General Consultant Discussion

These software companies are all partner friendly - until they aren't. And guess what - you won't have a thing to say about it when they change their policies or lower/remove margins.

The practice that SYSPRO engages in, that bothers me is that they charge a hefty up-front fee for their on-premise license, then they charge the industry-standard 18% - 21% for maintenance. What concerns me is that if you don't stay current on maintenance, they turn off the software, causing you to not be able to use it until your maintenance is current. That doesn't sound ethical to me, but it was legal at the time because it was built in to the fine print of the EULA. This is how it was about 2 1/2 years ago when we evaluated it, so please let me know if that's changed since then. I expressed mild concern about this policy, and Joey Benadretti, their President, gave me a dismissive answer which caused me to believe that Wayne is exactly right in this case - SYSPRO will do what they want, then change it when they want without input of feedback of any kind. Sound familiar?

@DougDeane Sage is wanting to do the same thing. Joe Langner said as much 16 months ago when the subscription model was launched.

I am in process with our letter terminating our reseller relationship. @MichaelBuscher and I will write up some of the issues we have had with SYSPRO over the years.

@JohnHoyt where do your Syspro clients end up once you've terminated the reseller agreement?

@RobertWood Sage would allow access to data as read only from what I have heard. Is Syspro read only or no access?Sounds like no access to me.

You're right, @ToddMartin. Read only is Sage's goal.

Terminating access (i.e. allowing read-only) for a subscription EU is WAY different than terminating it for someone who paid a large amount of money up front for an on-premise license, IMO. If an EU terminates their Sage subscription, and are given R-O access to their data for the purpose of moving it somewhere else, I have no problem with that. In fact, I hope that Sage will build that switch in as soon as they can. It protects all channel partners as well as Sage.

Notice how Syspro's first four arguments are purely emotional. I've seen that quite a bit with other software companies who solicit Sage partners to come over to greener pastures. Before exploring any of these greener pastures you should at the very least be able to answer ""yes"" to the question ""Will I be happy if the margin selling this product goes to zero. Could I still make a recurring revenue stream from my services around this product? "" Naturally the product itself has to be technically solid with positive references from other partners who've installed more than just one or two lucky deals.

Interesting. In my neck of the woods, they have been winning deals left and right where we've been in with epicor. They are always cheaper on software and services by a large margin