Sage Summit – Focus on Best Practices
Part 1
Sage Summit is coming up shortly. It’s Sage’s annual partner and customer conference and this year one of the focuses is on Best Practices. Sage Summit 2013, being held in Washington, D.C., will offer a wealth of knowledge and fun via its vast schedule of conference sessions, activities and unique venues.
Some Impressive Numbers
Summit’s customer appreciation party will be held in 300,000 square feet at the National Museum of American History. It will be great fun for all the attendees. There will be over 500 high quality meeting sessions to attend, including customer and vendor breakout sessions, panel discussions, roundtables and hands-on labs. Sage City, the signature Summit social media networking event, will provide hundreds of valuable tidbits and best practices. There will be over 200 trade show booths. In 2012, over 90% of attendees said that they would recommend Summit to a colleague.
What does Best Practices mean?
Sage has announced that Summit 2013 will drill down on best practices. But best practices can mean many things in our world:
- It means the best practices that are baked into the software as a result of the accrued experience of those who wrote the software, based on feedback from their users. It’s all about not reinventing the wheel.
- It means the internal standards and processes that we as users must adopt in order to live in harmony with, and make the best possible use of our Sage software’s features and functionality.
- It refers to the standards and processes that resellers use when they implement a new system, upgrade an existing one, or stay in touch with their existing end-users.
- It refers to your “special sauce”. That’s the body of knowledge that you use in order to differentiate yourself from your competition. This is a compelling topic, because it usually doesn’t exist in off-the-shelf software. You must take extra measures to build your own special best practices into your ERP or CRM system. DSD Business Systems can provide you with that help.
So which is it?
Which of these kinds of best practices will Sage be drilling down on at Summit? Sage says this: “Best practices to help you master your Sage solution”.
That sounds a lot like the second definition from above, but I think that Sage is really going to drill down on both of the first two. The first two areas are extremely valuable for companies who are younger in their life cycle, or companies who are experiencing high growth. Leveraging the best practices that are built into your software allows you to benefit from others who have been there before you, and to avoid many of the potholes that they fell into.
And tailoring your in-house processes to make best use of your software’s functionality imbeds efficiency and security into all your daily activities.
Some interesting End-User Sessions
These are the sessions that I’d recommend for those of you looking for best practices for your Sage software:
- All ERP Products: C-184, C-216, C-235, C-203, C-204, C-233, C-281, C-63, C-65, C-207, C-214, C-220, C-229, C-69, C-276, C-221, C-147 and C-52
- Sage 100: C-217, C-40, C-74, C-265, C-56, C-73, C-71, C-230, C-238, C-42
- Sage 300: C-218, C-75, C-241, C-81, C-230, and C-224
- Sage 500: C-45, C-265, C-50, C-283, C-247, C-245, C-238, C-38, and C-246
- Sage FAS: C-243, C-95, C-87, C-99 and C-93
- Sage HRMS: C-11 and C-35
- Sage CRM: C-125, C-112, C-118, C-116 and C-115
Join DSD Business Systems at Sage Summit
We hope that you’ll join us at Summit in Washington, D.C. We are happy to help you in mapping out your conference agenda, to help you achieve attendance goals and improve your overall conference experience. There will be almost two dozen members of the DSD team at the conference to answer any questions, introduce you to Sage executives, industry peers, and third-party software vendors.
DSD Business Systems will also be on the trade show floor in booth #1105 with the latest in Sage business solutions.
Written by Doug Deane, President & CEO of DSD Business Systems.
