Jo Fuller and Stephen Little from Percipient share a few highlights from Sage Transform, the software leader’s annual conference in Las Vegas, 26-29 February 2024.
Having just about shaken off our jet lag, we’ve been busy talking to customers and sharing all the exciting news, innovations and product updates we learned about at Sage Transform in Las Vegas at the end of last month.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, AI dominated the agenda, with Sage unveiling Sage Copilot, its AI-powered digital productivity assistant, designed to solve business challenges while elevating the value of human work. The output of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Aaron Harris’ dedicated Sage AI lab, which was set up in 2019 and now employs more than 100 data scientists, Sage Copilot has emerged from the lab as a generative AI product with accuracy, security and trust having been prioritised at every step of the way. This, combined with expert support, robust encryption, access controls, and compliance with data protection regulations, sets it aside from its competitors and cuts through much of the noise in the saturated AI/ML space.
Much of Sage’s work in AI is focused on hyper-automation, leveraging AI to learn about and continuously refine processes, in the same way the human brain works. Against this backdrop, Sage Copilot simultaneously handles administrative and repetitive tasks in a live environment, while recommending ways for customers to create more time and space to focus on growing and scaling their businesses. Crucially, it not only automates workflows, identifies errors and generates actionable insights for businesses and accountants’ needs but also helps with forecasting, cashflow management and generating and sending invoices with simple, natural language commands.
Bringing Magic to Finance
Aaron Harris was keen to stress that Sage Copilot will be available as part of all key Sage products as part of an agenda to move ever closer towards the continuous close. Its magic resides in how it interfaces with APIs across all applications, from Microsoft Teams and Excel to Procurement and Payroll, representing what is essentially a virtual executive assistant (EA) for the Office of the CFO.
The time and resources freed up as a result of its adoption can then be channelled into supporting strategy and driving the role of the CFO into a more business-centric one, which consistently adds value to strategy and operations through access to in-depth dynamic insights.
In his keynotes, Aaron Harris spoke at length about the importance of instilling trust and confidence as part of the launch, recognising that these issues currently prevail as barriers to the wider adoption of AI. Particularly when it comes to fears around AI replacing, rather than empowering humans in the workplace, he was keen to highlight that while AI will not replace people, people using AI will ultimately replace people who eschew it.
Enhancing Sage Intacct
We were also thrilled to hear that further enhancements to our ever-popular Sage Intacct product will enable organisations to drive more productivity and optimise and automate project management tasks through powerful AI capabilities that improve efficiency, with improved data and operational workflows. Specific updates include Sage Intacct’s AI-powered Project & Resource Management, and Forms and Operational Flows, to give companies greater visibility into resourcing and keeping projects on time while helping them work better and get more done.
This, alongside the announcements around Sage Copilot, reinforces Sage’s vision for the future of the office of the CFO which manifests digital as a prerequisite, is intelligently automated and leverages AI to drive value and enhance strategy.
Feedback from our customers so far has been incredibly positive and encouraging. The team here at Percipient is so excited to build on the momentum we’ve created with Sage Intacct, to deliver world-class AI capabilities by way of complementing capabilities with a new product which genuinely looks set to transform the Office of the CFO into the future.
A Continuous Event Close
The closing day of Sage Transform saw CMO Cath Keers announce a new format for future events, with an event series that brings together Sage’s entire ecosystem across partners and customers, to be held in London and North America.
We’re already looking forward to the London edition and can’t wait to see what comes next from the Sage team in the coming months.
Sage Intacct Partner UK
If you’d like to learn how Sage Intacct could help your business now and in the future, book a no-obligation demo with our product experts or call us on 01606 871332 to discuss your needs today.