Shawn Windle's Review of Sage Transform 2024

Rebekah McCabe: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for this very special bonus episode where Shawn's going to join me after getting back from Sage Transform 2024. So, we're really excited to talk about some of the things that he saw, talk about some of these product enhancements, and really dive into all of the great things that were announced. So welcome, Shawn.

Shawn Windle: Thank you.

Rebekah McCabe: Yes. So, let's just kick this off. I'll have you give a quick overview of the conference, some of the things you saw, overall experience, all that good stuff.

Shawn Windle: Yeah. It was a really good conference. Excuse me. I had a good time and really got an opportunity to talk to some of the subject matter experts about several of the releases that are coming out and some of the new products. The keynotes were really good too. But I would say kind of overall, now this is the first Sage Transform we've been to out of pure disclosure there. And even running into a couple of people, they were like, oh my gosh, you actually made it. And I was like, oh geez, probably should have done this earlier. So, thanks to everybody that helped with getting us there. I really mean it was very worthwhile. I'm sorry you couldn't be there too. But it was good. I think there's a lot of really, really good energy. I kind of look at the intrinsic things. You do a really good job, probably better than I do. Well, definitely better than I do about covering the product releases for sure for the ERP Minute. I know we'll talk about some of those here. But I've done this so long. I look at the types of companies that are coming and sending their people, right, because it's not just a matter of cost. It's a matter of people taking time away from work and then a company incurring the dollars of them traveling. Like, is it worth it or not? I look a lot at the partner ecosystem and the people that are there. I talk to the salespeople and sort of just get a gauge on what their pipeline looks like and who are the types of companies or nonprofits that they're talking to, et cetera, et cetera. And really across the board, I was impressed. I really was. I think Sage over the years, I remember doing sage deals or mass even, right before it was even sage, years and decades ago now, gosh. But I feel like there's more of a tear of the spit, tear of this, pardon me, the tip of the spear for Sage is Intacct. And I wish I wouldn't have just flubbed that whole line because that really is true. They really are the tip of the spear for sage. And that's Intacct's role. I think it's the, it's definitely not just a go forward product, but I think they're putting a lot of resources and a lot of attention globally to this product. And that's great to see because, you know, when we're advising clients on what platforms to go through, sometimes that's a very big factor is, of course, viability and long-term vision is huge for every deal. But sometimes our clients do need that more global reach. They need a partner that a, software vendor, that is really fully vested. Right. And I and I saw that. I honestly saw that. And so it was very, very good to get that out of the conference. And one of the dimensions I sort of use as a measurement of that, of course, are the product enhancement releases or notifications announcements that were made. And from both of the keynotes that I attended, I really got a good feel from. some of the founders are speaking on stage about, their excitement for copilot, right? For the AI tool. It's you can always call it copilot, except for SAP's name's a little different. I think Jewel, right?

Rebekah McCabe: Yeah, theirs is Jewel. Some of the other ones have some random names, but Microsoft went with the copilot.

Shawn Windle: Sage saying copilot Intacct. It's good. And it really, it makes a lot. I was kidding with some of the people there about that. It really is. It's a copilot. So I think there's a lot of internal excitement about the product releases and even chatting with a couple of people and them saying like, we are, we've never been more bullish ourselves about our company and where we're going and the investment that's going into the product and our competition and things are changing in the market right now with a lot of tier two ERP software, especially in the financial space. And I think Intacct's done a really good job of positioning themselves, and I saw that for my own eyes at Transform. And that's good. And remember, they don't pay us, right? Usually, the vendor will pick up the conference fee for us, which helps, but I gotta pay for travel and pay for your travel, whatever. That's totally fine, which we did here. But I really mean that, that there's a more... It's really the vector is the word I'm trying to say. I see the vector that Intacct is going on now more clearly than I ever have, not just because of the conference, but because I think even their messaging and their positioning, I think they are more clear. Frankly, that's kind of what it really is. Because their sales model is different than other software vendors. They have less direct sales. They work a lot with partners. Partner channels kind of changing a little bit where partners can sell the software and they can do implementations or they just do implementations. I think internationally, Sage International's got a lot more focus on Intacct. They're going into these new markets. We're going to talk about that, new micro verticals. And then there's even some other Sage investments, some other platforms that aren't quite ready for release, but they're in alpha that we'll talk about too. And so, It's pretty good. I was really impressed.

Rebekah McCabe: Yeah, that's great to hear. And I know from my perspective, even just covering the Sage Intacct, we cover Sage and Sage Intacct, but over the last two years since I've been here, even from the beginning, Intacct has changed so much. And I agree with you that I think even in their news stories and the way the product's going, it's really starting to shape exactly what they're going for. And you could clearly see the messaging even in terms of their internal personnel that we work with every day, like they're defining these new roles in people very specific positions that can direct you in the right direction. So that's been something I've seen from an internal perspective. And you already kind of mentioned this, but what were some of the latest product enhancements or releases that you saw announced at Transform?

Shawn Windle: So definitely the AI baked into the app and in a very pragmatic way for accountants to use AI. So that was really good. I did have kind of this thought of like, how many people watching this are thinking that their job's going to go away? Now, I think, again, the speaker, and I is one of the founders of the firm, right, was talking through this. And I think he even said, now don't worry, your job's not going away because it is simple tasks that take time to accomplish that basically software code, call it AI fine, but it's really just code can do for you, that do give you more rich insights and you can do a lot more with that, that today just takes 90% of the time just pulling the data, right? Then you have 10% of the time for decision making versus the opposite, 10% pull pulls the data, then 90% with the decision making. I would say of the vendors that we've seen their AI solutions, I think in Intacct has done of the best of making it more practical. And that that was great to see. There's also some investments in some international logic, some construction work. It's so interesting because, well, I'll get to that in a minute. I'll finish out the enhancements. But the other thing that definitely is worth noting is some work in the manufacturing and distribution area, distribution and manufacturing operations, that they're putting together tools that are built to sort of, you know, be best of breed tools around manufacturing distribution. You know, they're going through the release and the iterations of building and building and building. But it's interesting because, Sage Intacct's sort of approach has been best of breed around financials, right? Plug in CRM, plug in, Salesforce, whatever these different best of breeds are. But then Sage distribution manufacturing operations, which again is in development. I think it's an alpha testing with a lot of customers. They're getting a lot of great feedback. It's just interesting because I mean, even our own deals, as soon as we start getting into, most of our clients have financials needs. Almost all of them do, right? Unless it's human resources, payroll, other areas. But as soon as we get into product, it sort of does go out of that best of breed financials environment that Intacct plays really well in. Well, now we have a solution there. So, I think it's smart. I think it's a good play. There's a lot of catch up that you'd have to do there. But when you look at the legacy assets of Sage, Sage 100, Sage 200, Sage 500 even, and Sage X3, especially X3, you know, there's a lot of product-based, even process manufacturing experience that those developers are taking into that product. So super interested about that, but I know there were some other things that were released. Was there anything on the list that I didn't mention that you have?

Rebekah McCabe: Yeah, so I mean, we can dive into some of the very specific features within Sage Intacct. Like you said, they're kind of spearheading this initiative. For Sage to continue to move forward. So, I think a good chunk of the announcements made at the conference were about Sage Intacct, and a lot of them had to do with AI. I know AI purchase order match for AP automation, which super interesting. I think we are really in this retrieval phase of AI, where it can retrieve the information and you still need people to be there and to actually verify it. But these kind of just automation pieces, professional services automation, just making it 10 times easier for these employees. Their jobs aren't going away. They're not going to have to do those things that make them want to pull their hair out because all of a sudden, none of the purchase orders are matching up. And shoot, which one is it? Now I have to go back three weeks. There were also, as you were saying, from a global perspective, there is expansion in to Germany. That was a big announcement for Sage Intacct. And I know Sage is European-based, so they kind of already have a standing in that area. But I think that Sage Intacct is kind of expanding some of its very specific functionality into certain geographical locations. And they also had a new global fixed assets management tool in Sage Intacct, which that was kind of interesting. And I think as they're making this play along with some of the construction, functionality, advanced bid management that they're also adding to the solution. It just makes sense. And like you said, their strategy is kind of coming together even in these enhancements, moving towards manufacturing and distribution. That's just not an area they've ever really even wanted to play in. And I think now they're realizing, no, we want to get into that area and to kind of see what we can do. And they've had legacy products like Sage 300 CRE that's gone into construction, different things that they have delivered in these areas before. There just wasn't that functionality in Sage Intacct, and they know that, and they'd be very honest about that. But they're pushing towards, we have all these legacy customers that we're going to start maybe sunsetting or looking at getting them off of these legacy products. And that means we have to have a product for them to move on to.

Shawn Windle: And see, that is the biggest differentiator, I would say, of any other software vendor of Sage, maybe generally, but definitely even with Intacct, is there is a built-in customer base of small, medium size, even, you know, mid-size I wouldn't say large enterprises, maybe middle enterprises of all of these customers. These are hundreds and thousands of businesses and different kinds of entities around the globe that are running these products that are legacy. And I think that's the differentiation with Sage Intacct for me that I saw unequivocally like absolutely was that the roadmap for Sage is built around not just new customers, but these legacy customers. Now, SAP has a huge legacy customer base. Oracle has a huge customer base. Microsoft does too. But it's just different with the Sage world, especially the international reach. And it's something in the US that we don't really, you know, we get so myopically focused on just, you know, the North America, right, between Canada and the US. But there's tons and tons and tons of companies around the world running Sage products. And so I guess that's what I'm trying to get to is, I see the movement that the senior executive team is taking with Sage Intacct of becoming this product that will be the go-to product for all of these customers to go to. And I think if they were sitting here with us, they'd say, well, it already is, guys. But I would say, you know, the product line, the Sage traditional customer products are usually more product intensive. So now moving with the SDMO, I think it's called, construction, the Sage 300 construction real estate customers, the old Timberline, we get a ton of customers, clients that are on running that product still. And so, you know, there's even ACPAC and some of these other products that I don't even not that familiar with. I think we've got some write ups on some of them on our website that you've put together. But there's just a ton of Sage products out there. And I really do feel like Sage is listening to their customers a little bit differently than, say, Microsoft right now. I can't not think, and I've said this before on calls, like, who's going to buy Acumatica? Well, Acumatica is not for sale. I know, but who would that be, right? But I don't think now I would say that I see why that hasn't happened yet with Sage, because it really is the Intacct asset that they purchased, I don't know, five or six or seven years ago now, that I think it's just taken some time to really figure out what to do with it. And I see the motion towards that. Again, even going to the conference that it just felt like a large software vendor. And in reality, intact, I even think about their sales team or whatever. It's just smaller. It is. So, but it's, but it's a, there's a ton of people there, right? There were people everywhere coming out of the, I was on a call, of course, after I zoomed out of the keynote and I had to jump on a call. I was watching people. I just, all these people coming out of this conference. So I'm like, out of the keynote, like, where were all these people in that room? That room was perfectly optimized for that many people. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of people coming out. So they're not just like intact customers. Some of them are Intacct customers, but they're interested in learning more about the roadmap. They're interested in going to the sessions and seeing what's going on, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, it's kind of a long way to say it, but yeah, I was really, I really liked what I saw. Yep.

Rebekah McCabe: And I think another thing that we should touch on that all of the vendors have really put as a priority in the last year has been data. And they did have releases oriented in Sage Intacct for more data flows so that there's more connectivity, different things, so that eliminating some of those data silos that I think people have just kind of, now that's what they're expecting. Like they need a system that's not going to, that's going to be able to freely flow the data from one piece to the next and look at that. And so that was another thing. that I saw in reading the updates. Was that something that you feel like you saw at the conference? The data was still at the forefront.

Shawn Windle: I did. And even sort of adjacent to that is some of the deeper partners partnership with AWS too. Again, we've talked about that on a lot of our calls that I would not go with an application provider who isn't looking at some kind of a relationship with the hyperscalers because the amount of tools they can leverage across data sets is beyond anything that any of the vendors, application vendors themselves can do. So, I totally agree with you.

Rebekah McCabe: Yeah, and that's going to make a huge difference. We did cover that in the ERP Minute about the new... their new strategic collaboration partnership. And it's going to be interesting to see how Sage Intacct leverages that. I mean, all the vendors have their own strategy for how they're leveraging their hyperscaler relationships. It's so interesting to see the market's changing for sure.

Shawn Windle: So really great. I mean, I really, you know, it's been interesting. I mean, we've been through thick and thin with all of our vendors that we've worked with, but, you know, I'm super excited to see the differentiation that Intacct brings to the market. That no other vendor does, right? I mean, it's, we say this to our clients all the time, like these solutions are as different as your children are. Yes. You know, they might all have the same last name, maybe they don't, I don't know. But, you know, they're different, they're different entities. They offer something totally different. And I think, you know, I would say to sort of summarize my viewpoint that I really see that Sage is bringing Intacct, it's coming of age. And they're not just at the table, but they're saying, this is my position in the market. And we're going to do a little bit different with construction, right? We're going to get into a little bit more with distribution and manufacturing. But it makes sense. It's a good story that I think is going to be very viable for the future. And that's what we love, right? We love having applications that meet our clients' needs. And I see that with Intacct for sure.

Rebekah McCabe: Definitely. So we already kind of covered how these enhancements will impact customers. So just to wrap this up, what really were your key takeaways from this conference?

Shawn Windle: Well, like I said, I think at the end of the day, when Sage bought Intacct, they kind of, I think they sort of let it sort of harvest and see where things were going in the market and everything else. Of course, COVID came and then things sort of got put on hold and whatever. But I really see Sage putting a lot of emphasis in the product, putting them on a vector, keeping them going on a vector, and I see it really flourishing and prospering. And exactly, you know, again, the differentiation in the market, definitely strong financials for sure, but very good offerings around professional services. There's no question. Very good for nonprofit, right? They're even getting a lot more hospitality kinds of companies, And then sort of you'd see this construction, you'd see this distribution manufacturing. And so it's just becoming more clear to me that Sage is putting a lot more emphasis on this particular platform. They always have, but they really are now. I mean, it is the future of Sage. And the reality is, the last thing I'll mention here is the future of Sage is much more rich than some of the other vendors because of its history. So many companies and lots and lots of partners who, there was one partner that we met with that's been working in the Sage ecosystem for 40 years. Like for real, not just like, oh, I've been around for block. No, like for 40 years. And there's many, many partners globally like that have bet their business on Sage and now going into the Intacct platform. So I think it's exciting. I'm really excited for what Sage and the Sage Intacct people have done with the product. We know some great people there. And yeah, I just, I'm thrilled that we were able to see sort of the inside of it and definitely are bringing them to our deals. And look forward to getting our customers into the product where it makes sense and getting tons of success with it.

Rebekah McCabe: Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you so much, Shawn. These are always delightful. I always learn so much. And thank you to everyone who joined us. Thank you so much to our friends over at Sage and Sage Intacct who hosted Shawn for the conference and allowed us to really get an inside look and who are continuing to send us news that we get to cover. So just thank you to everybody. But thank you so much for joining us. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out and be on the lookout for bonus episodes like this that are always coming out. Have a great day.