Digital First spoke to the recently appointed Sage CEO Stephen Kelly at his debut ball, Sage Summit 2015 in New Orleans. Kelly has only been in the hot seat for eight months after leaving his role as chief operating officer for the UK government.
It’s a tough gig turning around a 14,000-employee company. Kelly has come out swinging with some high-profile announcements such as banning the use of the word “ERP” in Sage (a couple of sessions hadn’t got the memo) and boldly deciding to build an SME accounting program on top of Salesforce’s technology platform. (More on Sage Live, what it is and how it works, tomorrow.)
I sat down with Kelly for 15 minutes to understand how he intended to tackle the challenges and opportunities facing the world’s largest accounting software maker.
Questions included:
- Who is a bigger threat – Intuit or Xero?
- How important is small business accounting to Sage?
- Why is Sage using Salesforce One to build accounting software?
- What evidence is there that Sage’s culture has changed from old stodgy software company to a fast-moving competitor?
Below is a recorded broadcast on Periscope I shot immediately afterwards with some commentary on the interview.
Sholto travelled to the Sage Summit in New Orleans as a guest of Sage. Sholto has consulted to Sage and other accounting software companies.