Sage North America Reviews

Pros

Friendly atmosphere, very helpful co-workers. Management has open door policy and treats everyone as humans not subordinates.

Cons

Not enough opportunities for career growth of people who have set goals and would like to grow with the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Would be nice if there were opportunities for people to grow into other than the usual one or two that trickle down and has everyone trying to get into just to get out of what they are currently stuck doing.

Pros

Sage is a place with great people. The sales teams are very interactive and the managers seem to be very involved in the day to day operations of the business.

Cons

Turnover can be high, not enough annual enhancements to products, no support offered on trials, sometimes the hours can be difficult depending on your division.

Advice to Senior Management

It is important to not allow yourself to become to cliquish. You have to treat your employees as equals. That's all,

Pros

Smart employees who know their product and job
High levels of professionalism and respect between employees and departments

Cons

Overburdened employees struggling to maintain outdated business processes tied to outdated products
High levels of cynicism among staff
High levels of management turnover
Frequent changes in direction

Pros

Strong work/life balance; Some teams give their members the opportunity to re-think processes.

Cons

Slow to move; Products need to be pushed to innovate; Culture needs to shift to an entrepreneurial view versus "how they have been done in years past"

Advice to Senior Management

Innovate or die. Marketing and general processes are strong, but it is hard to sell when the products do not compete with other market offerings. Web product competition across the product portfolio will continue to gain momentum and Sage needs to be in the right mindset. Company needs to learn the practice of "sunsetting" products and moving these customers to new products, rather than continuing to support dead product lines.

Pros

Large stable global company that is very profit minded.

Cons

Pay starts being competitive but becomes below average the higher you are promoted. Product innovation has been very slow to be added.

Advice to Senior Management

Compensate employees competitively which includes stock options grants.

Pros

Large company with a lot of people that are fun to work with. Good work environment with good balance with family time.

Cons

Company has too many knee-jerk reactions that translate into undesirable impacts on employee salary and benefits. Long term employees are undervalued and product expertise is lost as they leave and are replaced by low level (and cheaper) developers. The remaining experienced developers are then expected to train the new developers while maintaining the same productivity and quality.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop punishing your satisfied employees when trying to please the unhappy ones.

Pros

The great people in the sales team that makes coming to work worthwhile.

Cons

Higher sales targets for smaller financial incentives has affected employee morale significantly.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop turning a blind eye to the things your employees do to increase short term profit and meet sales targets but destroy your customer base. It's not healthy for the company in the long run.

Pros

People are great
Benefits
Location
Lots of parking available

Cons

New CEO is a joke. He thinks the model in Europe will work here with know issues. He thinks a 2billion dollar company is enormous. CEO's management team is scared of him and won't stand up for their business units.

Advice to Senior Management

Go back to Europe.

Pros

Good vacation time, sick leave, average insurance coverage. All to make up for the average to low salaries and other inequities.
A good place for a recent college graduate to start a career, but not a place to have a career.

Cons

Absolutely unattainable quotes for sales team. Example: in one particular division they were 3% over AOP (5% over previous year in actual revenue), yet sales reps are lucky to hit 50% of quota. In a horrible economy this division is still hitting numbers given by corporate yet the sales reps aren't getting commission checks because of a steep deceleration built into quotas. To top it off this particular division raised the quotas by at least 15% over the numbers corporate set.
Managers are not promoted because of their management capabilities but instead on who they can hire at the cheapest salary or (like many jobs) who they know.
Sage is not interested in hiring the best or keeping high performers. I've personally seen a handful of employees leave a division because of frustrations that could have easily been resolved with leadership. That crippled their ability to deliver services to customers as well as sales reps ability to sell, so they had to outsource the work that ironically was (and still is) done better than their own staff.
Sage keeps expenses low by running what would be considered skeletons crews at most businesses.
Many employees do the work of two people, yet there are others that do half the work of one person. Why? It is VERY hard to get fired from Sage. Therefore, they have a lot of people that would have otherwise been fired at other businesses.
Internal processes are lacking or don't exist.
Some divisions lack basic tools do to their jobs (i.e. a true CRM for sales reps). How does a company that owns a CRM not have it available for their sales reps? Oh yes...a proprietary CRM named Atlas has been in development for 5 years and has yet to be delivered.
Cheap cubicals that dampen sound about as good as cardboard boxes.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire competent managers with long term vision.
Invest in your products that ware outdated.
Fire employees who do not perform their basic duties. Not doing so breeds resentment among those who do perform.
Truly invest in your employees.
Sell Sage to Microsoft, Intuit, or some other corp that has bid on you and knows how to run a business.

Pros

Good people to work with, good work/life balance. New CEO with fresh ideas.

Cons

Lack of synergy, lack of camaraderie, over the last few months several key people have left the company. Not a lean running organization. Many layers of red tape to get simple things done. Below average pay. No clear vision for company (too many products).

Advice to Senior Management

MBWA... Manage by Walking Around. Take a look at what is going on and become more involved instead of only behind the scenes.