General Consultant Discussion

We are less than 30 days from implementation of Sage's payroll tiers and Sage still does not have the procedure together for how they are going to implement this. Presumably part of Sage's plan is to call the customer to ask how many active employees they need. However I don't believe Sage has started to do this yet and we are in the midst of needing to invoice for our May renewals. Sooooo, my thought is we are enrolling all of our customers as unlimited $1,200/year and they can negotiate directly with Sage if they wish to buy down to a lesser level. I think probably all of our users on payroll have multiple years of ""backup"" companies (the need for which is still mind boggling to me) and therefore under Sage's definition I think they would need unlimited. Anyone have a conversation with Sage where they actually seem prepared to implement this? Anyone have different information from above?

Isn't BPAC this week? Maybe they are finalizing the plan with their business partners?

Nothing specific on the agenda. I assume since it's announced it is considered a done deal - no discussion necessary. We are discussing Sage Payroll which is the service.

During my days of BPAC, there was ONLY discussions of topics that were already done deals. I can't think of a single topic that was influenced by partner feedback. That is not sarcasm. The management team feels they know best - even though I believe that the average tenure for the team is < 15 months if you don't consider Connie Certusi in the mix. Is there really any wonder why Sage is broken? I'm surprised that they don't just hire kids out of school to reinforce their new, hip, Sage Live, smashing through barriers, vibe they are going for. It would have the same effectiveness and the bonus of saving a ton of salary. I guess I'm feeling surly today ... ;)

In my opinion, this is not your father's BPAC. The atmosphere is very much looking forward and not dwelling on those done deals. And we who are here are wanting to be told what is coming up.

We were told what was coming up too. That's not the issue. The issue is whether or not the partner feedback makes any difference in the policy details. If you are saying that the current BPAC is influencing things right now, then we all need to talk with you because things aren't going in the right direction.

I totally believe we influenced the current Payroll announcement and pricing and the 100c inclusions and pricing. What was originally presented was unacceptable and Sage made changes. We may not like what the final product is, but it sure is improved from the initial plan. I suppose you could say that all Sage is doing by having a BPAC is to cover themselves and not make huge mistakes. I want to believe that is not all that is happening. The top partners in the channel are here and they have been positive and supportive. They are critical, but are being heard.

Sage tends to want to have a ""discussion"" when they clearly have a problem. Witness Sage 100c which 15 Sage departments mapped out on 15 different spreadsheets and appear now to be puzzled as to why customers aren't excited. #FlopSweat

May 1 is implementation date for Sage Payroll, of which Sage claims 49% of their Sage 100 base use. Yet we have no indication from Sage as to what their procedure is to obtain the required tier from the end user. There is something still very very broken at Sage and it's concerning to have sat through years and years of mea culpa from probably 15 different executives all who promise to fix core issue. I can promise you one thing though - executives who leave are what you consider ""smart money"". They've had a look behind the walls and they are not leaving because they are thrilled. And, no, I do not believe all of them were fired. Chiefly to have Jody leave abruptly should be a huge tell.

So much wrong these days. What's up with the price increases? Do we really think that's the best approach right now when customers are already asking about value received for their annual M&S? Sage may think they are optimizing their cash curve (price vs number of customers) but they are actually eroding their customer base which is needed for their cross-sell strategy. Anyone comment about that at BPAC?

Very little discussion nor negative sentiment on the price increase - it happens every year and it is what it is. Subscription is the future and this in my opinion helps us sell it.

As for Payroll, I sent letters out last week to all Payroll clients and told them when they have to pay the increase and exactly what they will pay (we had previously asked them how many employees are paid). Only 2 calls so far, and actually we can take them to 100c and they only pay slightly more when combined with the Payroll increase.

So ... the sentiment is increasing prices with no value is a positive thing? Interesting. I wonder what Ed Kless and Ron Baker would say about that.

I actually believe price increases are expected, so we just move on. Note there were no increases in subscription rates.

@PeterWolf It also depends on what is perceived as value. I consider having a software company that continues to exist to be value. Let's again review the ERP graveyard. Compared to the last regime (and I consider Rich Spring to be in that group), there are changes that could also be considered an increase in value. The reality is the customers have no clue about any of this one way or other. If they are going to leave the product, they were going to probably do that anyway. Less that 5% of our customers actually are considering converting to something else.

Ok

@JohnHoyt - To add to your experience with informing customers about payroll tiers -- I sent around a notice when Sage first started talking about big price increases. I also spoke to a few customers on payroll who I thought would be impacted. My experience was very similar in that very few called me or asked any questions. I do not know what the result is going to be when I invoice them $1200 but I think they mostly do the math and still know it's a deal vs ADP/Paychex. Given the prolonged DD outage I do not think I will recommend that any use the Sage DD Service whose chief benefits appears to be to allow Sage to somehow make use of the funds for a short period of time.

I've attached a payroll subscription letter a client forwarded to us yesterday.

What do you think the ""Anytime/anywhere mobile access"" is referring to under the Gold Support option?

Gold plan lists ""Anytime/anywhere mobile access"" and Silver plan lists ""Anytime/anywhere access to critical business information"". Don't know what those two things mean and how they differ.

The more I look at 100c the more I think that the ""c"" was supposed to mean cloud and at some point there was a web UI of some sort that Sage wanted to offer but couldn't figure out (which I think is the same as what happened with 300). Then Sage eventually said the heck with the web ui stuff but we'll keep the ""c"" attached to the name. Either that or Sage is just really incompetent or all of the above.

Not for payroll yet. But recently, we too experienced Sage's lack of preparedness in executing Sage 100c change-over. We had a customer fully prepared to upgrade to Sage 100c (they wanted a monthly payment and to take advantage of new, best features - i.e., manufacturing). Sage offered a 40% discount in the first year (no one even asked for a discount). Then in year two their new subscription would end up ~ 35% higher compared to the previous perpetual licensing the customer had.

it is my understanding that the reseller has no ability to enroll clients in any payroll tiers and sage will be doing that directly. Renewals for may have excluded the payroll amount. there has been some realignments of Sage reps, so it should get even more interesting