General Consultant Discussion

We all know that the Sage 300 side of things is handled differently than Sage 100 within Sage. So three week ago a client who has been off maintenance, hired an IT consulting company. This company was hired to manage the network and assist them in the move from Sage to SAP as mandated by the parent company. The IT company called Sage to see how to migrate to Sage 6.0 from 5.4. Their only use GL, AP and AR and they never wanted to upgrade as they didn't see any enhancements worth the effort. The Sage employee handling the call told them they needed a current maintenance plan. The IT company talked to the client and the client said OK, the purchased the plan and downloaded the software but then corrupted the data as the IT company had never done a Sage 300 installation or upgrade. They called us to help fix it as they didn't have any backups before they started the process. We helped them but were prepaid. Next they asked us to help get them to the latest version on equipment that was certified by Sage but we couldn't locate the client in the partner portal. It seems when the client called in, the Sage employee changed the ROR to Sage so they could process the order. No notification was sent to us and according to the client and IT company no one at Sage told them anything about changing the partner, but who knows. Talking with other Sage employee's it seems that this is the new operating procedures when a client calls Sage and purchases anything, Sage will change the partner to Sage to process the order.

Oh great. So Sage is changing to direct sell? I hope this doesn't apply to Sage 100 as well.

End of life"" is no longer a part of the Sage vocabulary (except for mobile products, the channel, and maybe others TBD).

No notice to the channel Sage just implements a new SOP for ROR? Outrageous.

I'm not surprised. This is how Sage increases shareholder value. I would argue Sage announced this years ago when they implemented this very process for off-plan customers. I had a customer that was off plan simply because they are very cheap. They called Sage because they wanted to add more users. The CAM got involved because they needed to get back on plan. I spoke with the CAM and specifically told him not to discount anything for the customer because I knew what was going on. Not only did Sage discount the reinstatement and the sale of the additional users, Sage gave me zero margin because ""the partner did nothing to sell the reinstatement or new product"". Guess what happened when renewal time came again? Yep, they did not pay. It is so disheartening that Sage throws around the word ""partner"" as if Sage has any idea what a true partner is. If this is the Extraordinary Customer Experience Sage is going for, it is Extraordinarily Awful and Sage is excellent at repeating it every chance Sage gets.

Mmmm, when one of my former clients switched ROR, I was notified within minutes last month of the action. What is good for the goose is good for the gander??? Do as I say, not as I do??

Exactly!

I can't wait to meet with my RAM tomorrow and his boss's boss who will be in our office. I'm thinking about leading with this issue and see what they say.

Re-read @BrianKelly comment because I think what happened here is in line with the policy. Essentially, a customer not on plan who buys through Sage comes back and is aligned to Sage. I do not think this is a brand new policy. It is just a policy we don't notice until it happens to us.

To conclude this, I met with Olivier Cuvillon Sr. Director of Sales as we discussed what happened with our client. He not only told me that he would get this situation corrected and get us paid the commission he felt we were owed, he was going to see about having this policy dropped as he didn't understand it and felt it was counter productive to our relationship. I agreed with him there, so we will see. On the other hand, our meeting about 2016 and our plans was very frank and he committed to doing certain actions and I told him I would withhold judgement until I see Sage's actions. I would highly recommend meeting with Olivier if you get the chance.

Please update us on whether your discussion regarding the commission goes anywhere.

To revisit this now, I've been told that I'm getting credit for the renewal and no one knows why Sage changed the re-seller from us to them, but until I have the credit in hand I don't believe them. There were so many discrepancies that have come up based upon this business review with Sage that it's crazy. Almost every item we reviewed, using their own data and the presented the numbers, there were errors. Sage showed we had a $ -8,000 in HRMS sales revenue, when we had 1 HRMS sale and no returns and no credits. They don't know why and there isn't a credit note in their system nor does it show up in the detailed tier reporting. They are still looking into this. For Sage 100 customers off-plan,they say we have 32 customers, but when they print the detailed records they have 21. They are researching why their data produces two different values for the same criteria. It's very similar on the Sage 300 side as well. A piece of advice from Sage rep, don't trust the numbers they provide. That's a sad statement right there.

I would re-read Wayne's first post. This is not a new policy. It has been mentioned previously in these forums but people don't realize it until it smacks them in the face. Here's some other old news: 1. Sage is already selling direct - Sage ERP (particularly cloud) and Sage CRM. 2. Sage is slowly ramping up their PSG group. 3. Sage is winning back customers for Sage - not the original reseller. Lloyd called out Olivier / Sage on this but let's not kid ourselves and think that they are changing the policy. They will only change if partners squawk. As Lloyd says: watch your numbers - even your off plans. My 2 cents. PS. Regarding the ""fairness"" of the winbacks being assigned to Sage ... Does this make sense if they do all the work? I guess in the current Sage world, it makes sense to them. From a channel partner perspective, it shows an us vs them mentality that continues to erode the Sage channel confidence in Sage as a long-term partner going forward. I would think Sage would recognize and reverse these decisions.

@PeterWolf I think we've gotten info that Sage 100 Online has been discontinued. Sage has a tremendous amount of job openings posted to LinkedIn. More than any of us have ever seen. It's a true measure of the amount of change that I think we can expect from Sage within the next 18 months. As to whether Sage has enough ""runway"" to get those changes moving and producing revenues is another question. Me: No

Yes and if they do have enough runway, what would stop the benevolent dictator (Salesforce) from ripping up the runway? I don't understand the mentality of positioning Sage as an app builder. Time will tell.

Sage 100 Online has not been discontinued. We just added a new client this week. They even sent the notice to the client. (actually they sent the notice to us and we sent to the client)

Welcome to the family, (company name). Sage will give (company name) the specialized treatment (company name) expects. Please plan for (company name)'s pricing to increase annually.