Ep080: When AI Meets Accounting - How Sage is Transforming Business Software

From cost management to practical implementation, Sage's Amaya Souarez shares invaluable insights on building AI-powered business tools that deliver measurable value to customers.

Topics Include:

• Amaya Souarez introduced as EVP Cloud Services at Sage
• Overview of Sage: offers accounting, finance, HR and payroll tech for small businesses
• Company emphasizes human values alongside technology development
• Amaya oversees core cloud services and operations across 200+ products
• Sage Co-Pilot announced as new AI assistant – helping automate invoicing and cash flow management
• Common misconceptions with Generative AI
• AI solutions aren’t always solution to every problem
• Compares AI hype to previous blockchain enthusiasm
• Emphasizes starting with clear use cases before implementation
• Difference between task-based and reporting-based use cases
• Partnering with AWS to build accounting-specific language models
• Different accounting terminology varies by country
• Using AWS Bedrock and Lex for a domain-specific language model development
• Multiple AI models may be needed for single solution
• Customer feedback drives project funding decisions
• AI development integrated into regular product roadmaps
• Focus on reducing cost per user for AI features
• Success story: reducing 20-hour task to 5 minutes
• Tracks AI usage costs per customer interaction
• Early Gen AI hype caused confusion in the market
• Plans to make domain-specific models available via API
• Will offer language models on AWS Marketplace
• Emphasizes practical AI application over blind implementation

Participants:

• Amaya Souarez - EVP Cloud Services and Operations, Sage

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon/isv/