Sage Training For Partners

Last week, the company launched Fast Track for Consultants, a program offering free core certification training, free “Business Acumen” training, and help with interviewing and hiring practices for partners trying to staff up.

It also extended two other programs, one of which will repay partners for their initial investment in training and service as they add new customers.

Most solution provider partners list finding, hiring and training quality technicians as a top priority. What typically happens in the Sage or Microsoft or SAP world is that partners steal talent from each other instead of finding new blood.

“There is no net add [to the partner community] if they poach from each other,” said Taylor MacDonald, executive vice president of channel and sales operations for Sage’s midmarket group.

Sage, like other midmarket business software vendors, must tread a fine line between having enough solution providers to get coverage and penetrate new accounts but not so many that they end up competing with each other and drive margins down.

At its Insights 2006 partner conference last week, Sage CEO Ron Verni summed up the state of the midmarket business apps market as one where enterprise giants like SAP and Oracle are coming down and Microsoft is gearing up its Microsoft Business Solutions offensive.

But Verni insisted that Sage, Irvine, Calif., with its partner-friendly roots and background in small to mid-market business apps, remains well-positioned.

“There are people who come down from the top because they suddenly realize there are only 500 companies in the Fortune 500,” he noted. “SMBs are the growth engine, but [these vendors are] conflicted because they have direct sales. Other competitors have 20,000 partners so if you’re in a deal, there may be 50 or 100 other people vying for it,” he added.

MacDonald said Sage has seen some partners add competing products only to come back in-house and perhaps add another Sage line to their portfolio. “They trust Sage to be the most partner-friendly supplier but they want more than one product,” he said.

Dallas-based ERG, for example, added SAP BusinessOne a few years ago but subsequently dropped it.

“We were so busy with [Sage’s] MAS 200 line that from a focus standpoint it was hard to move into something else. We probably spent $150,000 in training and resources [on BusinessOne] and had a few customers but, ultimately, the product was not getting enough traction,” said ERG President Greg Boyd.