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Sage Advisor

2012 Innovation Awards

Apr. 17, 2012

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2012 Innovation Awards Nomination:

Sage Advisor
www.sagenorthamerica.com

At Sage, we know that most users of our software don’t use it as effectively or as thoroughly as they should, so we created Sage Advisor. Sage Advisor provides just-in-time advice through a proprietary, intelligent agent that provides advice based on the way users interact with the product. By providing personalized advice at the place and time when users need it, Sage Advisor helps users work more efficiently without overloading them with information that’s not relevant to their needs. Users of Sage Peachtree Accounting 2012 are already receiving this advice and unlocking hidden value in their software investment—they are learning, even as they accomplish real work.

Here are two actual examples of advice currently in Sage Peachtree Accounting 2012.

  • Doug consistently overrides prices on an invoice. The third time a price is overridden (when price levels have not been set up) Sage Advisor intervenes to recommend that he starts to use price levels and offers to explain how to set them up.
  • Jenna repeatedly skips the same fields on an invoice. The fifth time she skips the same fields (and she has never customized the invoice) Sage Advisor prompts her to customize the invoice and shows her a brief video of how to do it.

If users don’t need the advice, then they don’t receive it because the advice is triggered off how they actually use the product.

Sage has applied for a patent to protect the methods behind the technology. It will be used in many Sage products moving forward. Initially, Sage Advisor has been released in Sage Peachtree Accounting 2012. It will next be used in Sage Simply Accounting 2013. In the small business market, users are so busy that they need this very brief, personalized method of improving the way they use their accounting software. The advice saves them time by making them more efficient—and users can learn through these brief interactions while doing real work. Our Sage Advisor technology is the most sophisticated, intelligent coaching system available in any accounting software on the market today.

The way we designed and developed Sage Advisor was also innovative and user-centered. We conducted a series of usability tests with Sage users (and non-users) to design Sage Advisor. We brought users into our usability lab and watched them use prototypes of Sage Advisor, and we used their feedback to design Sage Advisor so it would be helpful without being intrusive. For instance, based on our usability testing, we created a Save for Later feature that flags advice for later viewing. We also gave users full control over how much advice they receive. Encouragingly, throughout our testing, we saw that even the most experienced users were hungry for advice that helped them use the product more effectively.

We believe Sage Advisor merits a CPA Advisor Innovation Award because of the innovative way it was developed and for the way it makes users more productive with their accounting software while they are doing real work.