Sage News and Discussion

Sage - the software equivalent of the Keystone Cops Since we have a substantial BusinessWorks client base and others that are prospects, we continue to work on upgrading them to Sage 100. We have basically told them that BusinessWorks will be discontinued, but we do not have an exact timetable. That has worked for the most part. Today a prospect decided to check on us and called Sage. Before she told them who we were, she led with: We are a BusinessWorks user and are looking at upgrading to Sage 100, because BusinessWorks is being discontinued. The response from Sage (don't know who) was: Oh, don't worry about that, because BusinessWorks is not going away for 2 or 3 more years. The prospect is livid and now believes we have been feeding her a line. We have calmed her down, but she certainly is not upgrading in the next two weeks. Sage can mess with our tier, do direct sales and actually kill sales. And they wonder how they can make more money? Let the channel do the talking!

There goes that YE tier achievement. No one seems to have the kahunas to actually do something tough. They have been talking BW dying for years but they just won't through the switch. Death by inaction....

No, I achieved my tier already at the new threshold. I'm now truly convinced Sage is rife with incompetence. That's because all the good people left or were let go.

@JohnHoyt we had to deal with this with PFW for a couple of years. We lost 4 or 5 customers because Sage would tell them that the product was not going away. We had to be VERY specific when discussing upcoming plans for the product. We tried to be very clear that when we stated that the product is going away, that this is OUR OPINION. Sage has not set a definitive date and will not even confirm that the product is in a sunset mode. (When we had discussions with the transition team however, they went so far to state (paraphrased) that ""We won't say that the product is dead, nor is it dying. However, the hospice brochures are on the table to spark discussions."" Made us livid. On the customers who called us liars, I relished the calls I made when the announcements were finally made.

Ok with all due respect to everyone don't you have very candid conversations with your customers about Sage ? Boy I know I do and my customers aren't usually surprised by Sage because I've never missed an opportunity to provide them with my insight about Sage. In most cases I've controlled the message and not Sage.

@ShawnSlavin ""History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."" - Karl Marx

@WayneSchulz I don't know what your conversation sounds like to your customer. but I would assume that the customers response is something like, ""But Wayne, YOU recommended and sold us MAS90, BW, or whatever, xx years ago. "" If that is the case, what is your response? Do they feel a little like you are responsible?

@MichaelPruet I have really had to work to get over feeling responsible for the world problems. Nothing in life stays the same, it is an every-changing world we live in. I was talking with a company still running PFW yesterday. The accounting manager was lamenting that when the put the system in 25 years ago, she didn't think she would have to do this again in her career. I was sitting there thinking about all the things that have changed in the past 25 years and it hit me once again how unrealistic peoples expectations can be. In this case, I wasn't the one who sold them their original system but felt perfectly comfortable telling them that car's don't last that long, the average marriage in the US doesn't last that long, some governments don't last that long, and very few of the people who were working for Sage 25 years ago are still there. Things change. I can't control that any more than they can. What I can do is promise to do my best to advise them on what I see as their best course of action with the information I have at hand today, right now.

@ShawnSlavin Well said!!!

Update: Conference call with Daniel Oh, who is in charge of the BusinessWorks initiatives, and my RSAM this afternoon to discuss. He has volunteered to call the customer. Sage's official position - from Daniel: At this point, our BW sales and support teams have received guidance to state that it is business as usual and BW does not have a retirement date. We are still selling and supporting BW at this time. So I guess the moral is we should always discourage customers and prospects from calling Sage - but we already knew that. [A few more of these experiences, and I'll be approaching @PhilMcIntosh cynic territory.]

@JohnHoyt - You are assuming my cynicism is static... :-) It could well be that the whole pending product retirement and offering people a trade up for ""free"" was just a ploy to boost maintenance numbers...

I'm sorry that you have to be the pawn in this chess game with Sage and your customer @JohnHoyt. Like a teenage girl, Sage has crushes, crashes, and re-crushes. There on-again, off-again, on-again relationship to products and product directions could be a Tiger Beat magazine serial article.

Just be thankful you aren't trying to explain Sage 500's trajectory.

All should know that currently there is no relationship between maintenance paid and R&D at Sage. As long as enough customers continue to pay the annual maintenance, Sage will not discontinued the product. I don't plan to advise any BW customer to migrate to Sage 100 unless they need Sage 100 or one year has passed since the last release and there has been no announcement concerning a future release.

@JohnHoyt Daniel Oh used to be on the PFW team and was one of the guys we worked with in the fina years of the PFW program. It's kind of like now that PFW is dead and buried, they moved the Hospice team to a new patient! Enjoy! BTW, Daniel is a great guy. He's just following the company line.

Daniel is great. He reminds me of Kevin Rooker - one of those people who are always positive, does their job and doesn't get caught up in the latest Sage is trying to do.

The result of the conference call was me being told that Sage never has announced end of life for BusinessWorks, and it's business as usual as far as the Sage sales group is concerned, hence the comment to our prospect. Our BW customers are smarter than that. When Sage offers $1,500 credit per user to move off BW and the annual enhancements are practically nonexistent, something's afoot. And even though there was no official announcement, we were verbally told it could be in 6 - 12 months. So our job according to Sage is to support and maintain our relationship with these customers, offer an upgrade path if they are ready, and be able to comfort them when end of life is announced by giving the same upgrade options. Or we can just tell them Sage wants to milk them for the $7 million in maintenance $ as long as possible, and when that becomes less profitable from customers moving to something else, they'll pull the rug out from under the remaining loyal (or lazy) customers.

John, that's exactly the tact we took. We told our customers that the writing is on the wall; plain to see for all who wants to look. It is OUR OPINION that the end is near. Those who don't want to move don't have to. Those who see the path in front of them requires a change, we are ready to help you lay the ground work. Those who don't want to make a change, we can discuss options. For CS3, we supported the product until the end-of-life finalized and all reasonable upgrade incentives were exhausted.. Those who had not changed and had no plans to change, we found arrangements with consultants who wanted to stay in yesteryear. We moved on. Those who planned to make a changes, we kept them on board and are working with them. Some moved to 100. Some moved to 500. Those we still have as customers. Some moved to 300 and we helped them connect with re-sellers. Some moved to other platforms and we helped the with data extraction and migration. Some we even helped with software selections. Net, net - the process took about 4 years. We have a few remaining customers to convert. We are also working with a couple PFW re-sellers that didn't make plans to transition their own practices away from a dying product as well. One we are subcontracting work to and helping them learn Sage 100. Another is learning Acumatica. Both operate as if they are part of CS3.

For what it's worth, Daniel is an awesome dude. He just has to deal with the reality that he is given by the people in charge.

And that's why the good ones eventually leave.

I try to tell customer what they are going to find when they call Sage, browse the web or talk to another partner --- because 99% of them will do just that whether you like it or not. Better to get out in front of it and be brutally honest that sling Sage's BS and have the customer read varying opinions. In most cases I make it clear that like Myron said - Sage usually doesn't discontinue products while a material number of people are paying maintenance. In any case I want the customer to hear the information from me first if at all possible. Some customers refuse to believe and continue to press forward upset that they're not getting their way with Sage but like Shawn says things change and I wish those customers well with their new partner.

Substitute Sage 500 for PFW - or BW - do I see a pattern?