Passionate users make the most of Sage transform 2022

Looking back at last month’s Sage Transform 2022, Sage’s flagship customer and partner conference featuring more than 3,000 attendees, I’m still inspired by the enthusiasm for product updates and training. While it was great to see real comradery among the Sage user community at the event, I quickly realized most of the professionals from across the globe were there for the learning experience.

The Orlando Marriott World Center served as an easy-to-navigate setting for 150+ sessions including roundtable discussions, hands-on labs, classroom style tutorials and networking. Also, an extensive showcase of partner kiosks was set up in The Neighborhood Expo for individuals to discuss challenges, review demonstrations, and discover new solutions.

The morning keynotes set the stage with several key announcements. Sage executives presented their shared vision around the company’s Digital Network which provides all of Sage’s customers access to new cloud applications and services. Sage CTO Aaron Harris stressed the role of AI in improving productivity and unveiled our latest innovation – AP Bill Automation – which will be available to everyone in the first half of 2023.

In another breakthrough moment, the audience cheered when Aaron explained how Sage customers can enable all of their employees to access their accounting system through Microsoft Teams through an expanded partnership with Microsoft. Now colleagues can easily complete month-end expenses, PO accruals, and other tasks within their familiar always-on application.

Each day, many of the breakout sessions were full of event attendees eager to learn more about how Sage can help streamline their processes. It was often standing room only when subject matter experts shared tips and tricks on themes such as the true potential of dynamic allocations, dashboarding strategies, successful documentation, paperless and remote audits, and easy financial reporting.

When recordings of the Transform sessions were recently released, I got a chance to listen to several of the presentations that I didn’t see in person. Here are a few highlights captured from demonstrations within those popular meeting rooms.

• Most organizations take a phased approach to their implementation. Even for those who think they did it all, the beauty of this product (Sage Intact) is that it is evolving and bringing new features, new modules, and new value with each quarterly release. If you stay on autopilot without staying curious about what more is possible, you might be missing out on some great value adds for your organization.

• Dashboards can break down complex data, help track business segments, encourage team collaboration, provide drill down into source transactions, and streamline business intelligence and reporting.

• Multiple sessions presented tutorials on how Dynamic Allocations can support the month-end process and be incorporated into reporting.

• From keeping track of recurring AP bills even when the amounts are different each month to creating a custom view to validate 1099 vendor information, out-of-the box functionality can be leveraged to easily boost AR, AP, and GL.

• The new Fulfillment feature gives warehouse managers and supervisors the tools to move sales orders through the picking, packing, shipping, and invoicing process without requiring transaction conversions.

• In ‘Getting Started with Sage Intacct Planning’, Hands On Lab participants learned how to import data directly from Sage Intacct, build a base budget, create a driver-based model, and create a what-if scenario.

• When implementing Sage Intacct internationally, enterprises should address some key considerations, including legal requirements, multi-currency functionality, and how to handle value-added tax (VAT) transacting and reporting.

This was just a small number of takeaways from the intimate briefings. Together, our customers and partners soaked up best practices and instruction on a range of product capabilities at Sage Transform. We received a lot of positive feedback about the mix of real-world examples, classroom style demos and allotted time for Q&As.

If you attended the event, but missed out on some of the sessions you were interested in, there is still time to access and watch the on-demand replays using the Sage Transform Virtual Experience platform. Everyone who previously registered for Sage Transform has access to the recordings and the virtual Marketplace Expo until January 1, 2023.

If you missed the event, check out some highlights below…