Postcards from Sage Summit 2013
I just got back from Sage Summit in Washington, D.C. and it was the best ever. There were, of course, too many interesting tidbits and experiences to include in a brief blog, so I’ll try to give you what I thought were the most significant highlights.
Incredible Experience: Richard Blais (Top Chef) at the Smithsonian
As a President’s Club and Chairman’s Club honoree in 2013, three of us from DSD attended the President’s Circle banquet at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. We ate in the great hall where Lincoln made many speeches, and our food was prepared by Richard Blais, winner of the Top Chef All Stars season. He prepared each dish of the four course meal on stage, and as soon as he was done with the demo, servers swept our table with the same dish prepared by his staff. Wow!
Here’s a picture of the stained glass dome in the great hall.
My greatest moment was viewing the unfinished portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart.
Compelling Sage Vision: Keynote Observations
The keynote had many noteworthy moments. Here are some:
Sage Brought in the Big Guns
- Guy Berruyer, CEO of Sage Group global, headquartered in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK, made his first appearance at Sage Summit. He was engaging and articulate, and conveyed a compelling vision for the future of Sage.
- Pascal Houillon, CEO of Sage North America, did a wonderful job as always. The opening video of two climbers summiting a high peak was inspiring, and acted as a great metaphor for the event.
Business Insights
- Pascal made a convincing argument that the brand consolidation is paying off. There is more recognition for Sage products than ever before.
- Brad Smith, EVP of Customer Experience at Sage North America, had an observation that is foundational to Sage’s customer experience. He observed that one of the greatest shared threats to ECE (excellent customer experience) is generational. Users cleave into three groups: pre-PC, pre-Internet and digital natives. Sage must be able to satisfy the needs of all three constituents, and we must all do that in our own businesses.
- CTO Himanshu Palsule made the observation that for many years, the user experience was really just a “Windows experience”. ERP software mirrored the look and feel of Windows, and was deployed and monetized in the same way. Those days are past and it’s now all about choice and flexibility, no matter what form that comes in.
- It’s all about partners and customers! Sage placed a greater-than-usual emphasis on the importance of its channel partners. It was the feel-good moment of the event for me.
- Sage Customer Loyalty, as measured by NPS, has doubled during the past year. BTW, I learned that DSD Business System’s NPS score, as measured by Sage, was recently determined to be 58%, second highest in the channel. Way to go, DSD Team!
Sage Vision and Commitment
- Pascal placed a warning shot over the bow of the cloud ERP and CRM providers and likely signals a permanent shift in Sage’s response to cloud marketing. He said that until this point in time, the cloud has been successful in advancing itself by hammering home the idea that SaaS is the only viable deployment method and that multi-tenant ERP software is the only valid option. He said that the discussion should be only about customer experience. If the customer has fast, reliable, affordable and secure access to the software they need then the deployment method is just a detail. This appears to be Sage’s strategy moving forward, and it is a sound one. I’m glad to see them take the offensive.
- When Pascal was talking about the power of Sage One, Sage’s entry level cloud product, it occurred to me that Sage has finally accomplished what no other ERP publisher has been able to. They have implemented a customer-for-life strategy that takes a company from birth and grows with it.
- Himanshu Palsule, Doug LaBahn and Steve Malmgren hit it out of the park with their live demos of a voice recognition user interface, mobile sales, and mobile service. Himanshu was very smooth during the little “surprises” that always occur with live keynote demos.
- Brad Smith told us about Sage City. It is apparent that Sage City will stop being a part time Summit activity, and will become a full-time Sage North America collaboration tool for partners, customers and Sage staffers.
Observations/Perceptions from the Floor
As I walked around the Summit Trade show Exhibit Hall I noticed that there were many vendors exhibiting connected services, and Sage X3-related products and services. Some X3 partners were actively recruiting channel partners. There’s a great deal of energy and excitement surrounding both areas.
The energy that I felt was likely due to the keynote address and the follow-up Super Sessions, which articulated Sage’s strategies in all these areas.
As I return to the office, I am heartened to see that Sage is doing, and has done what it said it would do. It has enabled all its ERP products with great new user interfaces and connected services, it has created a feeder pool of migration candidates in the form of Sage One, and it has moved toward respectability in its product architecture by enabling the cloud via Microsoft Azure.
It’s an exciting time to be in the Sage channel!
Written by Doug Deane, President & CEO of DSD Business Systems.
