Following my review of Billing Boss, I ended up having a long conversation with my main contact at the company’s HQ. During the call, I was told that Sage does listen but it was acknowledged that perhaps the company is less than good at communicating back to those who critique what they believe Sage is (or is not) doing. It’s not so much out of a sense of arrogance but more that the company believes its PR/marketing effort is better put elsewhere and in any event PR/marketing is pretty stretched. Winning 120,000 new customers last year is the way the company justifies that position. Here’s an example. It’s understandable but debatable. Here’s why.
During the last three years SAP has been able to make a lot more contacts by adopting a more open stance through its blogger program and tying that to meeting with the company’s most senior executives. In fairness, SAP is a much bigger company with deeper pockets than Sage but even so, it operates an extremely well oiled blogger program from which many of my colleagues have benefited. I get a LOT of access to the company’s senior executives, am regularly invited to events and participate in the SAP Mentor program. Among other things that’s meant that this year, five Mentors myself included, have felt willing enough to give back to SAP through the creation of a thought paper on SAP Certification. That might mean little to many but it is an important aspect of ‘doing SAP’ and one which I have written about inside the SAP community. We’ve not been remunerated but are aware that senior people within the SAP ecosystem value what we’ve done and are paying attention. We will be presenting our thoughts to the remainder of the Mentor group in an upcoming webinar and hope to extend that conversation at this month’s TechEd events.
That’s way outside the scope of what’s expected of Mentors but since it serves a useful purpose, it does no harm to put this kind of thing together. That would not have happened without a combination of the blogger and Mentor programs. No other vendor has an equivalent program. Even though I am one of SAP’s sharpest critics and will get the occasional irate call if I’ve embarrassed them, there is a sort of silently understood quid pro quo going on here that some of us understand. Sage could do something similar if it so chose – albeit on a different scale.
Sage operates in a different part of the market but it’s not uncommon for me to receive information requests about their US and EU operations alongside the obvious UK target. I can’t realistically provide what people want because often I simply don’t know. That’s because Sage – again by its own admission – hasn’t been great at reaching out, even though it is listening, and has tended to slot people it does talk to into specific markets. That’s much harder with me as I reach around the world anyway. However, I always judge a company’s ability to listen by the actions I see.
During our call, I learned the company has a swathe of SaaS offerings in different markets, something I did not know. I’ll be getting a list shortly and will follow up. More important though was that the Canadian operation under which wing Billing Boss falls took my criticisms seriously. Overnight I received a couple of ‘thank you’ type Tweeted messages telling me the company has fixed the password re-enter issue and added in Billing Boss specific terms of service. That caught me by surprise because even those vendors whom I have advised about this or that issue in the past haven’t necessarily pushed the dev gas pedal that quickly – if at all. Some resent anything negative said about their babies. That’s a whole different story. It could be the company was swayed by the report back to me that some 100 new sign ups occurred in the hours following my review. It was a spike. I didn’t realize I had that much influence and if truth be known I’m not sure I wholly believe it because I’m aware that as a blog owner, I am only one point of influence.
I can say without risk of contradiction that other than pure bug fixes, this is not the ponderous Sage of old that many of us know, love and hate, all in equal measure. As I said to my contact: “It’s a fact that the elephant in the room is you so you’re going to get more than your fair share of attention.” This is a business unit that is demonstrating to its parent and the wider world that it can see when something makes sense and acts swiftly. That’s how Sage should act. It’s what earns brownie points with people like me and makes its customers happier. Chalk one up for the buy side. I’m sure they are listening to their customers much more than someone like me.
Perhaps the Canadian operation has more resources than other parts of the operation, perhaps it is a lot freer to get things done. I don’t know but I will find out. And I expect that ability to perform will be more lumpy in some places than in others. Nevertheless, I sense that Sage is finally starting to see how working differently can help them in their own business.
Does this change anything from where I am standing? Yes and no. The ‘yes’ should be self evident but then Sage already knows it has some pretty big issues at stake if it is to get SaaS right. It will do so on its own terms which is again understandable but as I have consistently said in the past, I believe it will be a difficult transition if it does so at all. As my contact correctly pointed out: “We’ve got to concentrate on what we believe will keep customers happy. If that’s on-premise, SaaS or some sort of hybrid then we’ll take those decisions as and when we believe it is right to do so.” That sounds like a lame answer when you know you’re pushing an agenda but viewed through Sage’s corporate eyes it is perfectly rational.
The upshot of all this new found love is that I will be meeting with Sage at SoftWorld. I may even persuade them to go on camera where I am sure there will be much more to be learned and passed on.
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