Goodbye SageLive, Hello Same Old Sage

So what was the last post all about? Why bring up an old subject like SageLive? I mean, that's old news right? Everyone knows that it was an almighty cock-up! But that's ancient history and anyhow, surely it's been superseded by the 'robust' SageOne hasn't it? So all is hunky-dory now, surely? Sage know what they're doing now; lesson learnt and all that? 

Or not! The SageLive saga is just a case in point.

With all the romantic reminiscing of the previous post (which proved quite popular with the readership;), it would be easy to miss the theme of over-reaction and obsessiveness by Sagees with a perceived competitor. 

On its own it may have meant very little. But it's a trait I saw repeated a-plenty, every time I encountered Sage employees. And not just I; others noticed it too!

Totally Out Of Perspective

To be clear. At that time (late 2008), KashFlow had circa 2000 users paying no more than £15.99 a month. Sage had hundreds of thousands of customers, equating to a much greater ARPU (average revenue per user). Competition was perceived, not real. The only threat was what they represented - in short (very short) the future!

Yet (among other things) commercial threats (perceived or real) are purely for the upper echelons of a multi-billion pound/multi-thousand employee organisation to be aware of and to deal with. Not the 'rank or file' to worry about. 

Yet the only significant senior management tale I have is from an ex-Sagee who I respect. When he called the appropriate Director to make him aware of the post exposing the serious security flaws in SageLive, he was on his way home on a Friday evening. His response amounted to - it can't be that important that it can't wait until Monday! The rest, as they say, is history!

Poking Fun at Elephants With Sharp Sticks

OK, some fun was had at Sage's expense. Though it's possible that it might have fed a pathological urge, the handful of well-aimed blows were purely to serve a purpose. A business purpose. 

Yes, we giggled like schoolgirls as me and Duane Jackson dodged patrol cars in 'riot-torn' Pitsea while setting light to a Sage software box and then videoed the proceedings. The whole office laughed riotously upon receiving notice from Trading Standards of a complaint by Sage against KashFlow.

I could go on, but you get the idea. The interweb has more if you're interested. Piggybacking other brands is a well known guerilla marketing strategy. All the more (cost) effective in the internet age. 

Despite naive and surprising protests from some quarters that such baiting doesn't work (try telling the likes of Richard Branson and Michelle Mone that) and is doomed to fail. It did and it wasn't. 

An Organisation Gripped By Fear and Paranoia 


Time and again, Sage employees at various events shared their fear and awe of KashFlow with me and others. A very reliable source even shared with me the tendency of Sage North America reps to bring the 'KashFlow latest' to meetings over a period exceeding 12 months!

Incredibly, all seemed convinced that KashFlow existed purely to annihilate Sage. Like a seventies era anarcho-terrorist cell. On more than one occasion I even pleaded that KashFlow staff did not spend every waking hour plotting the downfall of Sage; they did not spend their waking hours muttering their hate and loathing like possessed madmen, complete with wide-eyes and salivating like devil-dogs! But each time it just would not be believed! This paranoia had spread and had gripped the organisation. 

Why was an entire organisation of such magnitude allowed to be gripped by such terror? Why (and how) are thousands of employees of a multi-billion pound organisation all obsessed with one guy and his tiny company. I repeat, why? WTF??! This company claim to be the world's 3rd largest ERP vendor, amongst many other things. They have fingers in plenty of pies. Why oh why?

It Wouldn't Happen at a SaaS Company

Every single SaaS vendor with any measure of success cares little for what others are up to. Even the closest of competitors. This is a time of fundamental change in the delivery of IT services. The potential market is massive, whatever the niche. They just want to get their share and then some! There's no time to waste worrying about others.

There's plenty of land for everyone. Of course, common-sense means be aware of what the others are doing, but it doesn't distract from the total confidence that is all-pervasive in a real SaaS org. Their culture is more concerned by there only being 24 hours in the day!

I mean, can you imagine the entire workforce of Dropbox seeking counselling because Google announce GDrive? Or Zuckerberg going on a month long bender because of Google+? Does the latest play by Amazon leave Rackspace crying in their milk? I could give thousands of examples. The point is, those that are serious about what they do just double down and focus on the mission. They differentiate; pimp their USP; provide the best UX. 

Single-mindedness, focus and confidence in the mission - all traits common to successful SaaS vendors. A singular belief in what all involved are doing as a team - as a collective - is what drives those that thrive. Disrupting the old ways of doing things, yeah, but more so improving the customers lot and gaining commercial success as a by-product. 

Swansong?

When you're an incumbent, you're a sitting target. You've gotta expect others to take aim at you. Especially in tech. You don't take it personally. It's a compliment! At worst it's a wee kick up the butt. You deal with it by putting together a winning strategy that plays to the strengths of your organisation, (not somebody else's) and a single-minded dedication to what you believe in; to what you do well. Not blind panic and an all-pervasive nihilism.

Don't blatantly imitate others, without knowing why it works for them. If you did understand that, you'd know it won't work for you! The reason that SaaS accounting has room for FreeAgent, Xero and Clear Books and others is that each plays to their strengths and ploughs their own furrow.

If you're not sure how to achieve success when it seems like you have everything, bring in someone from outside the organisation to conduct an entirely objective, root-and-branch review of your organisation and its solutions. They will identify your strengths and weaknesses in the new SaaS landscape and from there, produce a compelling roadmap and a winning strategy! If there is someone at Sage with the clout to make an autonomous decision to drag them back from the brink, you can contact me via Twitter @SaaSitUK !

SageLive - My Part In It's Downfall

I want to tell you a story! This story is the first part of two posts put together to emphasise my contention that SaaS is a cultural thing as much as anything else and that's why therefore, large pre-SaaS organisations struggle with it (I've split it in two purely because it's too long as one post and it divides quite conveniently).

During a recent discussion on Twitter Adrian Pearson asked me whether I considered SageOne to be a SaaS solution. I replied: 
@topaccountants For me, No. It's an attempt at SaaS by a non-SaaS biz that don't get SaaS and it competes with some SaaS products 

What follows is some background as to why this is the case.

The Main Event

Late 2008, DuaneJackson, KashFlow CEO, asked me to accompany him to the BStartUp Expo at Kensington Olympia. Being my boss at the time, I curtsied reverently and off we went!

As is often the case, Sage were the major sponsor of the event. Hence the largest stand, dead centre and visible from all angles, with an army of staff. We got there latish and flew around quickly in anticipation of battling with the east London traffic on a Friday afternoon. 

We stopped by the Sage stand on the way out as it would have been rude not to. TBH it was all pretty uninteresting as we made small talk with a couple of the guys. Until that is, I spied a laptop ticking away at the end of one of the counters. For some unknown reason I remarked to Duane that it looked like a SaaS solution! 

To this day, I don't know what it was about the green and black screen that made me think that (what does a SaaS solution look like from about 15ft away?). As Duane rightly responded, Sage didn't have a cloud offering. As it happened, he was wrong (kind of) and uncannily, by chance, we happened to be chatting to the proud parents of (the soon to be) infamous SageLive. And I mean proud: they were positively bursting!

Situation Comedy

There then played out a classic, farcical, sitcom type scene whereby the guys could hardly contain themselves as Duane (by now, very interested) proceeded to rain down questions on them. All the answers had a common theme, such as:-

• "Yes, it is at least as good as KashFlow"
• "Yes, KashFlow are the main competitor"
• "Yes, it does this and that, just like KashFlow"
• "KashFlow are definitely the driver for developing this product"
• "Of course there are others, but KashFlow, KashFlow, KashFlow...."

Get the idea?

Here were representatives of a multi-billion pound organisation - one of the world's largest software companies and the UK's biggest - obsessed with a small start-up with about half a dozen staff and less than 2,000 customers, each paying £16 a month or less!!

After a couple more minutes of having his ego fed, Duane relented and showed them his business card! From here on in the whole scene just got really surreal. 

There was the delight as these guys realised they were not only meeting their hero but had a golden opportunity to talk to him as well as show off what they'd built. They just couldn't contain themselves. There was also the furtive glances of the Sagees as they whispered to each other (in effect) "That's KashFlow"!

If this all sounds like unlikely, over-dramatised, romanticised nonsense, good! It's meant to. Because that's what it was. That's what made the whole scene so surreal. To this day, one of the most surreal I've both witnessed and been part of.

The next few minutes was taken up with a brief dem and the general impression Duane had was that it seemed pretty good. Or that was at least the impression he gave, though he was only half taking it in! Likewise it looked OK to me (for what it's worth). 

Ultimately, just how 'good' it was or wasn't, was besides the point. Duane was formulating a plan! Anyhoo, we finished up pretty quickly, quite abruptly in fact. Handshakes, back-slapping, card-swapping etc and off we marched leaving behind a cast of Cheshire Cats! "Wow, that was...and he liked it", etc etc etc.

An Education 

So off we ran (pretty much), back to the car. Duane was excited to say the least. In hindsight, probably the most excited I've ever seen him! The next two hours we sat in that dreaded traffic-jam, trying to get back to the old KashFlow offices in Pitsea, Essex. And Duane didn't care one iota. He'd already got to work before we got to the car. Calling a small PR co and immediately on to pulling the strings.

The truth is we were really surprised to have stumbled across SageLive. There had been rumours of a Sage response to SaaS. Much debate about how and why Sage should and would react, or not. And the general consensus was that the sooner the elephant known as Sage, validated the market, the better for all those smaller SaaS vendors in their efforts to educate the marketplace! But until that day, there had been nothing. 

Then out-of-the-blue, an unpublicized, public outing. Why? I don't know what their thinking was. What were they thinking? I don't know that such an action had even been sanctioned. But, it was a downright stupid thing to do. Made all the worse,  because their perceived nemesis stumbled upon it and then had the savvy to know how to use it to a maximum effect. Made all the worse because they had a perceived nemesis! But more on this later.

This was pure gold of course to Duane and KashFlow and an education for me. Using mobile phone and 3G laptop, he did what the Sage PR and marketing machine had failed to do. Tell the world about it! Thus making sure that from then on in, every search and mention of SageLive came with 'added KashFlow'!!!! Here's the blog post that he wrote that very day.

This all took surprisingly little effort, but paid in spades. In both marketing and PR, but more importantly, trials and paying customers for KashFlow! As the news spread, all commentary noted Duane's part in unveiling the existence of SageLive. 

Sage's initial 'no comment' type attitude was incredible. Incredibly, having kicked-off on a Friday evening seemed to mean that Sage weren't even aware  of what was happening for two and a half days, at least! It was their product for Chrissakes! It was almost like they were embarrassed about it! By the time they started to deal with it, it was far, far, too late. 

To this day Google SageLive and find all the commentary of it's appearance,  existence and sudden demise in two short, but eventful months, from several high profile titles; all with a hat-tip to Duane Jackson/KashFlow, but nothing from Sage!! 

How it all played out is almost legend and you can find it all easily enough. If you interested to know more, this is the infamous KashFlow post about 8 weeks after the Bstartup show revealing the glaring security holes that signalled the demise of SageLive. Should you want to know more about what happened, ping away and I'll try to help. 

The point

Look, I got a real education being up close and personal, watching one guy and his bootstrapped startup pulling the strings of a multi-billion pound org: getting untold marketing mileage out of them and making sure any pathetic attempt they made to compete or even stomp on them just added fuel to the fire!

But, this is not some KashFlow 'love-fest' - in true BBC stylee, "other excellent SaaS accounting solutions do exist". Just trawl this blog to find plenty mentions of most of the other players! Or vendors can even tell us about yourselves in the comments below, if you like.

I had to mention what it was like from (my perspective) the KashFlow side of the fence whilst on the subject (I've been asked about this a few times), but the main reason for telling this story is to lay the foundations as to 'why and how Sage is fighting a losing battle in going toe-to-toe with the SaaS vendors in the UK' (part 2 of this post).

The fact that Sage made a complete pigs-ear of SageLive from a technical POV is symptomatic of the fact, not the reason why. My personal experience is a good example of what is probably true throughout the software industry. The follow-up to this post recalls other anecdotes from the intervening three years as well as diving into this debacle and gels nicely to prove the point. Meanwhile I'll let you digest this.


Footnote: The title to this post is a homage to the glorious Spike Milligan;  paraphrasing the title of one of his seven short autobiographies (Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall - on Amazon for less than £5!!) which are all truly hilarious genius and highly recommended.