be costing them money. Rather than berating the channel for not delivering sufficient sales, they should start reviewing these processes. I really believe that much of what they require of us and the time it requires, take time away from business development and sales.

Sage made a number of strategic - and quite possibly fatal errors with respect to sage 100: - Focussed on short-term revenue growth with very little long-term product strategy. - Believed that Sage UK could mange the regions from afar with the same strategy working equally well in all regions. - Failed to implement expiring registration keys at the same time they implemented mandatory recurring maintenance. This is perhaps Sage's biggest strategic mistake and has apparently been very difficult for them to correct. - Alienated CPA firms - Failed rebranding effort - gave up years of goodwill and did not reap any new user benefit (or I believe Sage would have talked about the results of the re-branding) - Lost material numbers of recurring revenue installed base (from an estimated high of possibly 50,000 to their claimed 17,000 Sage 100) largely due to nickle and diming them on changes to maintenance (grandfathering, price hikes). - They marginalized the channel which in turn caused virtually all partners to actively diversify away from Sage. - With the channel marginalized and demotivated - Sage created a series of ""sell around"" policies for subscriptions for 100c and Payroll which were poorly executed (fax forms, franken-spreadsheet order forms) - Wrongly concluded that mid-market ERP ( Sage 100, 300, 500 ) could be managed and sold semi-directly. - Continued to plunge headlong into bolting-on third party or Sage products despite feedback that the strategy was not working to produce material sales (once the low-hanging fruit or ""would have bought anyhow"" customers were sold). - Failed to create a market strategy that focussed on customer benefit and instead focussed on revenue growth through indirect or direct price increases (see the story about the Goose that laid the golden eggs). -Completely fumbled Sage Payment Solutions to the point where smaller competitors appear to have eaten most of Sage's lunch.

There's enough material there for Harvard MBA's to spend an entire year on this case study - or quickly conclude to sell it off and move on.