In what Sage is styling the first new approach to accounting since the invention of double-entry bookkeeping, Sage Live, which was developed in partnership with Salesforce and announced this spring, has now, indeed, gone Live. The catch is that it's not live yet in Canada, but should be, fairly soon
Himanshu Palsule, CTO, Sage North America
NEW ORLEANS – Today at Sage Summit, Sage has announced the availability of Sage Live, a real-time integrated accounting solution developed in partnership with Salesforce, which Sage believes to be a truly revolutionary offering for the SMB market.
“We see future as the smashing down of the walls between the back office and the front office, creating a single office,” said Sage Group CEO Stephen Kelly. “The first but not last product to make this happen is Sage Live, formally Sage Life, which is available today in North America.” Availability in the U.K. and Ireland is scheduled for the end of the summer. Availability In Canada is due at some point after that.
Himanshu Palsule, CTO, Sage North America, was even more bullish.
“Sage Live just may be the most significant new solution of the century,” he said. “It offers the first new approach to accounting since the Italian accountants who closed their books in 1299.”
Sage Live is built on the Salesforce1 platform, which lets small businesses run completely in the cloud.
“Sage and Salesforce has reimagined the world of SMB,” said Keith Block, Vice Chairman and President at Salesforce. We see on a daily basis companies moving from on-prem and transforming themselves. The world between the back office and front office is being shattered and that’s what customers want.”
Sage Live is able to bring both front and back office together into a single real-time view with a multi-dimensional, multi-country accounting engine. Sage Live gives businesses one real-time source of information by integrating the front office and back office to create “one office” designed both for business people and accountants, and better enabling them to work as a team.
“Data entry is a slow, laborious and manual process, so it takes days and weeks to generate reports,” Palsule said. “The only way to solve the problem was to literally smash down the walls that keep you from functioning as one single office. This will rescue QuickBook users who have simply run out of runway.” To this end, Sage is offering a free trial to QuickBooks users, though which they can share their QuickBooks files through a promotional site (http://na.sage.com/us/sage-live), allowing most of their data to be migrated for the free trial.
“We have reimagined the office of the future – a connected office where sales and operational data will come together to give SMBs a connected view of their business, said Emile Karam, Vice President, Product Management at Sage.
“At the heart of Sage Live sits this real-time accounting engine built for SMBs who are working at the speed of thought, Karam said. When data entry is captured, everything is automatically updated.
“By capturing data at the source, life just happens,” Karam added.
Having all this information easily available on mobile devices is also a key innovation.
“Like iPod in 2001 putting 1000 songs in your hand, Sage Live puts your entire business in the palm of your hand,” Karam said.
Sage Live will also connect with thousands of apps, to give these customers the additional customization they need.
The solution was originally announced in May by Sage CEO Stephen Kelly and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. At that time it was named Sage Life. Since then, feedback has led to the slight rebranding.
Sage Live is available on subscription starting at $15 per month per business user and $30 per month per full user for the Sage Live Essential package.
