Blogs

by Timothy Harfield, PhD
Product Marketing, Sage 100 (US)

The last year has been among the most important in Sage 100’s 30+ year history.

18 months ago, we embarked on a journey of self-discovery.  Embracing the value of intentionality, we decided that everything we did would be done with purpose. We didn’t want to just ‘do more’ in our product roadmap. We wanted to ‘do better.’

In order to accomplish this, we needed to reset our vision for 100cloud. We arrived at three defining principles that also function as three core values. They are important because they describe what Sage 100cloud is today, and because they represent areas in which we refuse to compromise as we think about the future.

Trusted
Sage 100cloud is among the most mature, most stable, and most feature-rich business management solutions available today.  Thousands of businesses in the US trust Sage 100cloud to help them manage their financials and day-to-day operations.

Businesses trust Sage 100cloud because it is really good at the boring yet essential stuff: security and compliance. But they also trust Sage 100cloud because it is feature-rich in a way that reflects who they are.  Feature-richness is not simply about quantity.  It’s about depth.  The fact that Sage 100cloud has been trusted for more than 30 years means that it has co-evolved with the businesses it serves. Every feature that has been added has been in direct response to user feedback.  What this means is that Sage cannot take full credit for what Sage 100cloud has become. Instead, Sage 100cloud is the result of a long-time collaboration between Sage, its business partners, and its users.

That’s the ‘secret sauce.’ That’s what makes Sage 100cloud more than the sum of its parts. 

Trust is something that must be earned.  We’ve been earning it for more than 30 years, and we continue to earn it with our customers each and every day.

Customizable
The ability to easily customize (not just configure) every detail of Sage 100cloud is something that our customers and business partners hold very dear.  Our business object framework means that Sage 100cloud can be tailored to meet the specific needs of individual businesses in ways that persist with product upgrades. A source-available code base means that there is virtually no limit to how developers can enhance and integrate with Sage 100cloud.  Our recent investment in Web APIs and our support of development via the Microsoft Power Platform are just the most recent examples of our commitment to customizability, not just as a feature, but as a core value.

Connected
We started the year with a hypothesis: that ‘cloud-connected’ was not marketing spin or a stepping-stone to cloud-native, but that it represented a distinct approach that was the right choice for many American businesses.  We tested this hypothesis with Forrester, and discovered that, among medium-sized manufacturing and distribution businesses in the US, more than 50% were actively planning to invest in a hybrid approach that leverages a combination of cloud-native and on-premise technologies.

As a result of this and other similar research, we have been affirmed in our approach.  And we have also assumed a renewed sense of responsibility.  If we know that a large proportion of US businesses are best served by a cloud-connected approach to business management software, it is incumbent upon us to understand their needs and deliver a market-leading solution.

What does cloud-connected mean for Sage 100cloud? It means flexibility and control for the businesses we serve.  It means the ability to retain the feature richness and customizability of our core product, while still delivering the computational horsepower, mobility, and emerging technologies of the cloud.  It means providing businesses with anytime, anywhere access without asking them to give up control over their data.  It means extending the power of Sage 100cloud using the most modern technologies without making radical changes that could disrupt existing business practices.

Sage 100cloud is trusted, customizable, and connected.  These three words define who we are, and they guide what we will become.  In future posts for the 90 Minds community, I’m going to use words like ‘market-leadership,’ and ‘innovation.’ But even as we embrace the new and think carefully about how we can meet the emerging needs of today’s business, we are rooted in our past and in our community as defining characteristics, strengths, and the wellspring from which we will draw inspiration into the future.