Time to admit it. Bring back an annual upgrade and monthly service packs.

First some background.

Sage began issuing quarterly product updates with version 4.30 4.4 of Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200.

These updates contained feature enhancements (mostly folded in Extended Solutions which Sage used to sell but had since open sourced). Rather than increasing the version number the product update would add a corresponding Product Update version to the end of the customer’s version – for example Version 4.4 with Product Update 1 was 4.4.0.1.

Prior to version 4.30 4.4 Sage issued monthly bundles of program patches that they labeled as Service Updates. These were self-installable bundles of fixes which in turn had replaced the old method of requiring customers (or more likely their VARS) to install fixes individually.

The Service Updates rarely included additional features and instead focussed on stabilizing the existing code.

In theory these Product Updates would make customers happier as they introduced new features in each release and replaced the prior practice of annual upgrades and monthly service packs (primarily bug fixes).

Unfortunately from my vantage point quarterly Product Updates didn’t make most users’ live’s easier.

Here are my personal reasons that Sage 100 ERP (Formerly Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200) Product Updates are a flop:

1. It’s difficult to remember a dizzying array of “new” features. Especially to remember when they were added and at which product update releases.

The idea of adding features quarterly sounds great when written on a whiteboard in a conference room in Irvine. Unfortunately for most users it did not translate into extra value – primarily because (a) Sage ERP 100 upgrades aren’t generally self-installable and (b) company’s did not usually want to pay for multiple upgrades within the same year which (c) potentially interrupt their business with down time and additional training.

2. Hot Fix’s (one off program patches) are amateur hour – it’s too easy to miss one or two on a new install or upgrade. The bundle of self-install fixes need to make a return on a regular monthly basis. In the interim you can still include hot fixes.

3. Customers have shown reluctance to upgrade on any more than an annual basis. Sage has had some troubles releasing stable product updates – which means customers will sit on the upgrades during the year until such time as they are sure the bugs are largely erased.

Customers with third party enhancements such as Job Ops, Bar Coding, Warehouse Management or EDI were almost always several releases behind as their third party developers buckled under the strain of trying to keep up with the myriad of Product Update releases.

4. Sage has not focussed on the area of greatest customer value. Sure there are customers who really love using Positive Pay as an update to the Bank Reconciliation. More customers however would appreciate better control over printers, less problems installing Paperless Office in Windows 7 or migrating Paperless.

5. Most importantly – with an annual release instead of quarterly Product Updates Sage can spend extra time debugging and testing the annual release which hopefully will produce a more stable product which customers will more willingly upgrade to on a regular basis.

I realize there were companies who realized great value from some (or perhaps all of the Product Updates).  What I question is whether these companies were in the majority and whether even those companies were installing every Product Update.

Product Updates did add value. Customers enjoyed the features. My issue is that more than one Product Update per year is too many for most customers.

Join the conversation around this topic with other Sage Partners in our private Sage Partner Facebook Group (Membership limited to currently active partners only. The group is not sponsored, affiliated, monitored, approved or in any way supported by Sage).

Recently I’m noticing more top tier Sage VARS advertising SugarCRM – most recently Blytheco (Sage’s North America Partner Of The Year) , then Faye Business Solutions Group and Brainsell.

Faye and Brainsell are listed on SugarCRM’s partner site. Blytheco is not so it’s possible they’re just running a series of educational sessions though it’s difficult to believe they’re adverting a competitor for what’s supposed to be one of Sage’s bread and butter markets (CRM).

These are not lifestyle mom and poppers – but some of Sage’s up and coming VARS. In Blytheco’s case they’re “top of the food chain” and in early January hired a former Sage CRM Exec as VP Sales.

Either Blytheco’s new VP of Sales designed this as a “middle finger” salute to former employer Sage , or , as “smart money” (a former Sage insider with deep product knowledge) he knows something the rest of the channel may not.

Of course it’s also very possible that adding a third open sourced CRM package is just smart business and none of the above theories are valid.

Does this new fondness for an outside CRM solution imply Sage’s channel is destructing?

Probably not. But once you open the door a little to a competing product line – it can be difficult to shut.

And to be sure Sage’s recent changes to certifications, support and business care have provided lots of incentive for formerly loyal Sage VARS of all shapes and sizes to sit up and start making backup plans.

So why are top flight Sage VARS seeming to  take flight to third party CRM packages when Sage offers 3 of their own (Act!, SageCRM and SalesLogix)?

SugarCRM Demo Request

In a press release dated January 23, 2011 ,  FBSG CEO David Faye indicates that FBSG will be working on further developing an integration between Intacct and SugarCRM as well as other potential custom solutions.

Faye Business Solutions Group, Inc was formed in January 2010 as a spinoff from Southern California IT consulting firm Faye, Pollack & Associates and in addition to Intacct their website indicates support for Sage ERP MAS 90 , 200, and SugarCRM.

Interestingly the first paragraph of the press release talks about Intacct as being “significantly more partner friendly” which seems to take direct aim at the wide ranging changes Sage continues to make to their partner program including increased certifications, reductions to partner support and marketing of Sage support directly to customers.

The Intacct Business partner channel is run by former Sage Channel Chief Taylor Macdonald who has made some strides in recruiting Sage partners  - most visible so far being Sage Non-Profit specialists JMT Consulting who is noted as being a $4.9 million var on the Accounting Technology VAR 100 for 2011 and Canada’s $ 5.6 million  Equation Technologies who represents Sage Accpac and was ranked # 63 on the 2011 VAR 100.

In a move that might surprise some of their business partners who haven’t been paying attention and noticed that Sage’s compensation for maintenance plan subscriptions is amongst the highest of any competitor, Sage is expected to announce today that all Sage 100, 300 and 500 customers will have access to 5 support cases as their plans renew beginning with those expiring on or after March 1, 2012.

Several partners have contacted me to confirm they’ve been informed that Sage will announce elimination of the Bronze plan for Sage 100, 300, 500 ERP (Formerly Sage ERP MAS90, 200, Accpac and 500) which previously allowed for only maintenance upgrades and no calls to Sage support. Instead of calling Sage support most customers  relied on their local Sage Business Partner for support..

Customers instead will now be enrolled in the Silver plan. Under the new plan,  effective for renewals on or after March 1, 2012,  for an annual fee of 21 % of product SLP (versus the  previous 18% that the Bronze plan had cost ) Sage ERP 100, 300 and 500 (no other product lines were impacted) customers will have access to direct Sage support.

Additionally, two tiers of Sage’s top partners – Diamond and Platinum will have tier margin on maintenance renewals reduced effective April 1, 2012.

Tom Miller, Sage’s VP of Channel Management, explained that customers on Sage support have shown higher net promoter scores and Sage’s reason for changing the support options was to create happier customers who stay with Sage, continue renewing maintenance, etc.

In addition certain changes were also implemented where Sage partners must actively participate in renewing customers who have fallen 90 days or more off plan or they lose any compensation for the reinstatement order.

When questioned about how Sage will monitor some of these changes such as channel conflict with Sage’s own renewal teams and  how to make sure partners and consultants don’t usurp customer cases without customer consent Sage indicated that they’re still working on the details.

The subscription margin reductions had been widely anticipated (I’d expected them as early as my December 2009 predictions post)  in recent months by some Sage partners. In Sage’s own earnings reports such as this 2010 summary of North America, Sage repeatedly talks about premium support sales as a goal.

In short, Sage partners surprised by these announcements should be paying closer attention to the surrounding environment (what other software companies pay for similar renewals) and even Sage’s own earnings releases which are often full of hints about their future direction.

I’ve spoken at length about how Sage Business Partners need to get local with their customers and develop their own special sauce to clearly differentiate and add value to their firm’s own services. Sage themselves over the last two corporate earnings calls have indicated that adding premium support subscribers was one of their top goals.

What remains to be seen is the level of impact that changes will have on customers.  Will customers subscribing to a partner support plan abandon that plan in favor of the modified Sage offering?

If Sage continuously advertises the availability of support cases then partners might see drop off of 10% or more from their lower end customer base who could switch to Sage support.

A long time Sage partner who has been offering  their own agreements for years  indicates that even before these changes  they’d been heavily promoting Sage Silver plans as as backup option for their customers and would continue to do so since it gives customers a great help desk resource for simple questions and the difference in price was immaterial for larger customers.

Partners can continue to offer similar support agreements though it’s probably best to start labeling them as other than support (one successful Sage VAR labels theirs as Knowledge Transfer Agreements) . Modify your agreements by shoring up existing plans to include local (note the use of this word loca) on-site upgrades as a component of  the agreement .

Following in the footsteps of Sage I recommend enrollment in your company’s own plan be a requirement for you to perform any work for a customer. If a customer balks at maintaining two plans there’s no reason you cannot have a separate fee schedule for customers off-plan.

Where I expect to see the biggest impact of these changes is with what we in the industry term “orphan” users which are companies who have left their prior VAR for any number of reasons and in turn search the Internet for a replacement. It’s difficult to tell what percent of this business might disappear but provided the user is active on a Sage maintenance plan they may chose to migrate directly to Sage for future support instead of another partner as they  may have done in the past before support cases were included in their plan.

It’s important to note that support cases will only be added as customers renew their plans starting on or after March 1, 2012. There is no change to a pre-existing plan until the renewal.

The petition appears to have been created by Peter Ribeiro of Impac Solutions Toronto, Ontario – a Sage Accpac and Microsoft reseller.

The petition largely asks that Sage rescind their recent plans to measure the tier move-down calculation quarterly instead of bi-annually as was previously done. Some believe that this calculation may result in more VARS losing some tier commission.

Whether this approach will be successful remains to be seen. Increasingly Sage seems to be guided by the overseas corporate parent and is facing a huge branding project expected to take the better part of the next year.

The question of more tier is only one small part of what most VARS should be worrying about. The more pressing problem is fast movement of technology and the shifting tastes of the technical buyer.

I think you can make great arguments both ways– the first from Sage’s standpoint is “sell more” and this problem goes away.

The second from the partner perspective is ” you’re taking money out of VAR pockets to show improved North American results”. Note: The Sage earnings reports are not detailed enough to know if this is accurate or not.

Sage Software: Sage Mid-Market Partner group ask that Sage Inc. rescind tier calculation change.org/petitions/sage… via @change

— Peter Ribeiro (@peterribeiro) December 10, 2011

In neither case is the best route totally clear to me.

I’m more of the opinion that the era of VARS making money off software / maintenance commission is winding down. We’ll likely see it chipped away each year.

SaaS vendors sit and claim you’re going to earn x % recurring revenue each and every year for the life of that customer contract…

BAWHAHAHAHA – yeah ok. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this (as I’ve often done during these presentations at ITA).

From the SaaS side of the fence, Dan Druker, SVP Marketing and Business Development for Intacct has this argument to make about how the economics of cloud/SaaS favor the SaaS vendors.

In my opinion we can either fight change– or adapt our businesses so that the sale of software / maintenance is less of a driver of our revenues.

I’ve recently said that the VAR opportunity is:

1. All about local
2. An increasingly tough argument to tell customers that every upgrade has to be a “spreadsheet quote” with a hefty budget.
3. SaaS is not a cure all since the cost is often prohibitive, lock-in can be steep and many features are missing that present customers expect.
4. In my opinion no vendor/publisher is going to pay a lifetime guaranteed residual. Wake up and smell the coffee.

From The Petition Site:

On October 20th, 2011 Sage announced new Tier Level movement changes, effective April 1, 2012, that will make it more difficult to maintain tier levels. Whereas, with the current tier calculation method, a partner’s tier level could increase four times a year but decrease only twice a year, the new policy would increase the chance of a decrease to four times a year. This change will result in some partners losing 10% margin on sales and 5% margin on Customer Care commissions. This new policy comes on the heels of other changes introduced by Sage to its partners over the last 5 years such as:

· Introduction of “new license” revenue as a requirement to keep tier levels, introduced during the biggest downturn in the North American economy since the great depression

· Reduction of Software Assurance margins for most partners from 35% to 20% since margins were based on renewal revenue and now it’s changed effectively to “new license” revenue

· Offering of low or no cost training directly to clients – taking away parts of this revenue stream

· Offering of low or no cost support– taking away parts of this revenue stream

· Changing from yearly to semi-annual tier down calculations

During these tough economic times, it would be in everyone’s best interests to make it easier, and not harder, for partners to maintain their tier levels. Therefore, it is incumbent on all Sage mid-market partners to request that Sage reconsiders this proposed change to the Tier Level Calculation.

So far there appear to be 11 users who’ve signed the petition which may be viewed at Change.org.

The recurring bright spots in the US appear to be payments where Sage is reporting 15% growth (over 40% growth in cross selling payments into existing customers).

Selling software and related services is the low spot for North America– 3% contraction.

After touting the opportunities for Healthcare in their 2010 annual report ( well positioned to take advantage of stimulus) – Sage announces “Sage Healthcare business in North America is no longer core to our strategy”. Of course Sage Healthcare sale was completed in November 2011.

Sage One appears as if it’s going to the a low end (think Peachtree) common SaaS offering across many of the Sage offerings. While there’s no timeline for launch in the US (it’s already available in Ireland and UK) Sage have already been publicly calling for accountant’s to take a look — so my guess is you’ll see something pretty soon.

Specifically called out in the earnings were Accpac and Simply products. Also I was very surprised to Sage indicate in North America “the market for certain other products, such as construction and CRM, remain challenging in the year”.

I am not so surprised at construction – as North America is in the mother of all real estate slumps – as I am by CRM.

After hearing for years that CRM is the “way to the light” – I’m a little surprised that strategically Sage doesn’t have a “front and center” commanding CRM offering to tout. My guess is that if there’s one place that the move to SaaS is kicking Sage’s revenues – that it’s in CRM. I’d also look for M&A activity in the CRM area with possible divestiture of weaker performing CRM assets.

Weakness: Did Sage North America Lose 65,000 Support Customers From 2010?

One item that caught my attention in the North America results is the reported number of support contracts. Unfortunately Sage doesn’t provide sufficient detail around this number to know exactly what makes up the change – or whether it actually represents a decrease worth worrying about.

Assuming that Total Support Contracts is the count of customers on maintenance, by reviewing the 2011 financial report slide deck with 568,000 total North America support contracts against 2010′s reported 633,000 it would appear that around 65,000 support customers were lost.

During 2011 the Sage Healthcare practice was sold. I’m unsure whether Sage backed out those support numbers though I’m assuming they didn’t since the transaction only closed during subsequent FYE 2011. If they have backed out Healthcare numbers then the drop is certainly more explainable.

Also notice that in 2011 Sage reported that in North America they added 11,000 new support contracts while in 2010 they added 32,000 new support contracts. This reduction of 21,000 customers seems abnormally high. I’m asking Sage for comment on whether there’s some other change in how they are computing these on contract customers.

Here’s the recorded earnings call which you can listen to by clicking below:

Here’s the slide decks for your comparison:

FYE 2011 Sage North America Support Contracts

FYE 2010 Sage North America Support Contracts

Sage Earnings Slide Deck – 2011 (PDF)

Sage Earnings 2011 – Press Release (PDF)

The title of the email “Is SAGE Bouncing Your Around?” asks several questions – and implies that Sage doesn’t treat their resellers with respect.

I’m not sure I see where Sage is disrespecting their resellers though I guess the constantly moving tier commission structure is what Accountmate is implying is disrespectful.

I have a different opinion.

I couldn’t care less if Sage (or any publisher) paid me 100% commission on a sale.  The margin on software or maintenance is only covering most reseller’s costs.

What do I care about?

What I am increasingly seeing – and I am VERY concerned – is that customers on locally installed software products expect their upgrades, server moves and all other maintenance work including upgrades (ie – Non Projects) to be performed at a moments notice with no concern to their setup.

#Accountmate looks to penetrate #Sage partners… bobscottsinsights.com/technology-new…

— Wayne Schulz (@mas90guru) December9, 2011

And personally I agree with them – to an extent….

The era of consultants getting away with drafting a spreadsheet to quote a customer the cost to upgrade a system or move to a new server is largely over.

Those days will begin to wind down within 3 years.

No longer do customers consider upgrades or server moves magical or worthy of a high level of attention (and expense) and as such there’s very little value placed on those services.

Customers use zero maintenance systems like Facebook and Google and never worry about installing upgrades or bug fixes – so why should they have to worry with ERP or CRM?

I realize there are MANY reasons why the customer DOES have to worry. Especially with customizations or systems with large numbers of users. I get it. There are exceptions.

Increasingly customers don’t understand this. And if as consultants we quote a price that seems high (to their expectations) they’re happy to go find a less successful partner who will cut our pricing in half — or more – and perform the work.

Which brings me to my point….

Any on-premises software publisher can give me 100% margin on everything — but if they can’t deliver a product the customer WANTS then at best they’ve only been able to slow the erosion that I believe we will all see in the on premises market.

Some of us may be able to fight the erosion by cutting rates or doing work for free in order to maintain the illusion that upgrades and other maintenance are effortless. At best we probably are just delaying the inevitable.

Perhaps it’s the same with Accountmate. And I don’t know what their product looks like but if Accountmate’s main argument is better margins — but you still futz with the same low perceived value services (upgrades, server moves) — I’m not sure that Accountmate is worth a look.

Is Accountmate’s call to Sage partners “Hey the 1980′s are back – come on in and return to the way that things used to be”?

Maybe it’s just me but I get calls weekly that go like this:

“Hi Wayne this is XXXX , my IT guy is here. He is putting in a new Windows 2013 server. Can you talk to him? “

Half the time the customer is 5 levels back on their ERP (or worse they are trying to do year end payroll reporting and have not realized that the publisher no longer issues patches for their old version)….

I believe the true issue we have to deal with is the maintenance of existing systems. In surveys that I read online it’s called Total Cost of Ownership.

Customers don’t want to pay for things like upgrade labor when they deem that feature should be included in the product already (and from my vantage point most do).

As consultants we can collectively bounce from software publisher to software publisher chasing higher margins – but is that truly the problem?

After all,  if the perpetual grumblings of partners are to be believed,   big software companies only care about their largest partners.

Sage is working hard to dispel that myth. And they’re doing it largely by actions as opposed to photo opportunities and press releases.

As I noted in a post last year when I wrote about the Barbados conference held in December 2010:

Sage has about 6 partners in Barbados. They have 250 customers. Yet Sage made a trip during the busy December time to meet with customers and partners to discuss the products and how they can improve.

Sage just made another trip. This time the destination was Jamaica. The topic was again partner awards plus classroom training education.

Sage took another week out of their busy schedule to arrange a Caribbean Partner conference in Jamaica. The agenda included nearly a weeks worth of Sage Consulting Academy as well as a Sage CRM Boot Camp.

The five day Caribbean partner conference kicked off with an award dinner on Sunday November 6, 2011 followed by two week long sessions – Consulting Academy and Sage CRM Boot Camp.

According to those in attendance the classes had about 19 in attendance and were very well received.

Participant Shelldon Chin-See of Orbus Technologies Limited of Kingston Jamaica , Sage’s Highest New License Sales winner – Caribbean Region for 2011 – had this to say:

 In respect to the conference, it was an eye opener and a course I think ALL consultants should partake in. Before the conference, I was always puzzled why some tasks and projects were priced by the hour when it made more sense to do them by fixing the price, since we know that the customers will always question the number of hours it took to complete. Also, why were we, as consultants, continuing to make certain decisions for customers without compensation or getting their explicit permission.

After attending the conference and “sitting at the feet” of Ed Kless, I realised that my feelings on these matters were not strange and that they have a basis in good consulting practice. The knowledge dispensed by Ed was invaluable and would allow me to become a much better consultant than I am today.

Bill Delgado, Sage Partner and President of Reading PA based Keystone Software added:

As you are aware, In order to call Sage for support in the near future, they required certain certifications. Being a MAS consultant for well over 20 years I found this to be a real PITA. I was not happy having to take time away from work as well as the expense of travel and loss of revenue. In addition, I was told that the classes would be held Monday and Tuesday from 7:00 am until 7:00 pm and Wednesday from 7:00 am until 4:00 pm.

Needless to say, prior to registering for the class I was not a happy camper. However; when I went to register, I noticed I could register for the class being held in Jamaica. While the above mentioned pains were still valid, being able to travel to Jamaica and make it a mini vacation made it a bit more palatable.

Once I arrived in Jamaica, I started to forget the pains. In addition, attending the class was a pleasure. Ed Kless has a great knowledge of the subject matter that he teaches. In addition, his enthusiasm is second to none and this enthusiasm permeates to everyone in the class. The subject matter was relevant and taught in such a way those 12 hour training days seemed to fly by. (Well maybe not fly by J)

What’s worth noting is this conference went off largely behind the scenes with a minimum of fanfare. This wasn’t an event “for show”. The only way I stumbled across it was some images via social media.

In short this is Sage walking the walk. Connecting with partners who they’ve always indicated are the lifeblood of their company.

While the partner group in the Caribbean might not be producing sales  material to Sage’s earnings the company still took the time to fly in  VP of Channel Management Tom Miller and SR Director of Partner Strategy Ed Kless – along with their ace events team (Suzanne Spear and Kimberly Dorony) as well as  Rob Lawson who is a 9 year veteran of Sage CRM Sage  for a full week conference and educational boot camp.

Does this mark a change for Sage? A move perhaps to embrace the smaller consulting firms and welcome them with as much enthusiasm as they welcomer larger million dollar club winners?

For some partners that part may remain to be seen. It seems clear the message Sage is sending is that all partners matter.

The purpose of the call :

” to connect with our business partners and it is a result of my desire to communicate more with you. I look forward to speaking with you during this session. Please make every effort to attend.”.

The group call started around 1:05 PM and clocked out almost exactly at 1:15 pm ET making this possibly the shortest Sage all hands conference call that many had attended.

One commenter on the Sage LinkedIn group noted publicly “It ended so abruptly that I had a picture in my head of Pascal staring at a pile of note cards he had just dropped and ending the call in a panic”.

Still, by my count I’ve already met (twice) and heard from the new Sage CEO at least a half dozen times more than the prior CEO who was widely regarded by partners as distant and impersonal.

Whether it takes an hour or 15 minutes to deliver a message – what should matter is the message and not the time spent in idle chitchat.

So what was the message?

There were three topics:

1. Organization
2. Branding
3. Pricing

With respect to organization new hires were introduced and, similar to SAP’s explanation, Pascal refuted that executive level departures of the past year or so were anything more than typical attrition while noting the overall departure rate was about 8% which he described as within normal expectations. He quickly added that he can’t guarantee more would not leave and that nobody should panic if another 8 were to depart. It was unclear whether this meant executives but lets hope not.

Joe Langner, SVP of ERP and CRM, was introduced. Joe is a recent recruit from Ellie Mae where he was an EVP and Sales Exec for the past 7 years. Initially I asked Sage if Joe was a replacement for Laurie Schultz who left in July 2011 but Sage PR indicated that Joe was in a new role on Pascal Houillon’s executive team that has responsibility across both CRM and ERP. Dan Wilzoch, heading up CRM, will report to Joe as will the eventual ERP leader.

Joe’s stated goals were to drive business strategy for ERP and CRM. He lives in Northern California and next Monday he’s in Irvine.

First mission:
- Recruit VP Sales Marketing
- Recruit VP Sales CRM

Several promotions have been made and Pascal Houillon spent a few minutes congratulating the newly promoted executives.

Branding was quickly discussed. There have been several detailed conference calls with Sage EVP Dennis Frahmann covering the re-branding in pretty good detail. After the conference call I received contact from Sage PR asking that the new product name chart which was has been publicly distributed to the channel (and is found publicly in a Google search for Sage Product Naming Grid)  not be posted online. I’m unsure if this means that the final product names are still being voted upon or whether Sage just doesn’t want to confuse the market.

On the last branding partner call Sage Marketing EVP Dennis Frahmann indicated he would be out of the office for the next few weeks which likely explains why there was not much re-branding content during this call.

The last point discussed was pricing. Sage partners should expect some unspecified changes to Sage’s pricing. This will be announced to channel partners within the next three months and should be ready to roll out “within a year”. No further details were mentioned but Houillon did indicate except for maintenance renewals 50% of Sage North America customers never purchase anything additional during the year – something he seems determined to fix.

Best guess at this new pricing initiative would be some type of expansion of Sage’s existing perpetual payment plans – monthly, annually – perhaps tied to registration codes that expire and must be renewed or the software cannot be fully used. This is speculation but it’s long overdue as some customers have made a game of buying Sage software maintenance, canceling maintenance and then re-purchasing again when they are forced to upgrade.

The call ended almost exactly 15 minutes after starting. There was no question and answer period as many on the call had been expecting. Partners were urged to send questions via email to Joe Carroll – Sage’s Senior Director of Product Marketing.

The hiring appears to be a consolidated replacement for SVP Midmarket Solutions Laurie Schultz who departed in July 2011 to accept  a CEO postion at ACL Services LTD and former EVP Joe Bergera, head of CRM for Sage North America, who departed Sage in March 2011 for CCH. is for a new role on Pascal Houillon’s executive team that has responsibility across both CRM and ERP. Dan Wilzoch, heading up CRM, will report to Joe as will the eventual ERP leader.

Full press release below.

Irvine, Calif. – October 19, 2011 – Sage North America announced today the appointment of Joe Langner as Executive Vice President of its Midmarket and CRM Solutions business effective October 31, 2011. A seasoned executive with more than 25 years’ experience, Mr. Langner will be responsible for driving Sage’s Midmarket business strategy and initiatives in ERP and CRM Solutions.

Sage is a leading global provider of business management applications and services for SMBs with more than 6.3 million customers worldwide. Sage’s Midmarket solutions include the Sage ERP lines, Sage CRM, and Sage SalesLogix that provide SMBs with choice of online and on-premises deployment. In his new role, Mr. Langner will report to Sage North America CEO Pascal Houillon.

Prior to joining Sage, Mr. Langner was with Ellie Mae, a provider of enterprise solutions including an online network, software and services for the residential mortgage industry, where, since 2002, he held executive positions including EVP Sales and Client Services, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Sales Officer. Mr. Langner was previously with Dun and Bradstreet for 16 years in instrumental roles that included General Manager of Small Business Solutions. He graduated from the University of California at Davis with a Bachelor’s degree in genetics.

About Sage North America
Sage North America is part of The Sage Group plc, a leading global supplier of business management software and services. Sage North America employs 3,900 people and supports 3.2 million small and midsize business customers. The Sage Group plc, formed in 1981, was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1989 and now employs 13,400 people and supports 6.3 million customers worldwide. For more information, please visit the Web site at www.sagenorthamerica.com. For more information, please visit www.SageNorthAmerica.com. Follow Sage North America on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/SageNorthAmerica and Twitter at: http://twitter.com/#!/sagenamerica.