The Blog

  • October 19, 2011
  • Sage Naming Convention Revealed

    Earlier this week Sage North America told its partner community about its new product naming convention.  At the recent Sage Summit user group meeting in Washington, DC the company told press, analysts and partners that its new strategy would be to build up the Sage brand while renaming its products.  Yesterday’s announcement fulfilled that promise.

    Many Sage products still reflect the original branding they had prior to acquisition, which has been unwieldy.  Because the company has grown by acquisition and simply adding “Sage” to these names sometimes resulted in long names and little brand recognition.  At the time, the announcement raised many eyebrows because it was felt that elevating the Sage brand would necessarily diminish the branding and the brand investment in the products.  The new branding revealed an attempt to address all sides of the branding issue but also a surprise.

    The new branding uses numbers to reference what were previously separate brand names as follows:

    >>Sage 50: Easy-to-use, easy-to-implement software solutions, backed by Sage Business Care, implementing Sage Advisor, typically well suited to smaller businesses, often under 50 employees or $50 million in revenue, but based on complexity of their accounting and financial needs.

    >Sage 50 is available in US and Canadian editions, representing Sage Peachtree and Sage Simply Accounting.

    >>Sage 100 and Sage 300: Solutions designed to be configured to better support specific accounting and financial needs. Sold and supported through local partners, backed by Sage Business Care, implementing Sage Advisor, and typically well suited to midsized businesses. Sage 100 is North America-focused. Sage 300 has international features and distribution.

    >Sage 100 includes Sage ERP MAS 90, Sage ERP MAS 200, Sage Master Builder, and Sage Fund Accounting.

    >Sage 300 includes Sage ERP Accpac and Sage Timberline Office.

    >>Sage 500: Solutions designed for robust financial needs, often requiring customization or higher degrees of configuration and optimization. Sold and supported through local partners, backed by Sage Business Care, implementing Sage Advisor, typically used by larger companies that might have up to 500 employees and $500 million in revenue or more. Sage 500 includes Sage ERP MAS 500 and Sage Fund Accounting.

    >Sage 500 includes Sage ERP MAS 500 and Sage Fund Accounting

    Surprise, surprise, surprise

    The new branding so far leaves the front office CRM and contact management solutions unaffected.  According to sources at the company, “Sage SalesLogix, Sage CRM and Sage ACT! products will retain their names due to specific market plans, strategies or international factors.”

    It’s not clear yet if Sage intends to take a wait and see approach to the new branding before committing to changing the front office names or if some other reason, such as partner pushback, may be at work.  There is no further news on the subject.

    Published: 12 years ago


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