General Consultant Discussion

Very interesting from Bob Scott this week: Most resellers have spent recent years getting into Sage's X3 offering. France-based ProdWare has decided to get out of it. The company this week announced the sale, citing what it termed the software's ""restrained platform development at the international level limited its deployment."" The X3 practice had 28 employees and annual revenue of about $4.6 million. ProdWare continues to offer Sage 100 and 100, the products in the French market, along with payroll and HR packages. X3 was born in France, which continues to be the manufacturing package's biggest market. The prepared statement by CEO Alain Conrard looks like a fairly solid slap at X3's role and future. ""For years, we have been facing strong development of international activities by an important number of our clients,"" he said. ""Their new size and constant search for more efficiency spurs them on to search for a true international solution and true role-tailored expertise as regards both the solutions and the experts put at their disposal. The Sage X3 offering did not match these criteria anymore."" Let's see, this is saying that X3 lacks software developer support and people resources and is not providing what international companies need? Ouch. The 4CAD Group, which has six offices in France and one in Geneva, Switzerland, says the deal enables it to strengthen its position as an integrator of IT systems for industrial companies.

I have a Sage 100 Premium client that I migrated from Adonix X3 four or five years ago. They had looked at Sage 100 and X3 10 years ago as potential replacements for their patchwork Xenix-based system and ended up choosing choosing X3. Five years ago they approached me again saying they made mistake choosing X3 and wanted to revisit Sage 100. From their perspective, X3 bill of materials was too complicated and over kill, as was much of X3.

In all fairness that's kind of a different issue. These guys sound like they are complaining X3 isn't global or robust enough. Your client had the opposite problem. Anybody who thinks X3 is a 'next step' solution to Sage 100 is in for a rude awaking. X3 or a product like Epicor ERP (for a mfg), is 2 levels up from Sage 100

Definitely a different issue but I mention it as not all large/international companies necessarily need a complex solution. It is interesting ProdWare is Sage 100 / 300 resellers and are dumping X3. The vibe I get is they must be looking for a replacement to X3 but you would think they would have a replacement first.

I could be wrong, but given they are in France, I would assume Sage 100 is a different product there (using Sage's brilliant product naming schemes...)

Probably particularly since i don;t see any setup options that allow francs.

Only diehard Francophiles continue to acknowledge francs. They grudgingly adopted the Euro, although it's not always obvious. And that probably says a lot about X3.

LOL.. oh yea.. forgot about that... It's only been 10 years or so.

Heck it has been 15 years....