Kelowna, B.C. native Jennifer Warawa is the new executive vice president of partners, accountants and alliances for Sage Group.
Reporting to President Blair Crump, Warawa is taking on this new role to focus on two strategy technology alliances Sage formed last year with Microsoft and Salesforce.
A ten-year veteran of Sage, Warawa is leaving the role of head of product marketing, where she was responsible for Sage’s portfolio of accounting products, including the market launches of Sage’s suite of core cloud accounting technology.
Sage has developed a cloud-first strategy and has put in new incentives in the Sage Partner Program. Sage introduced new channel incentives that will pay solution providers 10 per cent more margins for cloud than on premise.
Warawa told CDN, in a previous interview, Sage is essentially reshaping the business to get to customers and markets first. This new approach brings a new set of challenges. Previously at Sage the company employed market segments such as SMB and Mid-Market. Warawa and her team realized these terms did not resonate with customers. “We could not connect to them and how big do I need to be to find a fit in any of these markets? It was too confusing and the message did not resonate with them,” she added.
Warawa joined Sage in 2008 to run the accountant business in Canada, before being promoted to various leadership roles in accounting products, partners and marketing, and product marketing.
Taking her place in product marketing will be Nick Goode, currently EVP for product management. Goode will oversee a merged product marketing and product management organization, and take the role of EVP Product.
Crump, the former Salesforce senior executive is also new to Sage. He joined late in 2016 in the newly created position of President. Crump said the portfolio of new and improved products will help all the partners win, and there is no-one more recognized or knowledgeable as an expert in the partner community than Jennifer.
“She will be responsible for combining her deep product knowledge, her experience of being a partner to Sage and her fantastic relationships around the world to help our partners go further and grow faster,” he added.
Nancy Harris, who had previously led Sage’s Canadian business will now head up the whole of the North America business as Managing Director.