In March, Sage North American CEO, Sue Swenson, was featured in the Orange County Smart Business sharing the Sage customer-centric focus. In the publication, Sue describes how this is not simply a business-initiative for Sage; rather, this is the new way of doing business, and is “at the core of everything we do.” She shared that “this is not a one-time alignment – it means setting in motion a cycle of improvement by sparking the ongoing conversation about how employees are serving customers and how they can do it better.
Last week, the Sage Peachtree team took this to heart. While the product management and marketing team talks with customers often, this team took it one step further … and, it all started with a tweet.
A simple tweet that read “doesn’t she know all the cool kids use Peachtree?” Of course, we jumped on that one! First we acknowledged the fact we’re cool. And, we let our tweeter know we appreciated his support and sent him a box of goodness to thank him. (What college student doesn’t like getting treats in the mail?)
More importantly, we’ve stayed in touch with him. He is our future, the next generation of accountants and small business owners. He represents so much more to us than a simple customer view. His name, Andrew Yellis.
When the product management and marketing team was asked to present a team briefing at a campus meeting, we thought we should share Andrew’s story; and, in the spirit of the customer-centric environment, we flew Andrew in for the day (with his professors’ blessings.)
Andrew was a rock star at the meetings! He delivered our shared story; but, his value was in talking with us about how his generation is communicating, sharing how they expect software to work, how they want companies to communicate with them, and how they let you know if you fail. Andrew also talked about the sense of entrepreneurship within his peers, information we knew but had not “experienced” the way he described it. He represented his fellow business students admirably, and departed leaving us with more knowledge than expected and a new friend whom we all appreciate.
The Sage Peachtree was thrilled to learn from this experience. We have a long-standing commitment to the student market. We offer advice and help for students through our Sage for Students web site. We support and encourage the online resources available to help accounting majors understand career options. (Two blogs, “A Girl and A Gun” and StartingFrog, both wrote nice pieces about accounting futures this last week, and today CPA Trendlines wrote a piece about how starting salaries for new accounting grads is on the rise.).) And, after our visit with Andrew, we be looking even harder at programs to help our next generation of accountants and business owners now, not later – after all, these are the next generation of Peachtree customers. A great team to join.
Jennifer Doctor
Sage Peachtree Product Marketing Mgr.
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