General Consultant Discussion

Setting aside the Sage 100 Road Ahead - what did everything thing of Summit overall? What did you notice was most different? What was the best and worst changes?

Good: - Exhibits opened longer, and the layout was much better - Ambassadors. These people grew on me during the show with their constant cheerfulness AND up-to-date knowledge of what was going on. - 90Minds events! - there was still beer at the evening Exhibits. - I think many of the keynotes were appreciated by customers. They are certainly better than ""inspirational"" ones. Bad: - The training opps for customers were way down. It is the one thing I heard most dissed by customers. - They had lightweights in some sessions that required beefier. My ""Better Decision-making for Executives"" was nearly content-free, given by a guy that couldn't have been over 30. And it ran for HALF the scheduled time! - no food in the evening Exhibits. It pushes people to leave earlier, which is not their goal (I think) - combining ""the outing"" with ""the party"" is probably a bad move. The museum outing last year was a pretty good chance to mingle further. Many attendees don't like the party atmosphere. i suspect they put the party on the last evening on purpose: fewer attendees. - no bags, and no warning about that. I suspect that ratings by new attendees will be substantially higher than from returning customers. I think this Summit crossed the line from ""solid content"" to ""obvious fluff"".

@JerryNorman Great summary. I have similar thoughts. In addition, for me, the most valuable takeaway was the two days of stripping, I mean scripting classes, getting re-acquainted with colleagues, and meeting new people..... none of which is related to the layout of the trade show, the keynotes or the Sage party.

To expand on comments of @DougHiggs Summit should be about communication among Sage, partners, customers and vendors. That has always been my biggest take away. The design of the exhibit floor and surrounding areas this year improved these opportunities. No bags and other missing items that we have become accustomed to were big negatives. They were obvious cost cutting measures, but I think bad moves on Sage's part.

The absolute highlights of the week were not Sage events - scripting and SI training and the social gathering - 100% 90 Minds. Thanks to all who made those possible.

One other thing I missed: NO hardcopy alternative of the session schedule. Not even a single kiosk I could find. I think this was a big mistake. Sage needs to believe that the future is mobile, and they do. But they also have to understand that a big chunk of existing customers are still not relying 100% on their mobile devices. I suspect that the missing easy reference, old-fashioned kiosk with the sessions on it fed a sense among customers of not much useful content.

I would have liked a mobile app and the ability to view the schedule filtered by primary product (which you could do but had to login to your account)

I mostly agree with John's comments about the 4 modules not on framework: the deafening silence about 3 of them should not have surprised any of us 90Minders. That said, Sage's view of what current mfg customers should do is mind-bogglingly naive and stupid. Even if you give a customer the X3 license for FREE, the annual subscription will likely double or triple (based on list price), and implementation prices for x3 mfg are usually well north of $70k. Completely unrealistic expectation for all the most sophisticated Sage 100 mfg customers, and there are likely very few of them still on Sage 100. On the bright side, Sage is now talking with Synergistic about using JobOps to paper over this jam. I doubt this is anything more than a marketing/referral agreement. Sage missed its chance 5 yrs ago to realistically partner with Synergistic when Sage insisted on ""taxing"" JobOps new customer sales that were from the existing Sage 100 customer base, instead of only on new Sage 100 customers brought to the family because of JobOps. Stupid greedy management. I am now completely mystified by LeBahn's response to my Payroll question at the ""Disaster Recovery"" session. Apparently they have decided what they are going to do, but they won't announce it until December?! Hopefully this announcement will not include Sage HRMS ""FrankenPayroll"" (@ChuckPeddy ) and is some easier-to-use alternative. But if they've figured out what they will do, isn't that sort of thing supposed to be on a Roadmap? I am completely missing the logic here.

@WayneSchulz I would have liked that too. So instead they left us in the worst of all worlds. No physical schedule, and no USEFUL mobile access.

What do you mean they 'taxed' new customer sales for jobops? One thing that hurts jobops is that Sage forces users to own a full MAS license for every user who simply wants to capture time on the shop floor. ""Real"" manufacturing solutions like Epicor charge about 25% the price of a full license for this type of user

Synergistic explored becoming an Endorsed Solution, that is, going on the Sage price list. Sage charges a hefty commission on the sale. Synergistic was fine with that if it was only to the new Sage customer. But Sage wanted it on all of them, meaning that JobOps would be charged for keeping a customer from leaving Sage.

I'm assuming all the endorsed solutions pay a commission to sage. For example, if somebody needs Avalara and they are on MAS they are paying a margin. I could see jobops as an exception, because there are times where it can save a customer. However, after 25 years, I doubt there are few vars left that don't know it exists and is available. Plus sage offers no alternative directly or through another endorsed solution so if I was Synergistic I don't see any value become endorsed.

If sage 'endorsed' them for free I'd doubt there would be a noticeable change in sales volume

Yes the Endorsed commission goes to Sage. As for VARS, I run into quite a few today who really don't know what JobOps is appropriate for. One of the benefits of Endorsed is access to current customers for marketing. I think it would be now appropriate for direct marketing contact with customers on JC/WO/MRP encouraging them to take a look at JO to replace their non-upgradeable modules.

We should make ""90 Minds"" bags for next year and be the envy of Summit. We've had them printed for between $0.75 and $2.00 a piece depending on quantity/size/logo.

Expanding on @JerryNorman comments, not only are there business partners who only know the JobOps name and no details, there really are some who have no idea who or what JobOps is. I would also surmise that the level of knowledge is not universal across all of Sage. If this is true, then the general awareness in the customer community is low. I'm thinking of other product lines, such as Sage 50 or BusinessWorks, where they are considering upgrading and have opened up the research to competitors of Sage 100. JobOps can make the difference, but if their business partners or Sage reps for those products are unaware of JobOps, the opportunity is lost.

One of the problems I see with Sage trying to use Job Ops as a salve over the Job Cost wound is that the two products have distinct functional differences that will be a detriment to certain true Job Cost/Construction environments. Of course, I know the answer from Sage will be... Move to one of our ""Construction"" products. The big gripe that I have with this (and customers as well) is that Sage will charge DEARLY for making what is essentially a lateral move to a product that there is NO clear migration path. Ad to that the consultant time and relearning an interface and I can see why customers would want to leave Sage. And, frankly, I wouldn't blame them.

Same story with payroll and to some extent fixed assets. These programs all look like band aids. The look and feel is different from the core modules and there is a big learning curve. there are programming code and data file differences also. if you want to sell the HRMS payroll this requires more training, certification, and of course, annual fees to Sage. A few more of these ""strap ons"" the Sage end users are going to pull out the Acumatica business cards they got with that free cup of coffee.

I'm not sure why, today, a company who is an engineer to order or make to order or configure to order shop would buy Sage 100 + Jobops unless they had some big Sage 100 bias going in or trust their var like they are the only player in town. When you need to add a 3rd party module, built by a company with less than 10 employees to manage the core of your business to go along with a distribution accounting system that was released during Reagan's first term then you have a really uphill sales battle. With solutions like Epicor, Globalshop, Syspro, Syteline etc, you're gonna get your ass kicked in a non-biased fight. With Epicor ERP 10 (latest generation of their flagship) they've substantially reduced the price of their smaller business configurations to about $1,500/user (less than 15 concurrent 'full' users). They charge about $500 per concurrent user for shop floor/timekeeper user. Compare that to Sage 100 at around $2500 per full user w/jobops + the same $2,500 per shop floor collection device. Then compare the breadth, depth, functionality and you are bringing a pitchfork to a machine gun fight...

Chuck I agree with you about Job Cost. In a perfect world (which isn't going to happen) 100 would have a Project's module which would integrate with a production 'jobs' module. You use production jobs for smaller simpler 'jobs' that result in a single product being made over a reasonable period of time. Projects would be for complex large scale projects that result in multiple production jobs to make multiple parts, or a complex production process. For example, designing, sampling and then building and delivery 1000 Coppertone display's for a consumer packaged goods company. This is something epicor does with ease including WBS structure, phases, cost codes, progress, T&M billing, phase billing, fixed fee, retainage etc. But they need to be natively part of one overall solution with full visibility into raw materials and WIP as it works it's way through production including moving to, from and between subcontractors

@MarkChinsky I understand the price points, and the current ones don't compete well. If JobOps did become an endorsed solution, the user charges would have to go away and they would need to reprice the modules and/or bundle complete solutions. There also would need to be a ""JobOps lite"" with variations for straight costing and no requirement for Sales Order to start jobs. I know very little about Epicor, except for your comments. I trust you and know where to go if a customer wants that. As for Syspro, we used to be a reseller and now we are not. They do not fit well in smaller customers, so we replaced what we did sell with Sage 100 and the customer is much happier. I also have replaced Syteline and we have provided the customer with more flexibility. When I am leading with JobOps, I rarely compete with the traditional ""manufacturing"" packages. In those situations, it is more about trust in us and giving them flexibility. Complex, large scale projects - no we are not having to deal with that with these customers, and our solution is probably not a good fit. We do deal with the objection of ""that's an add-on"" or a ""third party"", so if anything does happen between Sage and Synergistic, it needs to be closer - the OEM status as with Avalara. At this point, there are so many considerations and questions, I am not confident that any deal will go through in the near term.

Sage's ""vision"" is that they're going to leave the ""Hybrid Cloud"" products (aka Sage 100, 300) alone and use SDC (Sage Data Cloud) to enable third parties to write easier integrations to their ERP. In Sage's mind it will be one ""connector"" and then third parties all use that to link their integrations. I'll believe it when I see it. In my view this ""vision"" will last as long as the current executive team stays in place. A potential flaw in the vision is that all users will need to be relatively current on their product versions (and Sage said from the podium that about 1/2 were not -- -and that SDC usage would require the customer to be on a current version.) If someone at Sage isn't starting to get ""flop sweat"" from the knowledge that customers are not wanting to upgrade - then they are not being realistic in what I see as a big chunk of Sage customers staying on older versions due to lack of new enhancement features. Here's where I'm pulling the data from. Skip the first half fluff about Sage Summit - it's better toward the end. http://smist08.wordpress.com/2014/08/02/sage-summit-2014/ Of course it's also possible that deep in the spreadsheets at Sage they realize that 1/2 of the Hybrid Cloud customers will fade away and they need that maintenance money for only a few more years to fund the SDC vision.

Sorry, but SDC is just going to morph into a recurring maintenance transaction toll where you have to pay Sage a cut per transaction to get over the bridge to Sage ERP products

I suspect that you are correct. SDC also does not seem to present an attractive solution to those customers who need to either make customizations or use scripting. Ultimately I think SDC is basically Sage's ""take it or leave"" it growth path for their ""Hybrid Cloud"" products (aka any of the Sage ERP line that is not Sage One or X3). Like it or not these acquired products (Sage 100, 300, 500) are likely at the end of their feature upgrade lives. They surely will be kept around and their maintenance will fund future development of other Sage products such as X3 and Sage One.