From Tactical to Strategic: Dan Miller on AI-Powered Finance

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Emily Madere: How are you enjoying the conference?

Dan Miller: I'm loving the conference. I've had so many great discussions with CFOs. You know, the all the accounting staff, some of the operations folks that are using X3. It's been a really good conference so far. Very exciting.

Emily Madere: I guess maybe. What was your most memorable conversation? Was it a CFO coming up to you and saying, Sage Intacct [00:00:30] transform my business. I'm now able to go to my kid's baseball game.

Dan Miller: So actually, not that far off. Okay. Yeah. So I was at the CFO dinner the other night, and I talked to three CFOs, different industries, and they were asking questions about how they can adopt some of the technologies that we're introducing here that they had known about but hadn't really figured out. So how are they going to use them? One of the one of the conversations was around AP automation and how they could use [00:01:00] AP automation. What it would really look like. You know, some one of the CFOs had a CEO who wanted to understand why they should trust the AI. And actually, what Aaron was sharing about our trust label was key for for them, because now they have something right in product they can show. See, this is why you should trust this. This is this is designed to be trustable, something that you can rely on as being done with integrity. And so, you [00:01:30] know, it really helped them understand how they might be able to actually spend the weekends on, you know, kid's soccer games.

Emily Madere: Baseball games, soccer games, football games.

Matt Lescault: So we just jumped right into it.

Dan Miller: We did.

Matt Lescault: This is the I.

Emily Madere: Know I guess I.

Matt Lescault: Guess I should officially.

Emily Madere: Introduce the the podcast. Um. Hello, listeners. Hello. Hello, Dan. Um, this is the unofficial Sage Intacct podcast. Um, we are here at at Sage future. Um, having a great time, you know, talking to to marketplace partners, uh, customers of Sage Intacct, our eisneramper customers. Unfortunately, you have to [00:02:00] spend some time with Matt.

Matt Lescault: No no, no. You know, you have a better time with me than you do with anybody else.

Emily Madere: I do.

Matt Lescault: I do.

Emily Madere: Um, and today we're speaking with. With Dan Miller. So if you're living under a rock.

Matt Lescault: I guess.

Emily Madere: Dan, will you introduce yourself?

Dan Miller: Yeah. Living under a rock? Yeah. So I've been with the Intech team for about 15 years now. I now run the financials and ERP division where I'm responsible for all of our midsize products at Sage.

Matt Lescault: Now, you came from Intuit, didn't you.

Dan Miller: Long [00:02:30] ago? Yes, I did. I was at Intuit for many years prior to coming down.

Matt Lescault: You're an Intuit convert.

Dan Miller: I am an Intuit convert.

Matt Lescault: Now, did you actually code intact in the early days?

Dan Miller: Not intact. I did QuickBooks, actually.

Matt Lescault: Oh, you did QuickBooks?

Dan Miller: No, I joined in when I joined intact. I joined to run the product management and strategy team. And so when when intact was quite small, uh, you know, sub 100 employees, uh, you know, back in 2010.

Matt Lescault: That's [00:03:00] amazing. Now, before we move on to, like, what we're here to talk about, I brought you something. This is a cookie that is all about the Sage unofficial Sage Intacct podcast.

Dan Miller: Awesome.

Matt Lescault: And a sticker for you.

Dan Miller: Excellent.

Matt Lescault: Because we want to make sure that we have it on brand, that we are always bringing goods to the people that are willing to talk to us.

Dan Miller: We're bribery on the laptop.

Matt Lescault: So what was amazing, you know, [00:03:30] on your main stage, you really talked about where the future and and that's a terrible statement.

Emily Madere: The future at future, I mean, it.

Matt Lescault: Makes the future at future. But what the future of intact and really Sage from an AI perspective where it's going. Yeah. Um, and I have to say that I'm really excited for it, but without us repeating exactly what you said on the stage, can you give us a little bit insight into kind of like what the vision that you're seeing. You, Aaron, the [00:04:00] complete executive team of where the path will go in the next couple of years for for Sage when it comes to AI deployment.

Dan Miller: Yeah, I'm happy to kind of summarize what that looks like for us. We our history has been to create solutions based on our conversations with customers around what their what what's the pain and the experience that they have. Where do they feel like they're getting stuck? And it's not so much about [00:04:30] how they're using the product. It's much more about what the business problem is that they're running into. And what we continue to find is that finance teams and operations teams across industries are running into the challenge of not enough staff to do everything they need to do. They're they're juggling, you know, or, you know, wearing multiple hats, juggling multiple jobs. And because of that, they can't [00:05:00] really spend enough time looking forward. And they feel the pressure, the expectation they need to be looking forward, especially on the finance teams where they're a part of helping show what's possible for their organization to achieve their mission. And so where we're bringing AI into that is how do we reduce the amount of work that they have to do as a tool that comes alongside them. So our AI is not something off the side. Our AI is built into the core [00:05:30] tasks they're doing. It's easily accessible through generative experiences, and we're looking at how the agentic world will help actually automate whole workflows. Like I talked about what we're doing with the close, moving the close up earlier in the life cycle. So it's not really a close. It's a continuous close. And that's a big deal for us because we know Lots of prospective customers either have a long closed period, or I actually know [00:06:00] of many customers that I've talked to that are now customers where their previous system didn't allow them to really close the books at all, ever. Um, they guessed at where they really were and then kind of just kept going. And we are building the toolset to allow that to happen, basically, as transactions are getting entered into the system, that's really where we're headed.

Matt Lescault: So I'm about eight years into Sage conferences myself. Okay. And continuous close has been something that has been talked about forever. And I don't know if I [00:06:30] believed it.

Dan Miller: I'm not sure I believed it at first.

Matt Lescault: And, uh.

Emily Madere: It's like a bedtime story. Well, it was kind of like, you know, read to bed when you go to bed. And it's like, I don't know if it's ever going to happen.

Dan Miller: A little fairy.

Emily Madere: Tale, a little bit of fairy tale. Like, is it the princess? Is it? We don't know.

Matt Lescault: But I'll tell you what. This conference and the way that you showed the, uh. What was the close workspace? Workspace? Yeah, it was kind of the first moment that I said, I get it, I really [00:07:00] get it. And part of what my background is in outsourced accounting, and we always said, like, do you want us to do a soft reconciliation every day or every week or every month? And that's really the concept of continuous close. But the way that you have the workspace built, it was like an aha moment for me. Can you talk a little bit about that and kind of the vision that went into that, that capability?

Dan Miller: Yeah I can so that's a great kind of launching pad. The closed workspace [00:07:30] is where the finance team can collaborate around what's going on throughout the closed cycle. But our, our, our vision for that is not to use it at the end of the period. Our, our perspective is that this is going to be an area where they collaborate throughout the entire month, and it's an becomes an ongoing process. What I really imagine happening is the closed workspace. The closed workspace actually morphs a bit into a [00:08:00] validation center that all of this stuff has already happened.

Matt Lescault: The daily workspace, right?

Dan Miller: Yeah. So they don't have to they're not really closing. They're just watching. They still want those tasks to occur. They want to have confidence that their accruals happen the way they they need to, because that's still something that's real. They still need to know, where do I stand? Those kinds of things need to happen. And so they're going to want to be able to see did it happen. And you know when there's an anomaly be able to follow up on that anomaly. [00:08:30] That's what I see this evolving into.

Emily Madere: And I and I think too, like everything you're saying is great. I work with clients daily helping them evaluate intact and watch them grow with intact. Um, so I think this is going to help them tremendously, but it's the trust behind it. And you kind of alluded to the trust in Sage's I. And I remember Vegas last year at Sage. Transform. Um. Aaron said, you know, he had hundreds of patents out for anti hallucinogenic AI. Um, so we talk a little bit [00:09:00] more about like, the trust aspect.

Dan Miller: Yeah. I'm happy to, uh, yeah. I mentioned the trust label, um, as we were getting started. We know that accountants by profession and their nature just want to have confidence. Is this done with integrity? And one of the things that we have designed into the system, uh, is the ability to, you know, do a drill down basically into. So how did we arrive at the recommendation or the, you know, the, the [00:09:30] place that we're recommending. They, they, they take action with just a click or, you know, you know, you know, a little scroll on the screen. It'll show you how did you get to this recommendation? Why did you get there? I like the one that we did for some of the cash forecasting because it shows, you know, there's a there's a range of, you know, how the forecast could kind of play out. You know, if you were aggressive, it could look like this. If you were getting super conservative, it could look look like this. We chose the middle of the road as [00:10:00] the what we suggested to you over time. We'll see. What did they end up doing? And so okay. They don't like the, the the middle of the road. They like the ultra conservative one. So we can make some changes. But they had visibility into that. Um, and then in addition, as Aaron was talking about our trust label, there's a set of principles that we use in how we use the customers data, um, that they agree to. Um, so and they know that we're going to do things with a [00:10:30] certain level of integrity that's built into the system so that they have can have confidence in, in how we are using their data, how the algorithms work, so they can have confidence in what we're doing and we make that all visible for them.

Matt Lescault: So what you're telling me is really it's an AI audit trail.

Dan Miller: Yes, there is an I audit trail behind the scenes. We're capturing every single decision that we're making in an audit. An audit trail. Um, we're working out how we want to be able to [00:11:00] show that to the customer. It could be anything from, like we were showing at the bottom for the cash forecast, where it shows a couple of different options. Or do we want to be able to provide a report that shows them, here's all the decisions that we or recommendations that we're making and how we arrived at the conclusions. Um, we're we are capturing that information at every point.

Matt Lescault: So something interesting that you said a little bit earlier in this conversation, which was to try to reduce the work. And I actually I want to challenge that. I don't think [00:11:30] that we're going to reduce the work that accountants are doing. I think we're going to shift the work that accountants are doing. And you kind of alluded to it. And I just I just want to be very specific about this. I think we're going to shift it to what is more value driven.

Dan Miller: Yeah. You're right. It's it's not I'm not. So somebody that is, you know, has a, a job that's, you know, a certain number, a certain amount of time is also going to have to work less. That's I don't think that's realistically going to happen. I think in this especially I'll talk just about the accounting profession. There's [00:12:00] a shortage of staff at almost every company. You're always behind. And so what I'm trying to do is not have less people. I'm trying to have less nights and weekends, less time doing things that are manual and more things that are looking forward. As I was talking about earlier, I want the.

Matt Lescault: Tactical.

Dan Miller: Less tactical. Yes. That's right. Yeah, that's that's a great way to describe it is we really are trying to help the finance teams, as I talked about [00:12:30] in the keynote, be much more of the business partner that's looking into the future for the business. The CFO and their their staff are some of the most central people within a company. In my personal experience and working with my finance business partners, they know more about the business than almost anybody on my team.

Matt Lescault: At least they should. Right. Yeah.

Emily Madere: But oftentimes they're they're kind of looked at last, though, as as I'm talking to CFOs, it's often, [00:13:00] yeah, we want Sage Intacct. We see its value, but sometimes they have to fight to get it.

Dan Miller: Yeah. That often happens. You know, the, the the tool set that, uh, the finance team often is living with is subpar versus, say, what they're doing for revenue. You know, for from a sales perspective. Um, yeah, I, I, I'll come alongside any CFO that needs help and help them make sure they get the tools that they need.

Matt Lescault: So one of the things that I really like about where Sage [00:13:30] is going and where your vision is going, is that so much the finance office has been looked at as a cost center, not a strategic center. And with the capabilities of Copilot, with the capabilities of intact. I think we can start shifting that thought process into it really being that strategic partner to the CEO and really helping drive the revenue along side of sales. And so that's what I'm really excited about seeing through this. [00:14:00] And I want to talk a little bit more about the fear that I think a lot of accountants have of what copilot or generally I have in their jobs. And I want to talk about this isn't coming for your jobs. This is this is this is not that. And I like to I like to hear a little bit more from you.

Dan Miller: Yeah. It's not I, I, you know, as I was talking about what we and you suggested, we're really trying to help, help the finance team be more strategic, you know, invest their time more on opposed [00:14:30] to doing the tactical. We are trying to do that. And I think that the kinds of tools that we're creating still require or allow for. Review. They allow for, um, intervention if needed. Um, they're they're there as a tool set to help the human element to help us as, as as people be able to be more effective in what we [00:15:00] do. Uh, not to replace anything that we do. Um, we're trying to make sure that, uh, we can, I think, do what most accountants went to school for. I don't think most accountants went to school to spend hours and hours and hours, you know, moving data between Excel and some other Excel spreadsheet and, you know, some system. That's not what people went to school for.

Emily Madere: That's not what they want to do.

Dan Miller: No. So, you know, I want to I want to be able to fulfill that, that dream of where they were going to [00:15:30] where they were going, which was really to help businesses be successful. And I believe we can do that.

Matt Lescault: Absolutely. Absolutely. We've been talking a lot about Sage Intacct.

Emily Madere: And yeah, on the unofficial Sage Intacct podcast. I would, I would assume.

Matt Lescault: But that's not the only products that we're talking about. And what you announced is that in X3, Sage Copilot is launched and embedded. Now, I don't have a lot of experience in Sage three, but I have a little bit of knowledge about [00:16:00] it. Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like for the customers of X3?

Dan Miller: Yeah, so X3 is a pretty amazing technology platform that, uh, is great at solving for true ERP needs and that solution around process manufacturing. Uh, I think, you know, creating, um, uh, energy drinks, um, uh, breakfast sandwiches, um, uh, [00:16:30] or, uh, you know, or around, you know, a larger distributor that has more complex distribution requirements.

Matt Lescault: Well, we see it as we're partner in South Africa in mining, agriculture, Exactly. All that kind of stuff.

Dan Miller: Right? Yeah. So we're bringing copilot into that product first around, um, the operations role. We're coming along the operations team to help them have visibility into inventory, uh, purchasing customer [00:17:00] orders. Because what we're trying to do is create a 360 degree view so that the operations team can make prioritization decisions about what's most important right now, as they're fulfilling orders to customers. There are times in a business where they have to prioritize, uh, short term revenue to be able to meet cash demand. And there are times where what they really want to prioritize is being able to deliver on a customer sat, uh, for some of their high value customers. [00:17:30] And so we've created the tooling that will allow copilot to do that order fulfillment, prioritization on behalf of the staff and make those recommendations that they can then push through to to production.

Matt Lescault: And x3's native cloud as well. Just like intact. Correct?

Dan Miller: That's not correct. It is, it is. It is currently cloud hosted product.

Matt Lescault: Okay.

Dan Miller: It is actually we announced to our partners that it is a going to have a [00:18:00] true native cloud solution coming out this fall.

Matt Lescault: Okay. Exciting. That is a big step for it. And X3 from my understanding is is a huge push and priority for Sage. Um, a complement to what Intacct is. That's right. And uh, and really being driven from a global perspective.

Dan Miller: That's right. Yeah. So we our approach is to serve the industries that we serve. And we really look at it from a subindustry or even [00:18:30] a micro industry. Uh, and really building solutions that are great for those particular needs, set of needs and we have realized that we're intact. Play is best is in service based industries and also in construction. And then also it's a great financial solution for a distributor, a smaller distributor manufacturer, the one that has a little more complex needs. [00:19:00] The flexibility of the X3 platform that has more depth in its operations capability is a much better answer. And so we are investing in our platform technologies that we've been talking about here at the conference to enable us to leverage both of those products to serve the specific needs of specific industries on a global basis.

Matt Lescault: Is it fair to say that intact is more of a configuration based solution? In X3 is more of a custom development capability [00:19:30] solution.

Dan Miller: It has that ability. We have been investing a lot into X3's Reuse capabilities so that it can also be a configuration based solution. As we're moving to a multi-tenant cloud environment we are at, you are enabling a more configuration based deployment to speed up that implementation and show that time to value for new customers.

Matt Lescault: I think it's a big, big change in kind of what the history has been to what today or what the future could be [00:20:00] for for X3, because what I understand is kind of some of the barrier of entry was that that that implementation was a was a heavier lift on that product.

Dan Miller: That's right. And we know as we go to a cloud deployment model what could take a couple of weeks to get the first provisioning process done can now be done in a matter of an hour. And so we're working on how we speed up that whole time to value at the beginning of the implementation.

Emily Madere: So I have a question. This is kind of off the off the streets, [00:20:30] if you will. Um, we've talked a lot about and I think on the streets in the conference center, people are talking about AI and Copilot. And there's a question is what exactly is copilot? I think we all have a good idea, but how does it relate to Sage AI? There's a lot of confusion between those two.

Dan Miller: Yeah. Think about copilot as the experience you use to interact with AI services. Um, so, uh, we. You're you want to ask a question [00:21:00] about how to get something done, and, uh, and then you want to ask or you want to interact with, uh, you know, accomplishing a task copilot is a experience that allows you to use natural language or in many, in some cases, will prompt you to, you know, what should be the next step you walk through. Um, that feels friendly and familiar. That's the copilot component. Behind all of that is Sage AI. So our [00:21:30] our AI capabilities in the close in, um, AP automation, in cash, cash forecasting, etc. are all AI services that are built into the solution where the way you interact with them is through this natural language interface so that, you know, think of it as, you know, in, in in common terms that get used. It's natural language. Generative AI is allowing us to be able to interpret what customers are looking for, [00:22:00] and then we direct that to the right AI service to fulfill that requirement.

Emily Madere: Okay. I just memorized everything you just said. Um, and I will let people in the street know.

Dan Miller: Excellent. Well, I think I think what I would add to that is think about it as Sage AI copilot is an experience. Um, you know, we're embedding AI into our applications to help them with work. They get to experience it through something that's easy to understand.

Matt Lescault: I think it's really important to mention here, [00:22:30] because I had a misconception of Sage copilot and I ran into Aaron Harris in Canada and I asked the questions like.

Emily Madere: Ran into Aaron Harris in Canada.

Matt Lescault: I might have cornered him or something uh, it was at the accountants conference, quite frankly. Um, and I thought, who is is copilot just a a extension of Microsoft Copilot in which it is not? No. And I want to make sure that that is widely understood is that copilot is more of a term. It [00:23:00] is more of the accepted term now for, uh, for AI deployment within products, whether it's Sage, HubSpot. Microsoft. But Sage is not built on Microsoft Copilot. It uses multiple Llms to deliver its capabilities, and it builds very specific agents around the knowledge of Sage technology.

Dan Miller: That's correct.

Matt Lescault: Is that a fair thing to say?

Dan Miller: Yeah.

Dan Miller: That's correct. Yeah. So our [00:23:30] yeah, our copilot is not Microsoft Copilot behind the scenes. It's our tech. You know, as you said, running across our AI services, our LMS, that and others. We're using things both off the shelf and our own capabilities. And we, uh, we use the the correct technology behind the scenes to do what the activity is that we're trying to accomplish.

Matt Lescault: Well, it's interesting. I, uh, yesterday met with a client and they was like, oh, the accounting field is so slow [00:24:00] to take on AI. And the conversation that I had with this individual was like, there's a little bit more depth that needs to go like ChatGPT. The reason that we see so many hallucinations is that it looks at the internet widely and pulls back information, but you can have competing information depending on what site you're looking at. So from my assumption, and I'm going to use assumption because I am not a technologist. But my assumption is you are in Sage [00:24:30] has had to really look at how we confine the information that is used to deliver the results that the AI is providing to the customers, right?

Dan Miller: Yeah.

Emily Madere: And to add on to that too. So, um, we work with a lot of healthcare clients too. They need to be HIPAA compliant. So kind of tag on to that is the AI. Will it be HIPAA compliant?

Dan Miller: Uh, we haven't gotten into that level of depth yet. But the big thing with, with um, [00:25:00] being HIPAA compliant is who has access to the patient records, most of which don't actually show up in your financials. Um, because we don't do patient billing. Um, so there there are some, uh, there are, you know, as we do help our healthcare customers, we're making sure we're clear around what we are using and which service so that they can know as we're, um, as they're adopting services, whether they are allowed to use that service or not. [00:25:30] So we're being careful around that so that we can provide HIPAA compliance when we need to. Yeah. Um, so back to your question. I'm trying to remember exactly where we were going with that.

Matt Lescault: No, it was just it was just the concept of the the care and duty that you have in Sage has had to take to, to to limit.

Dan Miller: Yeah, we've had to we've, we we have been, uh, as we look at what we can do with off the shelf capabilities, [00:26:00] uh, you know, versus what we need to do to be serving the needs of accountants, there's a level of expectation around accuracy that we have to hit that you can't readily get with off the shelf technology. Um, you were mentioning, you know, what happens with, uh, ChatGPT. You know, we've done similar kinds of tests looking at asking about how do you accomplish Publish a reconciliation. [00:26:30] Just to keep it simple, I just want to know how you run a reconciliation. And you can even say, you know, how do you run a reconciliation? And intact, depending on exactly how you ask the question, you might get one of several different answers running it through ChatGPT. And they have access to a lot of the information about intact. But the information is across the web. And I've looked at them, and sometimes it's right and sometimes it's not.

Matt Lescault: Or.

Matt Lescault: Sometimes it's partially right,

Dan Miller: And sometimes it's partially.Right, which is very confusing. But when [00:27:00] we run, when we run it against our content and we narrowed the scope of what it can do, we know it's right. And so we're continuing to use our own technology so that we can make sure and technology that we're building collaboratively with AWS so that we can.

Emily Madere: That was a big announcement.

Dan Miller: That was a big announcement. Uh, yeah. We're we're going to continue down that path because between us and our in our partnership with AWS. There's a lot that we can do [00:27:30] to, uh, hit that level of expectation, uh, of, of accuracy that our customers really need. You can't be 70% right in accounting.

Matt Lescault: You can't just be 90% right, right.

Dan Miller: You need to be right.

Emily Madere: 100% of the time.

Dan Miller: Yeah.

Matt Lescault: Well, I'll go 99. Let's be fair.

Dan Miller: In the terms of volume of mid market customer. I'd go 99.99% of the time.

Matt Lescault: So we're [00:28:00] here at Sage Future in Atlanta. When's the next one coming.

Dan Miller: That's a really good question. I am.

Dan Miller: Happy.

Emily Madere: You're about.

Dan Miller: To tell us. I'm going to tell you.

Dan Miller: I am happy to be able to tell you that the next one, next April, will be in San Francisco, which is great because, uh, the original headquarters of of Intacct Sage Intacct is in San Jose, and that's actually where we had one of the early conferences that I was a part of a number of years ago, um, [00:28:30] in South San Francisco. So it's great to be able to be in another home of Sage and be able to draw customers to the West Coast. So I'm really excited about that.

Matt Lescault: Does that mean you live?

Dan Miller: I live in I live near San Jose, California.

Emily Madere: Okay.

Emily Madere: So you'll be in the same time zone. You won't be jet lagged.

Dan Miller: About an hour away. Okay.

Dan Miller: Yeah, I won't be jet lagged. So.

Matt Lescault: So wait a second. Can we tell listeners your address so everybody can see?

Dan Miller: No you can't.

Matt Lescault: No. But. And then I think in November we got Fort Lauderdale for, [00:29:00] for.

Matt Lescault: For the partners.

Dan Miller: For the partners.

Dan Miller: Yeah.That's right. Yeah.

Matt Lescault: And what can we expect there.

Dan Miller: Well we're going to. So with our partners we will be kicking off our new fiscal year. We think of our partners as being us. Our partners are not just another set of companies that we work with. Our partners are an extension of who's Sage is. And as we kick off our our new fiscal year in October, in early November. We do the same thing with our partners as we roll out how we're going to collaboratively [00:29:30] help our customers be successful into our fiscal 26. And we go deeper into what success looks like and all of the great things that are coming from a technology perspective that they can count on to build our businesses together.

Emily Madere: And do you hear that, partners? Because I, a lot of partners walked up to me and said they listened to the podcast. Yeah, you're talking directly to them.

Matt Lescault: And I do want to give a shout out like nothing's perfect. But [00:30:00] I do commend how Sage Intacct Sage in general has really been a partner led organization, really supports the partners. And I think, uh, I think it was Dallas was the last time we had a true just partner, uh, experience. And that was such an amazing event. I'm really looking forward to it.

Dan Miller: I am as well. I you know, I really like being able to get together with partners, being very focused on partners, as we did Tuesday morning. This this week, because you can have really deep conversations [00:30:30] about what's helping. You know, they have a particularly good, they have a particularly good perspective on what customers really need because they they look at helping a broad group of customers. And so they help us really narrow in on what's going to be great for a particular industry or sub industry.

Matt Lescault: Yeah.

Dan Miller: Yeah.

Matt Lescault: Well that's great. Now, before we wrap up, we have a kind of a a tradition [00:31:00] on the podcast.

Emily Madere: Oh wait, wait, I have some more. I have like let me just ask you some questions though. Okay. So. Okay. I thought about these before. So one of my favorite questions to ask all my guests is what does your family think you do?

Emily Madere: Okay.

Emily Madere: Because if you asked my family, they would they would have no idea. They would say, in fact, I work with enact and that would be good.

Dan Miller: Uh, yeah. Uh, my family thinks that I get up on [00:31:30] stage and talk to people because they see the pictures.

Dan Miller: Of me up on stage.

Dan Miller: No, they they they know pretty well what it is that I do. I mean, I it may not be quite exactly right because, you know, how do you explain what it really means to run a division of a bunch of software companies but.

Dan Miller: Uh, but it, uh, they know pretty well that I'm not just that face up on stage.

Matt Lescault: You know what's funny about that? My seven year old says, I want to be like you because you just talk to people. And [00:32:00] trust me, I don't do. This is not the only thing I do.

Emily Madere: Um, okay, so we're at a conference. You know, a lot of vendors are giving away swag. So what's your favorite swag item you've ever received?

Dan Miller: Favorite swag item I have ever received? Oh, that's a good one.

Emily Madere: I know.

Dan Miller: I, I like, uh, comfortable sweatshirts. And there was I got a really nice Patagonia one. Okay, so I really I like that, yeah.

Emily Madere: Okay.

Matt Lescault: What's yours.

Emily Madere: Up at [00:32:30] this conference.

Matt Lescault: In general?

Matt Lescault: No,

Dan Miller: General. You're asking in general.

Emily Madere: Okay, wait. I'm just going to say it that if you got 10,000 points at the Sage shop, you were able to get a pair of tennis shoes.

Dan Miller: You want the tennis shoes?

Emily Madere: And I got I got the tennis shoes.

Dan Miller: You got the tennis shoes.

Emily Madere: I got them.

Dan Miller: Oh that's awesome. They got the Sage shoes.

Emily Madere: I can't wait to walk into client's office and be like, look at these shoes.

Dan Miller: That's awesome.

Matt Lescault: I'm jealous. I really am. I wanted the shoes.

Dan Miller: Get out there and get some points.

Matt Lescault: I have not gotten any points. I think [00:33:00] I think that ship has sailed.

Emily Madere: Yes, I think they they X'd out the shoes as available options.

Matt Lescault: So I just I heard that Dan was going to personally send me a pair.

Emily Madere: Oh yes. We'll work on that.

Emily Madere: Um, I don't know. Any fun questions off the top of my head. We've done a lot of asking you questions. Do you have any questions for us?

Matt Lescault: Yeah.

Dan Miller: What has been your favorite part of the conference so far?

Matt Lescault: For me, I'm really lucky as individual. I know a ton of the [00:33:30] Sage people here. Uh, and my my big value from these, uh, from these events is getting to get face time with all the people that I work with, uh, and have teams meetings, and it's always like, we got 30 minutes to get as much as we can in that moment and just keep, keep moving and to have that moment to, uh, to have a bite to eat, to have a drink, to just say hi. Uh, and so for me, that's, that's what it is. That's what this is all about. Uh, [00:34:00] it's interesting, uh, one of my colleagues coined this, ah, Super Bowl.

Dan Miller: Awesome.

Emily Madere: The Super Bowl. Um, so I have been in the Sage ecosystem for a lot less time than than Matt has, um, this selling Sage Intacct was kind of my first big girl job coming out of college. And so this is my fourth big Super Bowl Sage event. And over these past four years, just like what Matt said, the opportunity to to meet people from partners [00:34:30] to marketplace partners to now you up close is kind of cool. I'm kind of fangirling.

Matt Lescault: Oh, no. I'm not fangirling, by the way.

Dan Miller: That's good.

Emily Madere: He's definitely fangirling. Um, I think yeah, go with Matt said just the opportunity to to meet people IRL, if you will.

Matt Lescault: And I don't want to take away from the sessions that you guys do, the learnings that are available. Those are amazing opportunities. But I think for us and, uh, for what our roles are, [00:35:00] it is the it is the, the person to person opportunity.

Dan Miller: I totally agree. I mean, it's so it's so nice to be able to talk with people face to face, ask questions, learn and see.

Emily Madere: How tall they are.

Dan Miller: See how tall they are. Yeah, I've run into people I've talked to. It's like.

Dan Miller: Oh Yeah, I'm not very tall, so there's a lot of this going on.

Dan Miller: Yeah. That's that's great.

Matt Lescault: It's funny you say that because I've met people that I was like, uh. Wow, you're six four. I didn't expect that. And then I had somebody [00:35:30] come up to me and be like, I really thought, you're a lot shorter.

Matt Lescault: But no, as we wrap it up, what's our tradition?

Emily Madere: Um, we just. We just leave the room? No, um, we always do a dad joke at the end.

Dan Miller: You do.

Emily Madere: The podcast. Wait, wait. And normally, our guests are pretty surprised, like, oh, my gosh, I didn't even know. And they sometimes come up with some spot. Um, but we didn't have to tell you because you always come to the Sage event with a dad joke.

Matt Lescault: You were called [00:36:00] out by one of our guests as the dad joke guy.

Emily Madere: If anyone was going to have one you were so I guess.

Dan Miller: Yeah.

Emily Madere: What's a dad joke?

Dan Miller: This has become a thing since Covid. I have turned into the dad joke guy because I started doing them in internal, internal meetings that have now turned into it's an expectation. It is that I am called out on if I don't fulfill.

Matt Lescault: So we want [00:36:30] your worst.

Dan Miller: My worst, worst no dad joke.

Dan Miller: I have one, but I actually kind of like it.

Matt Lescault: Okay, I'll go with that. Go with that.

Dan Miller: Okay. Because I was I thought about using this with the partners the other day. I chose not to because the the rhythm we were in just didn't quite fit this joke.

Emily Madere: But this is perfect platform.

Dan Miller: Yeah, this is perfect platform. Because I was going to say, because I was getting such a rough time from a couple of folks about doing dad jokes at the beginning of all of the, you know, keynote kind of things. You know, I was going [00:37:00] to say, you know, I was getting a really rough time on I was on this team meeting, um, that, you know, with the, the staff about doing, you know, how I was going to open the keynote and I was saying, you know, I, you know, so I just did a dad joke with them And I just, you know, I was on this teams meeting and I just found out that I wasn't remotely funny.

Emily Madere: The listeners, obviously you can't see the room that we're in, but but literally all of our guest audience [00:37:30] laughs. That was a good one.

Dan Miller: That was a good one.

Emily Madere: That was a good one.

Matt Lescault: That was good. So we really appreciate you coming on and taking the time. I know you have to be amazingly busy at the conference, but it's really important for the listeners, for people to hear where Sage is going and so greatly, uh.

Matt Lescault: Thankful for your time.

Dan Miller: Yeah, really happy to do it.

Matt Lescault: Yeah, that just means that he's agreeing to do it every time. Every time, every time.

Matt Lescault: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. [00:38:00]

Emily Madere: Well, thank you so much again. Thank you to our listeners for listening.

Matt Lescault: Absolutely.