Sage North America

  • October 19, 2011
  • 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


    Over on the Website we just posted a thought leader interview with Larry Ritter the SVP in charge of CRM products at Sage. Worth reading if you want a better idea of what makes Sage tick.

    Published: 13 years ago


    Announces first annual Short Tale Award™ for Excellence in Video Use

    Stoughton, MA, February 8, 2011 — Beagle Research Group, today announced “The Beagle Short Tale Awards” for 2011.  Beagle gives the annual awards for various aspects of video production and use by front office software companies in sales, marketing, service and education.  Denis Pombriant, Beagle’s managing principal said, “We believe video is profoundly changing the way companies communicate with customers and prospects and this award brings recognition to the pioneers as well as encouragement to those using the medium.”  The award is given for excellence in short videos (typically under six minutes) that are produced during the prior year (2010).

    This year’s software vendor winners include Eloqua, Microsoft Corporation, NetSuite, RightNow Technologies, Sage North America, SAS, Salesforce.com, Zuora and a special award to Jess3 a creative agency.  The grand prize for Strategic Use of Video went to Salesforce.com, which produced, among others, a video quantifying the effectiveness of its video library as a sales and marketing tool.  Pombriant also said, “At this stage of a trend we often see unsubstantiated claims of effectiveness for a new technology.  Salesforce, provided the needed proof.”

    A full report including links to all winning videos is available at www.BeagleResearch.com.

    About Beagle Research Group

    Beagle Research Group, LLC is an analyst, consulting and market research organization focused on emerging front office software companies.  Beagle Research investigates market trends and provides analysis and insight to vendors and buyers of front office computing solutions.  Our content is presented in articles, blogs posts and free downloadable reports at multiple locations across the Internet.  The Beagle Short Tale Award and logo are trademarks of Beagle Research Group, LLC.

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    Published: 13 years ago