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.
