General Consultant Discussion

Taking bets on whether this promo ends with Sage's FYE.

If we were all completely honest - this is primarily a great deal for customers moving to Advanced or Premium. For others it is largely a ""beat a huge price increase"" promo which really only delays the increase because the rate rises per EULA until it reaches Sage's SLP.

It feels like Sage is trying to make us all accessories to extortion...and when there aren't any conversions in Sage's 2019Q1, the promo will be back.

I already have 2 cases where the $0 promo is just a gimmick. One customer on 100c for a year had a price increase that charged them more than current SLP. Still trying to get this resolved. In another case Sage stated the credit to get to $0 is only for 1 year and then you subtract that credit and increase the price by 10% so then it comes out to a 25% increase in year 2. My bet is that the business partners will be stuck trying to explain why the 2nd year renewals go up more than the 10% we have been lead to believe and relay to our accounts.

@SteveEngmann I have always been concerned that the promotional credit would somehow get backed out and ""not counted"" as part of the EULA limited increase. But how do you sell that ""deal"" to a customer - I can't very well say ""Sage says they won't increase over the EULA but I don't believe it once you factor in the promo, etc"". It has been my experience that many of the Sage staff don't understand the promos. I recall years ago making permanent lifelong enemies on the order desk because I understood a promo (as told to me directly by the Sage exec) which contradicted the order desk understanding. The situation was so difficult that I was sent wrong keys, etc. Luckily the move to Atlanta partially eliminated that personnel problem.

I've given this whole perpetual v subscription much thought and ultimately I am in the consulting business. If a company is under my access agreement then I'll help them understand licensing options to the best of my ability.

The problem I have with all of this is that we know from prior experience that Sage (a) can and will change he EULA at any time (b) will eventually ""ungrandfather"" any promotional promises Once the noose has been tightened with subscription this will only get worse. ""It would be a shame if something were to happen to your ERP system."" So as of right now all I can tell customers is ""This year you can expect a 20% increase in maintenance, and only a 10% increase in subscription. Next year that may change. Once you are on subscription if you stop paying you can't use the software anymore. If you are on subscription there will be 'improvements' in the form of more things you can subscribe to (or the lite versions thereof). On maintenance, the best you can hope for is Sage keeping up with Operating System requirements, and even that may not be timely."" I still remember the original EES promo that after a couple of months of quoting Sage realized was giving people CRM for an actual reduction in their maintenance. Instead of saying ""we screwed up, we're changing the promo going forward"" they DELETED all their quotes from the system and forced you to provide proof and get managers on the phone in order to get them to honor their quotes.

I remember pushing through two EES migrations ASAP because clearly someone at Sage made a pricing mistake. I didn't have quotes cancelled but I recall they phased out EES pretty quickly.

Different customer types for this discussion: (1) AP/AR/GL - accounting only and happy with Sage 100 - ""We're going to keep paying something every year. If subscription is cheaper, at least for now, let's go with it."" (2) Distribution with a bunch of integrated products - ""The system works, we may want to add on more integrations, way to complicated to switch over price anyway"" - went with subscription. (3) Distribution with no addons - ""Nothing has changed in the past five years we've been paying maintenance. what else can you show us?"" Dropped maintenance and will switch to something n a year or two once they figure out exactly what they want in a new system. (4) Distribution with custom addons mostly home brewed (customer paid for maintenance from 3.71 till this year and only upgrade was to 2014 SQL to enable easier home brewing - dropped maintenance and figures they are good for at least five years in which time they will bank the $$ for a new system instead of giving it to Sage.

Isn't Sage jacking up the perpetual renewals a LOT now. So are they saying you will still pay a LOT but you can switch at NC? The promo is perplexing.