Archive for the ‘Accounting Software’ Category
The Face Of ERP Web Leads
This image from the FindAccountingSoftware’s daily lead report is a pretty accurate representation of 95% of web leads who contact consultants “looking for a quote”.
These are not requests for quotes – they’re requests for free consulting and invitations to undercut an existing provider without the ability to know the background of the customer.
- Already have a quote from a provider
- Looking for a second/third/fourth bid
- No budget for any type of discovery – expect VARS to quote blind despite complexity
- Have a third party – IT manager, outside consultant – playing gatekeeper
- Stringent requirements, unrealistic budget, unrealistic timeframe
- Not interested in an ongoing consulting relationship
Are Free Demos and Price Quotes Killing ERP?
A story out yesterday describes an Epicor customer who is suing over a $70,000 software purchase.
Although I do not know the circumstances of this particular case – my bet is that most of these types of ERP problems start off with a free demo and free analysis.
Who is ultimately to blame if a customer purchases ERP software and subsequently (as the story infers) refuses professional implementation services.
As professional service providers do we not have a duty to first diagnose before prescribing. To coin Ed Kless’s phrase – “prescription before diagnosis is malpractice”.
In the “I can get this cheaper on the net” world this type of customer is very common and typical.
Here are their common characteristics:
- has already self diagnosed
- wants your best price based on a list they provide youi
- typically the evaluation is led by IT (biggest red flag in my experience)
- 100% your fault when ERP doesn’t run identically to MS Office
I blame whoever sells the software into these situations without requiring an advance paid analysis. Paid analysis, in my experience, is an ideal way to separate the tire kicking problem customer who may not ever be successful with an implementation. My experience says that problem customers never see a need to pay for advice.
Red flag #1, 2, 3. Three strikes you’re out.
New Sage Reseller Of Record Rule: Per Customer Transfer Fee Assessed To Partners Effective 4-1-2012
We’ve learned that Sage North America plans to implement new fees for partners who have customers change to another partner as well as drop their Reseller of Record (ROR) requirement that customers changing consultants provide a reason for the change.
Thankfully there will be a new certification which partners may enroll in to avoid Sage’s upcoming fees for ROR (Reseller of Record) management.
UPDATE: 4-2-2012 – this is an April Fool’s 2012 post.
This new ROR charge (effective 4-1-2012) is to reimburse Sage’s cost of entering ROR forms into the Atlas portal. The charge is the greater of a $500 administrative fee (Due when the ROR is filed) or 100% of first year commissions. The new cost is explained as covering only a very tiny portion of Sage’s internal expense for “figuring out how to enter a ROR form into the new Atlas partner portal”.
The only way a partner can avoid this fee is to enroll in Sage’s brand new Atlas Certified Partner Optimized Originator (aka POO certification).
POO certification is a 7 week off-site, $ 2,000, intensive education which includes one week at the new Sage POO Academy in Irvine, CA. After certifying participants will be able to log into Sage’s Atlas portal and manage their own ROR requests to avoid any Sage fees.
Sage notes they will allow partners to use Co-Op funds for up to the full amount of the certification fee. Partners should however expect a minimum six to twelve month reimbursement delay while “Sage searches for the Atlas option to authorize co-op reimbursement”.
Sage Transformation Journey: More Flexible Change
Sage today sought to calm channel nerves by announcing updates to their self-proclaimed transformation journey which include changes to their subscription pricing sales goal measurements.
Instead of measuring the new subscription pricing sales achievements by the quarter – Sage announced that they will measure them by the half year. Sales goals become more flexible too – changing from one per quarter to two per half year. Rock on.
Certification Deadline Day – Or Not
Many Sage partners will be up late struggling to meet the first certification deadline to remain active and receive support from Sage.
March 1, 2012 is the time that has been announced for completion of initial certifications with renewals of Sage 100 ERP ongoing certifications due by April 30, 2012.
To make matters more confusing – these certifications have also been broken down into sub-components whereas before there was one certification to pass.
Now some partners must take six or more tests just to continue to earn a living.
No certification – no support.
There is this other April 30, 2012 deadline which someone pointed out is still displayed in certain areas of the certification portal.
I stand by my prediction that the eduction department will largely be unreachable for a month or three as partners call in a panic to understand exactly what competencies are required.
Sadly there was no clear roadmap sent to partners – just an early warning that testing costs will rise absurdly if not purchased by an early deadline.
The next time a prospective customers asks if the software is easy to use – mention that not only is it simple – but you took 6 separate certifications to learn how the basics worked.
No Mas
Just received an email survey from a software publisher.
They claim it should only take 15 minutes to complete. They appear to be looking for a lot of information on how they can better sell software and what type of customer buys their software.
They’d like to know, among other things, what are the typical characteristics of my customer.
What’s strange however is the wording. Recently this publisher started calling my customer – THEIR customer – except in situations (such as this) when they’re asking for free help or dodging a sketchy technical problem – then it’s my customer.
BCS ProSoft Consumes Deltek Practice of Forepoint Who Themselves Were Consumed By Net@Work
In a blog post today Clark Haley, CEO of Sage VAR BCS ProSoft announced his firm had reached a deal with Forepoint Inc. to take over their Deltek Vision practice. Forepoint Inc. is a provider of business application software for small to mid-sized companies with a focus on accounting, ERP, project management, HRMS, and CRM solutions.
Forepoint, Inc in November 2010 sold their Sage ERP Accpac practice to East Coast super-VAR Net@Work.
BCS PROSOFT TO TAKE OVER THE DELTEK VISION PRACTICE OF FOREPOINT, INC.
Let Me Pick Your Brain. You Name Your Price – So Long As It’s Not More Than What I Pay My Lawn Guy
I get maybe one or two requests a year to speak to some anonymous web visitor doing research.
It’s almost a certainty that these are some financial types either doing due diligence or writing a research paper that they’ll re-sell.
I’ve never found a way to properly charge for “brain picking”. They all want to pay for an hour or two of services — however in the back of my mind I know that the value goes far beyond the hour or two that they offer – yet they almost always disappear at any suggestion beyond them paying you for an hour of your time (which they usually value at the lowest rate that they’ve offered the guy mowing their lawn someone doing this type of work on the side — aka about $25/hr is deemed “fair”)…
Here’s what the request looks like.
Life After Jodi Uecker-Rust At Sage Business Solutions
Yesterday’s news of Jodi Uecker-Rust’s departure as the leader of Sage Business Solutions in North America didn’t really come as a total shock.
Surprise? Yes. Shock? No.
Prior to joining Sage in February 2009 Jodi had spent her career first at Great Plains and then led a division at Microsoft (after they acquired Great Plains for $1.1 Billion in 2001) playing a key role in the Navision acquisition.
By my personal observation during her tenure at Sage North America she was all but invisible to most VARS while Paul Johnson, Executive VP, served as the public face of Sage and emceed many events including the Sage Presidents Circle in Phoenix.
When the announcement arrived yesterday that Jodi was leaving for what were described as personal reasons there were several things that stood out to me.
Are All Blogs Created The Same? Not If Publishers Are Hidden Behind Them
Late last night one of my 90 Minds group members posted a link to our internal Socialcast network regarding a new blog. He commented that a new web blog he found looked like an interesting source of information about Software As A Service (SaaS) or cloud computing.
First thing this morning I skipped over to take a look. Sure enough it seemed to be a relatively new blog cataloging news items in the SaaS industry.
The Internet is ripe with sites that spring up overnight with posts populated by RSS feeds from other blogs (aka SPLOGS or Spam Blogs). In general these SPLOGS seems to exist to try to game the system and earn both ad revenue and perhaps measure search visibility for a particular domain.
At first I suspected that’s what this site was. However after looking for a minute it didn’t seem to be your typical SPLOG. There were links to industry analyst blogs. The articles seemed relatively current and topical.
The it hit me as I read the bottom of the blog. There was an entire row of posts sponsored by only one SaaS/Cloud publisher. I took a quick look at the Network Solutions Domain Name Lookup. Sure enough the site is hosted on the server of what seems to be the only sponsor. Read the rest of this entry »
