Archive for the ‘Business Matters’ Category
Google Alerts Is Not Enough: Thinning of The Reactive Herd
There was a time back right after the invention of electricity but before the widespread use of motorized vehicles that vendors with crappy salespeople didn’t have to worry about customers talking to each other and sharing their poor service experiences.
Heads up – the world’s changed.
ERP VAR Hightower Inc Reportedly Closes For Undetermined Period of Time
A consultant who claims that one of his employee’s received a phone call from Hightower Inc reached out to me to say he had been told the support case they have pending with Skokie IL ERP consultants Hightower Inc. may take a little while to be resolved.
According to one of my 90 Minds members who spoke to their Hightower representative:
We had an open support case with them and got a call from our rep that they were shutting down
I have a message into Hightower executives. Calls today (3/20/12) to their phone line listed on the web site have gone unanswered. Update: As of 2:28 pm ET 3/20/12 the phone message is indicating that Hightower is experiencing a serious data interruption to voice and email.
The Most Shocking Thing I Learned At Today’s LinkedIn Session
Perhaps the most shocking revelation today at the LinkedIn group meeting was not the change happening at Sage but the answer to the question Sage’s Tom Miller asked about who had attended Firm of the Future.
Only a few hands went up. And this was in a room of about 50 of arguably Sage’s most active partners.
For those who’ve not been, Firm of the Future is two days of instruction with Ron Baker of VeraSage and Ed Kless of Sage. The course catalog describes the experience as:
This experience is dedicated to the possibility that a professional organization can be run more effectively when it becomes a knowledge firm rather than a service firm. Creating such an organization is hard work and not for everyone as it requires partners to think differently than they have in the past about what it is that they do.
The course is about shared knowledge you can use for building a business that bills for knowledge and results and not time. It’s about learning how to bill for value not hours. It’s about making more money. It works.
I attended the session back in May 2011. You can read my review.
Since the course I no longer bill hourly. The day I completed the course was the last time I have billed hourly.
If you are tired of the “race to the bottom line” that comes with billing hourly – you need this course. If you want to substantially increase your firm’s revenues – you need this course.
Sage Partners Gather To Discuss Change
A group of approximately 100 Sage partners (panelists pictured above left to right- Moira Goggin (Chismet Consulting – event co-organizer), Mary Abdian (Macabe Associates) , Doug Deane (DSD Business Systems) , John Hoyt (Hutchinson and Bloodgood), Bill Kizer (xKzero)) gathered today in Lake Forest California. The group was split about 50/50 with some consultants attending in person and others remotely (web ex) for an in-depth discussion of changes that have been rolled out to the Sage eco-system (margins, certifications, subscription pricing, partner compensation).
From Hide & Seek to LinkedIn Group Meeting
Kudos to Bill Kizer for arranging a LinkedIn group meeting for Sage Parters, Alumni and Employees which at last count showed 100 people RSVPing they would attend.
Bill persevered in creating this meeting despite the software publisher suggesting a game of channel hide and seek instead.
Don’t you love social media?
The event happens Thursday March 15, 2012 and features a panel discussion with some top VARs, prizes, sharing, vendor presentations, networking.
There’s still time to register -UPDATE: Event has occurred. Read our wrap up of this networking event – Sage Consultant LinkedIn Summit.
MAS90 LinkedIn Group Approaches 1,700 Members
Our LinkedIn forum devoted to the discussion of Sage ERP MAS90 and MAS200 is up to almost 2,000 members. The official count as of March 12, 2012. Based on the present growth we should cross the 2,000 mark approximately Mid-summer 2012.
Balanced Scorecard
Although a method to rate Sage partner performance has not fully been made public – here is my personal opinion of what the internal scorecard looks like.
It’s a simple two line checklist. Pick either #1 or #2. It will trump all other criteria.
- Sells acceptable number of new user deals
- Does not sell acceptable number of new user deals
In my opinion no other measurement matters.
Soldier on.
Sage Facebook Interests List
Are you one of the 845 million users of Facebook? If so then you may be interested in a new feature from Facebook called Interests.
Facebook Interest Lists are a new feature designed to help users follow the content of Pages and public figures in which they’re interested.
The service promises to deliver the top posts from each interest group (list) in the user’s newsfeed. By grouping together users into a list it’s possible to subscribe to the public feeds of all users on the list without having to go through and find and subscribe to people individually.
This is a very similar concept to Google+ Circles which also allow you to group people into circles (lists) and view their publicly available posts.
Here’s a sample for those interested in following public feeds of some Sage related people.
Can You Sell One Net New Name ERP Per Quarter?
Of the 22 consultants in my 90 Minds Consulting Group who replied to this survey – only one was confident that they could sell one net new name of on premises ERP software every quarter.
We’re in the process of finding out who that one sale per quarter person is so we can vote them off the island congratulate them.
New Pricing Strategies Soon
Sage announced in an October 28, 2011 all hands partner conference call that a new pricing method for their products would be forthcoming within the next year and that they’d be ready to think about discussing it within three months.
Three months has passed and it now seems Sage are actively polling about 500 current customers asking what price they’d be willing to pay per month for their current accounting solution.
Update March 2, 2012: Sage have notified that channel of pricing for NEW (not existing) users of Sage 100 ERP, 300 and 500. This poll that was sent to existing users would appear to be testing the pricing method EXISTING users might prefer to pay if there is a transition allowed between module and user pricing (as of now Sage prohibits switching between licensing models).
Pricing options under consideration reportedly are $75, $100 or $125 per user per year. I believe this is for Sage 100 ERP users though I was not able to view the actual survey so have to rely on the customer’s explanation.
One company sent a copy of the email to us (not a customer of ours) remarking that with their present user count they could potentially face a bill of $40,000 per year. Of course this is only a survey and Sage might implement any number of plans for existing users including grandfathering existing users but adding new purchases at a potentially new rate.
With any change to a subscription model I think the Sage 100 ERP software will be issued expiring unlock registration codes so that using the software without paying maintenance could become a trick of the past for cost savvy customers.
