Acumatica has taken a very aggressive marketing approach over the past couple of years with some crazy stunts, but I guess that’s what you do when you are a small company looking for recognition. Last week at Sage Summit, the annual Sage conference in the US, Acumatica once again took an “in your face” approach by offering free coffee at the event.
This time, however, Sage fought back. Here is the news as told by Bob Scott:
I guess Sage is in a tough position because they know that they have aging products and here is a pesky newcomer on the scene showing current Sage customers a modern alternative. So, Sage decided to threaten Acumatica with a lawsuit. Which of course makes it a news story and gives Acumatica exactly what they were looking for: free press. If Sage actually follows through with this, it’s going to make it an even bigger news story and lend further credibility to the fact that Sage feels very threatened by Acumatica.
In the past couple of years Sage might have viewed Acumatica as an ERP outsider who wasn’t going to amount to much, but now Acumatica continues to gain steam and so the lawyers might be getting involved. That’s basically to say: “welcome to the big league Acumatica.” I’m sure everyone at Acumatica is hoping that this lawsuit goes through because it will probably be one of the least expensive publicity stunts to date for Acumatica.
If the lawyers do get involved, they will of course be limited to the judicial court system. They have no influence in the more important court: the court of public opinion. Even if Sage sues Acumatica and wins, it’s going to cost them a lot more in the court of public opinion, especially here in the US. Why especially here in the US? Because Americans love the underdog. Just look at the American sports stories from the past decade. Even if an athlete commits a terrible crime, if you give it a couple of years, they will find popular support again. Americans love rooting for the underdog, the David over the Goliath. We definitely have a David vs. Goliath story here: the bulky “right hand doesn’t know what left hand is doing” Sage versus the much smaller, much more nimble Acumatica. If Sage does pick a fight, I wonder how much the battle lines will be drawn on generational lines with Generation X on the Sage side and Generation Y on the Acumatica side.
I have a vested interest in this because the ERP product that I know best is Sage 500 ERP. Sage 500 used to be called MAS 500 and it’s an example of one of the many Sage products that has been dying a slow death for the past decade. I’ve been learning Acumatica in my spare time in anticipation of Sage officially dropping Sage 500 in 2017. The sad thing is that MAS 500 was a great product (one of it’s biggest strengths, the customization platform, is also one of Acumatica’s biggest strengths). But Sage mishandled MAS 500 and lost the trust of many in the community. I’m sure that I’m not alone in looking outside the Sage camp for my next ERP product. I also wonder if the Sage 500 customers are the ones that Sage is most concerned about and the primary motivation behind the $10,000 coffee bill.
It will be interesting to see if Sage goes ahead and brings in the attorneys. I honestly hope that they do, because it will help to solidify Acumatica’s place as a contender in the world of mid-market ERP.
To me, it seems like a move that shows Acumatica is desperately starved for attention. At the same time, I did have 2 cups of Acumatica coffee on 2 consecutive mornings (on my way to the Sage Summit trade show floor). So for me, it was a personal gain (the coffee was pretty tasty). But as a marketing tactic, it seems like the little brother doing everything he can to get some recognition from Mom and Dad. I guess time will tell whether it’s successful or not.
Thanks for chiming in Mark.
I agree with you. As a marketing tactic, it does seem immature like a whiny little brother.
However, if you give it a few years, that little brother is going to mature, go through the squeaky voice stage, and eventually leave the house to make his own mark on the world (assuming Acumatica is male). Kind of reminds me of this country song.
I like your little brother vs. mom and dad analogy because it speaks to the generational shift that is currently taking place in the workforce. Millennials don’t want mom and dad’s ERP. They want ERP For Millennials.
I think the real issue here is that if Sage – or any conference host – lets third parties come in and essentially exhibit for free then the next year you’re going to have 4 or 5 do the same thing. I am not sure this so much fear as trying to protect their conference which the presumably pay lots of money for.
That being said – it was great to see Dawn there and chat for a while.
Hi Wayne,
Thanks for the comment. I’m a big fan of your blog and I have a lot of respect for the business that you’ve built around it.
You’re probably right from a Sage standpoint. Acumatica is just a blip on the 2 billion dollar Sage company radar and Sage probably has some corporate policy that they’re executing on which isn’t specifically targeting Acumatica.
However, from a Sage 500 standpoint, I think that there is fear. I know Sage 500 very well from a product standpoint and have been working with it since 2005. I’ve been learning Acumatica since April 2013 and I’m continually amazed at the similarities between the two products. I think that Acumatica is very similar to what MAS 500 was in the late 1990s: an ERP platform built with modern technology that wants to make it easy for others to build on top of that platform. However, MAS 500 was second in the priority line when State of the Art owned it because MAS 90 was always first in line. Then, not long after Sage acquired MAS 500, it fell to almost last in the Sage priority line. Acumatica, on the other hand, is first in the priority line at the company that owns it. This is a position that MAS 500 never had the opportunity to enjoy.
If Acumatica remains a separate company, I think that it has very strong potential to realize the dreams that the original MAS 500 developers had when they were designing their product almost two decades ago.
Of course, the Acumatica product could get acquired in the next couple years and then suffer the same fate as MAS 500. If that happens, I’ll just have to pick up X3 or NetSuite or something like that.