Sage Future 2026 opened Tuesday at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, with Sage CEO Steve Hare welcoming attendees to the first main stage session of the three-day conference.
Key among announcements during the main state were:
A commitment by Sage and PwC to tackle the AI trust gap in finance with their ‘Beyond the Black Box’ approach because research shows that seven in ten finance leaders will reject AI outputs they cannot explain, highlighting the need for more transparent, accountable AI. Additionally, finance professionals are spending an average of 12.9 hours every week reconstructing, validating and defending AI outputs, resulting in slow and cautious adoption of AI. As a result, 26% of time savings from AI are lost to this reconstruction, verification and explanation work, showing that a lack of transparency doesn’t remove labor, it shifts it into explanatory work that slows scale.
Sage’s acquisition of Doyen AI brings AI-enabled implementation capabilities to help customers and partners migrate from legacy systems to modern Sage solutions faster and more accurately. When customers decide to transition to a Sage solution they have“we want it today”expectations and those expectations require a rapid and accurate deployment and onboarding.
Sage HCM connects Human Resources, Payroll and Workforce data with Sage Intacct financial management to give organizations clearer visibility and control over workforce costs which are often their largest and most dynamic expense, while improving payroll accuracy and supporting better workforce planning.
Incorporation of new Agentic AI into Intacct will reduce fragmentation which is a major problem reported by many businesses. Sage Intacct Planning will provide a more responsive and connected approach to give businesses a single environment for plans, actually and dimensions that will provide a sophisticated forecasting tools to model outcomes with greater confidence and reliability.
An expanded strategic relationship with AWS (Amazon Web Services) that will bring Sage’s AI-powered fintech together with AWS cloud infrastructure and AI Services to enhance SMBs modernize more quickly. The alliance will expand the future of Sage financial tools to bring AI-power to more Sage customers. It will also scale agentic AI resources for Sage Developers using the Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, and accelerate the migration from desktop to cloud. AWS Chief Marketing Officer, Julia White told those attending the event that SMBs shouldn’t have to choose between AI technology and simplicity. So, the new tech arising from this expanded relationship will remove barriers to adoption of AI by potential Sage SMB customers.
The main stage session also featured Mark Hickman, managing director of Sage North America, and Scott Krug, Sr. Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the New York Yankees. Scott has been with the Yankees since 2004 when he was hired as the Director of Internal Audit and Special Projects. When he arrived at the Yankees he found that his job was accounting, with essentially no finance functions, no budgeting, and no outlook to the future.
Soon thereafter Scott was given his first special project, to determine the financial viability of building a new stadium. It was to be a different kind of facility, to provide what the then Yankee Stadium couldn’t provide. At that time, the Yankees was still a family run business where Mr. Steinbrenner was involved in almost every major decision.
But now, every quarter, Scott and his team are projecting what the future really looks like using real time information provided by Sage Intacct since 2023. to do that with. And good thing because the most significant transactions (like player signings) are ‘in the media in moments’ after they occur .
Today, the Yankees’s CFO focuses on what each department’s goals are for the organizations primary goals of offering the ‘best possible product on the field, and the best opportunity for the Yankees to win.’ That means that each of those departments need access and transparency to their financial measures, which makes conversations over finance much easier.
Scott sees an organization’s modernization is as much a mindset shift as it is a systemic (platform) shift. Thus department managers must evolve as a strategic leader that is curious and flexible. Scott believes you can’t sit still… you must evolve, find ways to improve, and how new tech can help you and your business advance because there is always something that can be done better.
There was one clear takeaway from this segment, no matter what the organization, it is the financial leaders that drive clarity, confidence, and growth of every business operating in rapidly changing environments.