Atlanta - Session recommendations made via Twitter, attendee feedback via text message and stories of customer success with social networking were the buzz here at Sage Summit, Sage's annual confab for its users.
For many, the conference traditionally is an opportunity to network and connect with others using Sage products, meet with Sage employees and executives, and perhaps get a preview of upcoming strategies.
This year was no different.
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In a welcoming session, Jodi Uecker-Rust, president of Sage's Business Solutions Division, expressed gratitude to attendees and encouraged them to learn from their user peers who were scattered across different industries. "This is our single biggest opportunity to get feedback," she said of the Summit. "We need to work on what's working well and what's not working well. We are here to make it easier for you, our customers, to do your business processes."
Uecker-Rust spoke about the growing phenomenon of social media, and to showcase this, attendees were able to receive conference updates and "tweeted" recommendations on sessions, not to mention updated highlights on a blog that had been specifically set up for the confab. Attendees were also encouraged to share their opinions via text messages throughout the conference.
"[The summit] helps you develop the right questions to ask," said Jeff Livingston, a physician at MacArthur OB/GYN in Irving, Texas. Livingston was spotlighted by Sage execs as a customer who was successfully using social media to connect with his patient demographic: pregnant teens. "You can get your questions answered, but it's more important to stimulate your brain, find out what people are doing and what direction you should go. This is a great place to do that," he said.
Attendees had a variety of sessions to choose from - some were divided into product lines to focus on support and specifics, while others were more general and business-oriented.
Olga Arreguin, an MAS 500 user from the Alzheimer's Association in Chicago, said that she was glad to attend for the first time - even if she had to finagle a way to get here. "Cost savings is a big deal, so I had to present an external topic," she said of a project-management session she was facilitating. "That's how I could get my registration paid for."
Arreguin added that she had many missions while at the conference, namely learning about the new version of MAS 500. "We just went on [Version] 7.2 and we'd like to understand why we need to be interested in 7.3," she said. "It certainly piqued my interest so I came to learn more. They just released it, but like a lot of customers, we're paranoid and skeptical, so we need to read about it and test the heck out of it."
FUTURE VISION
During a press briefing, Himanshu Palsule, executive vice president of Sage's Business Solutions Division, discussed the company's product and marketing strategy, centering on five trends that are influencing the software market from a customer perspective - business analytics, globalization, the mobile workforce, social media and cloud computing. "The vision is to take advantage of these trends without disrupting our current customers," Palsule explained.
