Sage North America just announced the departure of Nina Smith who was the President of the Business Management Division for Sage North America.

This announcement came in one of the first ever channel wide public emails from CEO Sue Swenson since she took the reins shortly before last year’s Insights conference in May 2007.

Nina Smith joined the company in 2001. She assumed the leadership of Sage BMD in October 2007 shortly after the ouster of executives Ron Verni, Jim Eckstaed, Taylor Macdonald and Jim Foster.

The Sage North America site listed Nina’s responsibilities as:

As President of Sage North America’s Business Management Division, Nina Smith is responsible for the company’s success in serving small and midsized businesses with core business management products and services that encompass accounting, customer relationship management, manufacturing and distribution, and related functions. Ms. Smith previously served as chief marketing officer for Sage Software, defining the company’s marketing strategies and guiding the company’s multi-year corporate re-branding effort. Ms. Smith has extensive experience in branding and customer strategy issues, and has successfully implemented multi-dimensional distribution strategies that encompass retail, distribution, and business partners.
Ms. Smith joined Sage Software in 2001 from Webtrends Corporation where she was chief marketing officer. She previously spent 19 years at Xerox Corporation where she held a variety of senior management positions, including chief marketing officer. In that role, she was responsible for integrating Xerox marketing efforts worldwide as well as global advertising, brand management, research, events, and marketing strategy. She also served as vice president of marketing and strategy for small and medium business operations, and vice president and general manager of mid-range printing products.
Ms. Smith serves on the board of Output Links, Inc. She lectures frequently on marketing, mentoring, and general business topics, and is featured in the book, The One to One Manager: Real World Lessons in Customer Relationship Management, by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. She is a business graduate of the University of Redlands, Calif.

The Sage BMD Division is a key portion of Sage North America operations. Recent financial information from Sage UK discloses that the Business Management Division contributed 47% of the revenue of North America as reported in their most recent annual financial disclosures.

According to an email circulated to all Sage Business Partners on December 9 at about 4pm EST, there is presently a search for Nina Smith’s replacement. The email also announced the hiring of Motasim Najeeb as the CTO charged with working with Sage Division leaders, general managers, and the R&D teams to leverage the opportunities across the entire Sage North America product portfolio. In addition, he will work closely with Klaus Michael Vogelberg,  global technology leader at Sage.

The announcement seems to have caught most of the Sage channel by surprise and comes on the heels of a Sage North America reduction in workforce of 150 people which just was widely reported on December 3, 2008.

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