This month’s cover story is focused on communication, something that’s high on the priority list of most business owners I speak with. There’s an art to communicating well. We see it in the work of great speakers who seem natural at capturing our attention. Yet there’s work behind that seeming effortlessness. Of course, it’s not just in speaking engagements where our communication skills come into play. It’s still surprising to me how much we accomplish at our keyboards, managing conversations with people around the world, without a word actually being spoken. That accelerated pace of communication has been an important driver of change in business, enabling faster decision making. Our expectations for getting fast answers have increased in direct line with technological advances. By going online, we can get immediate answers to questions, participate in user group discussions to share ideas, and more easily gather research that helps us make the decisions we need to move business ahead. Our communications skills are critical. The communications tools we use every day bring businesses closer to customers than ever before.

At Sage Software our customers have been central to how we drive our business. Through our ongoing communication with you, we learn more about your needs for business today and your dreams for the future. To ensure we always remain well connected to our customers, our business structure evolves, as do our products. In the past 18 months, we’ve added two new divisions—our Healthcare and Payment Solutions divisions—to meet the needs of physicians’ practices and merchants. In the past few months we’ve combined our other businesses to form two new customer-focused divisions: Business Management and Industry & Specialized Solutions. These changes more closely align us with our customers’ interests, providing the focus to develop and deliver products and services tuned to their needs.

Being a successful business today requires excellence in operations, in products, and in being connected to customers. To me, the customer is at the center of it all. That makes customer connection, and the communications needed to achieve it, key to winning in business; and that’s where our cover story kicks in. Check it out for some great ideas on how you can improve communications in your business and take a step to being
closer to your customers.

Enjoy this issue of Business Minds magazine, and let us know what’s on your mind by dropping us a line at businessmindsmagazine@sage.com.

Sincerely,

Ron Verni
President and CEO
Sage Software
‘Your Business in Mind’