Sage Summit San Diego 2019 Wrap-Up

Sage Summit San Diego is wrapping up today. The three-day event held February 13-15, 2019 was the first Sage Summit branded event since Atlanta in May 2017.

Sage Summit 2019: San Diego and Atlanta

During 2018 Sage held a series of “mini-Summits” which they branded as Sage Sessions. The first of these was held in Los Angeles which I attended and reviewed here – Sage Sessions 2018 – Los Angeles Highlights and Recap.

Sage Summit San Diego featured a partner day followed by 1-1/2 days for customers. I was unable to attend this Sage Summit, however, what follows is my analysis based upon a close review of the Twitter activity throughout the 2-1/2 days.

Sage Summit San Diego – Partner Day – February 13, 2019

Partner day one opening welcome was delivered by Sage North America Managing Director Nancy Harris. About 200 partners were present at this event to learn more about Sage’s vision for 2019. After a brief introduction, things kicked off to the executives in charge of Sage’s channel partners.

The kickoff session was led by Sage North America VP Partner Strategy & Sales, Scott Ehmen, and Sage EVP Partners, Accountants & Alliances Jennifer Warawa.

Key takeaways:

The market is changing
Sage is committed to becoming a great SaaS company
Specialization is a key to future growth

The remainder of partner day one included various marketing presentations as well as a partner panel where Sage announced the expansion of their Partner Advocate program with DSD Business Systems being one of the Sage VARS who will join.

Sage Summit San Diego – Customer Day February 14-15, 2019

About 700 people reportedly attended day two which kicked off with Sage MD Nancy Harris interviewing Tarryn The Tax Lady who gave an inspirational discussion of how she got her start in business and presumably the role Sage played.

You can view the detailed agenda of Sage Summit San Diego to get a better idea on the topics discussed.

Once the opening session was complete the remaining sessions went into more depth on the Sage 100 platform.

The opening slide showed the current status of Sage 100cloud – including a customer count of 20,000+ users.

Sage Senior Product Marketing Manager Timothy Harfield and Sage Product Manager Linda Cade provided a review of the road ahead for Sage 100.

The biggest announcement for Sage 100 and Sage 100cloud was the addition of newly updated manufacturing modules. Work Order and MRP are now at the framework. This means that advanced methods of scripting now work with those modules. The ability to run these modules on Sage 100cloud Premium (aka SQL) is now a possibility.

Expect to see these new and updated modules rolling out starting with the March 2019 planned release of Sage 100cloud 2019.

Also announced is a lower licensing cost for certain types of Sage 100 Production Management licenses.

With the March 2019 release comes an expanded set of options for manufacturing with Sage 100cloud

Paperless Office is due for some enhancements. Soon you’ll be able to include email attachments and make use of the CC and BCC fields as well as copy a salesperson on invoices sent to their customers.

New “Grad Caps” are coming with Sage 100cloud 2019. These are similar to context-sensitive online-help except they lead to anytime learning options on Sage University which are directly related to the task on screen.

Sage’s integration with Office 365 – aka Sage Contact – has been enhanced to include vendor information.

Sage Summit – San Diego also featured a scaled back trade show with dozens of Sage ISVs there to discuss their products in-depth.

Dan Rodriguez of ScanForce was manning their display and available to answer questions from anyone interested in Warehouse Management for Sage 100.

Overall, Sage Summit San Diego seemed to more closely match Sage Sessions than the larger Sage Summit conferences of past. This may be a worthwhile conference for anyone who is a user of Sage products or who are considering becoming a user. The exhibition area is much less hectic which means you have plenty of time to talk to any exhibitor whose products you are considering.

The next Sage Summit is in Atlanta May 13-15, 2019 at the Hyatt Regency hotel.