A revitalised Sage rolled into the American market on Tuesday as the first fruits of chief executive Stephen Kelly’s leadership were revealed at the company conference in New Orleans.
Under his tenure the accountancy firm will maintain its focus on the small and medium business (SMB) market, having unveiled a slew of products and updates for its on-premise, hybrid and cloud customers.
Chief among these is Sage Live, a real-time accountancy package which, as of Tuesday, will be rolled out to customers in the US, with Ireland and the UK due to receive it in September.
Previously known as Sage Life, the product is the result of a surprising partnership between Sage and the cloud software firm Salesforce, which Kelly claimed is key to the firm’s market strategy.
"Marc Benioff [chief executive of Salesforce] said it was the most strategic partnership they have in the world in the 16 years of their history," Kelly said, speaking exclusively to CBR.
Keith Block, president of Salesforce, also noted that the connected world had created a "convergence of social and mobile and data technologies in the cloud."
Despite Sage’s roots in Newcastle, Kelly also talked up the firm’s foothold in the US, noting that the accountancy market can pose challenges for foreign firms because of varying laws between states.
"I think in the US we’re like an American company," he said to CBR. "I think we’ve got momentum in the US; I think we’re ready for prime time in the US."
As well as Sage Live, the company also released Sage X3, targeted towards medium businesses, and announced the redesign of Sage One, which focuses on the smaller end of the market.
The company also updated its legacy Sage 100 and Sage 300 enterprise resource planning (ERP) products, despite Kelly’s criticism of that segment of the software industry, which he jokingly summarised as: "Expense. Regret. Pain."
