Sage News and Discussion

Sage X3 mailings going out to current Sage 100 customers - 12/8 virtual event. It would have been nice to be included on the mailing or notified prior.

It is part of Sage's program to convince the channel to sell more Sage One.

With a 30-day trial and no credit card required, why hasn't Sage made this available to the channel, but perhaps for 90 days? Accountants and bookkeepers are no charge if they have paying clients, and the discounted price for a full accounting version for clients is $19.99 per month - UNLIMITED users. Somehow all 90 Minds members should be able to get a copy, if we work this right.

Does anybody know how happy X3 customer really are? Does anybody have a customer that moved from 100 to X3 and how they like it?

I don't. I do know that during Capital Market Days in July 2015 Sage indicated 5k X3 customers. At Sage's recent earnings Q&A session they indicated ""a little over 4k"". There were 2,700 claimed users at the X3 V6 launch in January 2010. I've not run into any X3 partners who've indicated anything negative about the product or heard much in the way of negative chatter about it outside of the Sage partner channel. To me, it does not seem to be growing all that fast.

FWIW, I just received a phone call from someone who appears to be a local Sage Strategic Account Manager with Sage and focusing on X3. It's the first time I can recall Sage reaching out to me asking to meet and possibly exchange leads in the future. I think he is looking for X3 leads and in turn would offer Sage 100 leads. In general, I've found these types of meet and greet are generally a waste of time. Isn't Sage Summit for all these ""let's meet and exchange business cards""??

Almost all of the successful X3 resellers are the largest resellers. This should be an opportunity to pair the rest of the channel with those X3 resellers. I have an agreement with NexTec, which I put together when I realized it is too large an investment for us to attempt. By doing that the Sage Strategic Account Managers can concentrate on the actual X3 resellers - or not exist at all.

The whole process reminds me an awful lot of what Sage went through with Sage 100 -> Sage 500.

Other than maybe making a few bucks as your long term client exits Sage 100, how do you build a long term business handing off X3 opportunities?

That's exactly the issue @MarkChinsky , and it was an issue with MAS500. The only reason you'd go through the process is if you had an existing user who was absolutely leaving Sage and/or a prospect who clearly didn't fit into the solution you offered. And in most cases, I found the lead-to-close time was so long that you forget about the entire deal so the net $$ is often zero. In some rare cases it's an immediate close but those are more exceptions than rules.

Of our current Sage 100 customers, perhaps 2-3 would potentially consider looking at X3, but at this point there is no interest. That was the same with MAS 500. I have told Sage that if a customer is happy with Sage 100, the only reason they would consider changing is if their volumes increased to a point where they could no longer use it (due to coding structure limitations, not data storage) or if there was some special feature that they absolutely needed and could not get with 100. I believe the 100 customer base in general is relatively happy, if things are working for them.

The cost of annual maintenance or Sage 100c subscription has not been an issue with the larger customers. I just had one opt for 100c at an annual cost of $24K without question. They didn't even ask about paying monthly. I suppose I missed my chance to sell the 3-year plan. Speaking of that, I have at least 2 customers on 3-year plans.

I think the main issue is X3 wasn't built as a distribution solution. Although it has distribution functionality, like Epicor, it's focused more on manufacturing, and in X3's case, process and batch which is a place few Sage 100 customers live in.