Sage News and Discussion

Some of you may have received notice of a new Sage program called Certified Implementation Program. I received a copy of the notice this morning. https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/d6b861a7-33ec-4704-8959-9fa491937bf6/916300567c9d1b629da43b8900bd9e9a Here's a link to the program details: http://cdn.na.sage.com/sagemail/SageMail/CIP%20Program%20Overview.pdf If you think it looks a lot like the Certified Consultant program - you're not alone. I couldn't help but notice that the program seemed almost identical to CC. With one important exception. Members of CIP do not have to be affiliated with a reseller. This started me wondering - well why not just modify the existing CC program to make non-reseller types eligible for CC? My guess is that this is going to become Sage's second channel. My speculation (and I could be completely wrong): CIP are organizations which do not earn margin on sales of product or maintenance. CIP therefore would be the perfect type of organization for Sage to refer any direct sales. I'm not implying that Sage is imminently going to field a huge salesforce to knock on doors. But certainly Sage's web presence attracts customers who want to buy direct from Sage. Presumably if Sage refers those purchasers to a CC organization (which by definition is also a reseller group) then Sage would have to deal with the payment of current and future commission. However with the CIP there is no such conflict. If a customer/prospect goes directly to the Sage site, clicks ""buy now"" and needs an implementation partner Sage can refer them to a CIP without splitting any commission -- present or future. This is in my opinion - brilliant. At least from the standpoint of Sage. I could be completely wrong on this and maybe Sage have created this program just out of market need.

I was thinking the same thing on them using CIPs for direct sales.

I was never associated with a Reseller with the old program.

I was speaking with Roger Demers about Sage X3 prospects and he pointed me to the CIP. The impression I take away from that dialogue was that we might not be a CIP partner now but if/when Sage 100 ERP is retired (an argument for another time), Sage might expect us to transition that way...the same way they expect end users to transition.

@BethBowers Interesting - I wonder if there was some grandfathering since there was a prior CC program which I don't think had many members (guessing). @BrianRice -- even if CIP never goes anywhere at least Sage does have an option where they can funnel people. And since CIP exists (or will shortly) Sage also has an avenue to turn to should there be another situation where a big VAR goes under. There would be no reason for Sage to take all those customers and gift them to another reseller. Sage could theoretically keep the customers as ""house"" accounts and just refer the consulting to CIP. Nice and easy - no further payment of commission. A brilliant move by Sage even though it's not all that new of a concept.

This is very similar to how salesforce.com consultants operate. The driver there is that ""no software"" means that customers buy first from vendor. A month into it, they discover they need help and turn to consultants. The main driver is the cloud delivery. Also, I think that customers who pay on subscription affect this. If a reseller drops below quota requirement, the margin on all the subscription reverts to Sage. Even when the reseller gets back in min quota, there is no requirement now for Sage to reinstate that commission flow.

I'm not sure what Sage's current policy is. I do know that they did a direct sale of their online Sage 100 product. They assigned the customer to us and send us a monthly check. They did the install and all the support and I've never talked to the customer.

I am a CC and I am not/have not been assigned/associated to a particular Reseller. I have a SAGE partner/like account with no customers listed. Since SAGE has mandated that all end users purchase a Silver Support Plan why would they send an end user to a CIP? SAGE is looking to capture it all....Direct Sales, Implementation, and ongoing support!

If Sage made the sale in your area and didn't feel they could do the implementation remotely, they'd get a CIP involved.

Sage will gladly take the initial sale and recurring maintenance. For small projects it's too much overhead for them to manage remote consultants.

My initial thought was the same as Wayne's. - Sage will use this to develop their consultant pool for the direct sales.

I stumbled upon this guide to Sage partner programs which describes their present CC in one section as: http://www.sageu.com/bp/SagePartnerProgramResourceGuide.pdf Sage Certified Consultant Individuals within a partner organization who have completed at least one designated Competency Role for Sage products are certified to provide professional services to end customers for those competencies in which they are certified. Then in another section it mentions: Independent Sage Certified Consultant Independent individuals who have completed at least one designated Competency Role for Sage products and are certified to provide professional services to end customers for those competencies in which they are certified. Seems to me like the CIP is redundant to the Independent Sage Certified Consultant

The only thing that I can see which is different is that CIP is designed for organizations or individuals. Whereas before the Independent Consultant was just a person and I don't think carried any benefit for organizations.

A pretty clear distinction of two channels - http://na.sage.com/us/partners#Partnering

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