Inside Partnering
At Sage FUTURE in San Francisco, I sat down with Dan Miller [https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielgmiller/], EVP of Financials and ERP at Sage, to talk about how Sage is thinking about AI, ecosystem partnerships, and the future of ERP platforms. One of the clearest themes from the conversation was this: finance leaders are not resisting AI. They simply want transparency, accountability, and confidence in the outputs. For partner leaders, ISVs, and ecosystem builders, that creates a very different opportunity than the generic “AI transformation” messaging dominating the market right now. Dan framed it around trust. “What finance and operations professionals really want is confidence in the tools that they’re deploying are doing exactly what they are expected to do.” That requirement shapes how Sage is building both its AI capabilities and its broader partner ecosystem. Inside Partnering is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. AI Adoption in Finance Requires Transparency Dan pushed back on the idea that finance organizations are inherently resistant to innovation. Instead, he described a customer base that is willing to experiment with AI - as long as the systems remain explainable. “It’s not that they don’t want to experiment. It’s that they want to know when they experiment, there’s going to be a good result.” That distinction matters. Sage is positioning its AI capabilities around visibility into how outputs are generated, rather than treating AI as a black box. Dan described how Sage customers can inspect the reasoning behind cash flow predictions, financial close recommendations, and other AI-generated outputs. “It’s not a black box. It’s actually transparent. You can see into how the steps were determined.” That transparency extends into Sage’s Copilot capabilities, where users can interrogate how the system arrived at a recommendation or prediction. For CFOs and finance teams, that creates auditability and confidence. For partners, it creates an environment where AI adoption becomes easier to operationalize with customers. The Partner Opportunity Around AI Enablement One of the more interesting parts of the conversation was how Sage views AI through the lens of partner enablement, not just customer productivity. Dan talked about how Sage is helping partners accelerate implementations and reduce deployment friction. “One of the most important things for a partner is to have a pipeline of new business being delivered.” He connected that directly to Sage’s recent acquisition focused on accelerating Intacct migrations from systems like QuickBooks. The idea is straightforward: if Sage and its partners can reduce migration complexity and implementation timelines, partners can onboard more recurring revenue customers faster. That’s an important point for ecosystem leaders. AI is not only being positioned as a feature set for end customers. It is increasingly becoming an operational multiplier for partners themselves. Why Open Ecosystems Still Matter Dan was also very clear that Sage does not believe a single company can build every workflow or every vertical solution customers need. That philosophy continues to shape Sage’s ISV strategy. “We believe at our very core that we need to be open. We know there’s no possible way that we could invent every piece of technology that solves for every vertical, every micro vertical, every workflow.” Instead, Sage is leaning heavily into ecosystem extensibility. The company works with a broad range of ISVs integrating into Sage platforms, while also creating tighter strategic relationships in priority verticals like nonprofit, healthcare, manufacturing, distribution, and financial services. In some cases, that means co-development. In others, it means packaging and selling integrated solutions together. The more interesting extension of this strategy is how Sage is now applying the same thinking to AI agents. AI Agents Become the Next Ecosystem Layer Dan described Sage’s new AI developer program and marketplace as the next evolution of the platform ecosystem. The goal is to allow developers and partners to build highly specialized agent workflows directly into the Sage experience. That includes micro-vertical use cases where partners may have unique expertise, proprietary workflows, or integrations that only exist within a narrow industry segment. “Agents are going to be a new mode of delivery of capability.” Rather than treating AI agents as external tools, Sage is embedding them directly into the ERP workflow and user experience. Partners can build agents that appear inside the same Copilot interface Sage users already interact with. Just as importantly, those agents inherit Sage’s authentication and security framework. “Those agent capabilities are protected by the same kind of authentication capabilities and controls that we do for our users.” That creates a potentially important differentiator for enterprise AI adoption. Instead of customers stitching together disconnected AI tools with inconsistent governance, Sage is positioning AI agents inside an existing operational and security framework. The Bigger Ecosystem Signal One of the broader signals from this conversation is how platform companies are evolving their ecosystem strategies in the AI era. Historically, ERP ecosystems were largely built around integrations and workflow extensions. Now, they are increasingly becoming marketplaces for intelligent workflows, embedded agents, and verticalized AI expertise. That creates new opportunities for ISVs, SIs, and developers that deeply understand a particular industry process or operational workflow. The winners may not simply be the companies with the largest models or most generic AI capabilities. They may be the ecosystem partners that can combine trusted data access, workflow expertise, and operational context into highly specific business outcomes. And as Dan emphasized throughout the conversation, trust remains central to that equation. “We provide those controls, those guardrails, those are in place, which provides real value for customers because they know that they’re protected by that same set of standards that we hold ourselves accountable to.” 🎙️ Inside Partnering is a podcast for ecosystem builders, alliance leaders, and the people shaping the future of partnerships. Let’s build the future of partnering - together. 📌 If you found this post helpful, would you please consider restacking it and sharing it with your audience? This spreads the word and keeps me interviewing and sharing content that will help you grow your partnership business and career. Thanks for reading Inside Partnering! This post is public so feel free to share it. 🎧 Want more conversations like this? 💌 Subscribe to get new episodes and behind-the-scenes insights: insidepartnering.substack.com [http://insidepartnering.substack.com] Check out all 130+ episodes at InsidePartnering.com [http://InsidePartnering.com] 🔗 Follow Chip on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiprodgers] for daily partnership content and guest clips Know someone Chip should interview? Send a quick email [chip@insidepartnering.com]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insidepartnering.substack.com/subscribe [https://insidepartnering.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]
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