An Insider’s Look At Sage Summit 2014
Sage North America tried a new format this year for their annual conference, Sage Summit 2014. I would have to say that overall, the event was a hit! Below are a few of our favorite highlights from this year’s event.
Top 5 Highlights of Sage Summit 2014
1. Reimagine Your Business
Rather than only focusing on the technical aspects of the software,
Sage decided to provide small to medium sized businesses with inspiration on how to grow their business. The theme for Sage Summit 2014 was “Grow from here”. The event was presented as an invitation to reimagine your business. This became an amazing opportunity for businesses to attend a conference and become inspired.
2. Resellers and Clients Combined
In past years, Sage Summit attendees were mainly Value Added Resellers (VARs). Then last year, Sage added in specific conference days for Sage clients. This was the first year that Sage decided to go ahead and combine the event to include both VARs and clients. This created a wonderful opportunity for DSD Business Systems, along with other VARs, to have the opportunity to network with our clients and show them the many exciting offerings being created by Sage and other vendors alike.
3. Sage Intelligence
One of the best sessions attended was a hands-on class instruction for using Sage Intelligence. The product that everyone ran away from has now become a successful Financial Report Writer choice. Changes to the Sage Intelligence product have shown that in the current release, those looking for a either a replacement of FRx or a new financial reporting software is no longer a daunting task. Questions will now center on performance and “what else can this product do”, versus “how can I learn this software”. The class opened many eyes and it will be interesting to see the traction that Sage Intelligence receives.
4. Biz Stone
I would have to say that Biz Stone, co-founder and CEO of Jelly Industries, was the best keynote speaker hands down. He was inspirational and engaging, while also being quite comical. Biz is also the co-founder of Twitter and had some excellent stories to share with the audience. For example, when critics began to review Twitter early on, one critic noted that Twitter wasn’t useful. Biz’s response was “Oh twitter isn’t useful? Well neither is ice cream! Should we ban Ben and Jerry’s?” If interested in watching the interview, his keynote can be found at www.SageSummit.com.
5. Sage Mobile Solutions
A major focus at Sage Summit this year was Business performance in Digital Age, more specifically regarding mobile solutions. From various discussions about the cloud to Sage Mobile Solutions, these sessions helped to provide a better solution for our clients. This is especially true for businesses that want further mobility and to remain untethered from the office. Products such as Sage Mobile Sales, Mobile Payments and Mobile Service are currently available for Sage 100 ERP products. I look forward to many future offerings, such as Sage CRM Mobile, Sage Intelligence Go and Sage Data Cloud.
There were many other exciting aspects to Sage Summit 2014, but we’ll keep this list to only five highlights. We look forward to next year’s event being even bigger and better. With the price of $99 to attend, I’d have to say it was a great deal for what we received.
Written by DSD Business Systems
