Sage EVP Partners and Alliances Alan Laing announced that a revamped partner program will be unveiled later in 2017. This new program will emphasize new sales. It also seems likely that a revamped tier structure will be announced rewarding the addition of new customers.

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Transcript:
Sage Podcast – Alan Laing, EVP Partners
and Alliances - Talks About Upcoming
Global Partner Program

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Alan Laing: Hello and welcome to the first in a series of podcasts that we at Sage are providing to
you our partners. I'm Alan Laing, EVP of Partners and Alliances at Sage. Many of you
have been partners for a long time. Many of you are new to the Sage's partner
ecosystem and we want to use these podcasts to bring all of you up to date with what
we are doing and what we want to bring to you to help you grow your business
significantly in the future. [00:00:30] As you know Sage's heritage has always been
based on strong partner relationships and in 2016 we announced a series of alliances
with technology giants such as Salesforce, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Slack. Which
not only deliver added value to Sage but will also benefit you, our partners, whilst you're
working with your customers.
Firstly, let's talk about the Sage ecosystem. [00:01:00] We've worked hard at enhancing
the platforms that we're providing to you. Including bringing a lot of innovation into our
products. We've worked on the open APIs to make things easier for you to integrate
with Sage Solutions that bring our products to life for our mutual customers. There are
many different data points which demonstrate why the open ecosystem is important
and many companies have embraced this model. Research from Partner Path in the US
shows that 40% of partners [00:01:30] regularly partner with three to five other solution
providers in providing a solution to their customers. That's testimony to Sage's open
ecosystem philosophy and why we believe so strongly in it. Many of you will already
have heard about Sage's vision about energizing business builders around the world
through the imagination of our people and the power of our technology. Business
builders are at the heart of everything that Sage, and hopefully you, do. We don't exist
without them. [00:02:00] We need to enable business builders by providing them with
the underlying infrastructure, technology and innovation that helps them grow their
business without worrying about back office functions.
Whether that be accounting, payments or payroll. These things are important but they
need to be easy to use and adaptable by those businesses if they're going to succeed.
You, our partners, are the critical champions of our business builders. Without you being
able to address their needs, we won't be successful [00:02:30] and you won't be
successful. We need to join together in providing what these business builders need to
make sure that their businesses can grow and flourish without worrying about back
office functions. Success in enterprise is also key and you'll hear much more about that
in the weeks ahead. There is no doubt that the partner ecosystem is pivotal to the
success and evolution of Sage and hopefully to your businesses. Let me take this
opportunity to tell you how that's working in practice and provide you with an update
[00:03:00] in the ecosystem that is made available through the Sage marketplace.
So guys, the second thing I want to talk to you about is Sage's Cloud Momentum. A
press release announcing five Cloud solutions across seven global markets, went out at

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the end of January. If you didn't see it, please head to sage.com to read the press
release. This is a very significant announcement from Sage and one that's really exciting
the market. These new solutions highlight Sage's vision to empower [00:03:30] business
builders and enterprisers around the world to automate back office functions and live in
a world where accounting becomes invisible. With Cloud Momentum our partners will
need to build deeper relationships, providing vertical or horizontal solutions and
consulting expertise around the Sage Cloud product suite. A really opportunity with
significant revenue streams for you our partners to take advantage of. In essence, what
we jointly need to do is talk the language [00:04:00] of the customer, the business
builder, at a deeper level. These Cloud solutions that we're bringing to market mean
that for some partners they will have to adjust their business models fairly significantly
to take advantage of the opportunity.
IDC research suggests that by 2020, 70% of all software revenue is going to come in the
Cloud. How does this affect our partners and how are we going to drive forward
together to ensure that we can take advantage of this opportunity? [00:04:30] It does
mean that you're going to have to change your business models. It does mean that
we're going to have to adapt to a constantly changing world and ensure that we focus
on customer for life as a core value in our joint proposition towards the market. We
keep talking about Cloud and the opportunity. It's not new in the marketplace. It's not
new to Sage and it's not new to you. But the faster that we adopt it for greater growth, I
think the better we will all be able to succeed in the constantly changing [00:05:00]
market that's out there. Watch out for the video that myself and Margo Adam from IDC
have recorded as part of our Cloud Momentum tour. We discussed the big issues for
partners and moving your business to the Cloud and have also created tools to help you
become Cloud ready.
If you haven't looked at our Cloud product suite, Sage One, Sage Live, X3 and Sage
People, then I encourage you to go to the website and look at what those products and
enhanced solutions with their open ecosystems can bring to our customers. [00:05:30]
They really are innovation first and bring a strong capability to our customers to be able
to adapt and to be more competitive.
Let me now turn to my favorite subject and something we've been talking a lot about
over the past year and something that we need to bring to reality for you. The Sage
Partner Program. We announced the launch of the Sage Partner Program in 2016. Built
around the Cloud products Sage One, Sage Live [00:06:00] and X3. We explained at the
Sage Summit in Chicago in July 2016 that we'd be extending the reach of the Sage
Partner Program to all partner types, for all products in all countries. That's still an
intention. To be clear, the Sage Partner Program applies to all new business but doesn't
affect your installed base. The Sage Partner Program is to make it simpler for you to do
business with Sage and to be able to conduct the business you need to do in the field
and in the market [00:06:30] quickly and easily. We are committed to giving you the
right partner program in all of your countries with the right assets to help you be more
competitive in the marketplace.

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We want to create a unified program, a framework under which we will work together
to be able to win new customers in the market quicker and more effectively. That takes
a little time but we're committed to making it happen in conjunction with you. As I go
around and meet with many of you, you give me feedback [00:07:00] that you're
worried about Sage direct sales competing with you. All of our public statements and all
of the programs that we are developing are built with partners in mind. There is
absolutely no intent from Sage to move our focus to a direct revenue model and every
time one of you comes to me and tells me about some conflict you see in the
marketplace, I'll be very eager to enter into a discussion with my colleagues and with
you, to ensure that we have absolute clarity that our intention is [00:07:30] to work with
partners first and ensure that our partners are successful.
In conclusion everything I've tried to say today is underpinned by commitment to you
our partners. We need to enhance that communications with you and I'm committed to
ensuring, with my team in the countries that you've regular access to what's going on in
Sage through podcasts and other means of communicating to ensure that you have
complete clarity on our mission and [00:08:00] our vision for making the world of
business builders and enterprises easier and more effective. We're really excited about
what we're doing. To this end I just want to reiterate that the announcements we've
made over the last few weeks about our Cloud products really give us and you a market
leading advantage and we want you to be able to take full advantage of that as quickly
as possible. Please talk to your local Sage partner teams about how we can make that
happen for you and let us know any feedback [00:08:30] you have on any of the issues
that we've raised in this podcast. I look forward to talking to you again in the near future
and introducing guest speakers for the partner podcast series. Thanks for your time.