Pros

There are some great people here, the brand is well known and the company has really good intentions on the social front and environmental awareness. Because it has several thousand employees, there is plenty of scope for making friends, and the company offices in Newcastle are simply gorgeous, a lovely place to work. The restaurants are lively and offer decent food, and the Christmas parties are always superb!

Cons

Sadly the business is being slowly strangled as the company has become more and more fossilised. The very top level of executives seem to stay year after year despite disappointing results, and middle management are continually being shuffled around/fired so there is very little stability. In the 3 years I worked there, I reported to 6 different managers. Time and again there was talk of 'a new era' which never came - and Sage software resellers' opinions were continually ignored. The launch of the Sage 1000 product, which should have been stellar, fell flat due to a poorly-thought-out pricing model which looked great to customers but horrendous for resellers - so they didn't recommend it. At one point, an absolute fortune was spent on a massive 'brainstorming' excercise of about 200 Sage staff - and a steering committee was appointed to push through the best ideas in the following months. Not a single recommendation was ever acted upon, and management made it clear the whole thing had become an inconvenience to them. As a result, the software is aging rapidly and the company really has nowhere to go - they have quite rightly stolen the small business market with the Instant/Line 50 range, but those customers are badly hit by the recession, and Sage never did commit to the enterprise-level market. The Enterprise division was chronically understaffed, with a lack of direction in development, little or no migration paths, and kludged together efforts. Talented people began to leave for Microsoft, and Oracle, and SAP, and so on. No effort was made to retain them, and they weren't replaced. An absolute tragedy for a company which could easily have threatened Oracle or SAP's smaller enterprise market and been a massive expansion opportunity. I'm sure Sage will meander along for some time to come, but seems highly likely to become a takeover target by a bigger, hungrier company.

Advice to Senior Management

The Enterprise market could be won, but will take a serious financial commitment to do properly. It's time to begin building products in-house rather than acquisitions. Sage could easily become great again - it's just time to adapt, and listen, and truly act, on advice from the channel, and from employees at all levels.