Saskatoon - First Stop on the 2010 Simply Accounting Listening Tour

What a day! It was the first stop on the 2010 Simply Accounting Tour and it was the best stop yet!

From a Simply perspective, yesterday’s event fully exceeded our expectations. We had a fantastic dialogue and collected some great feedback and suggestions about our business. It was constructive, humbling, and at the end of the day exactly what the Simply team needed. Both customers and Sage Accountant Network members (business partners) provided at ton of useful insight into the product, our business, our marketing, training, and support. Thank you Saskatoon!

One of the greatest things about the day was the knowledge sharing across our small business customers and business partners. We saw business partners reconnect with each other, small business customers connect with new business partners, and we also saw small businesses helping other small businesses. There was a real flare around the dialogue and I think it was because we had a great cross-section of attendees.

Last night the Simply team got together for dinner at Keo’s Kitchen (the new location on 2nd) to talk about the day. We talked about the agenda, tweaked some things, and discussed some of the key learnings. With all the great feedback we decided to create a “Nag List” which we want our customers and partners alike to hold us accountable for. The whole purpose of this tour is to gain feedback and insights and then action on them. We will certainly need to prioritize and focus in on the top concerns/issues/suggestions, but I am already super excited to implement some of them. The power of our customers!

There were two key pieces of feedback that resonated with me:

1) We need to make more business partners aware of all the benefits of the Sage Accountant Network (SAN) program. We could see the energy level in the room rise when we explained everything that is included and particularly what happens at our annual Simply Partnership Conference. It is a blast, don’t miss it this coming October in Vancouver! One of our attendees, Marg, also made a great suggestion about randomizing new customer leads so that preference isn’t always given alphanumerically. Look forward to more information on the SAN program and check out www.simplyaccounting.com/partners/joinSAN/benefits for more information in the meantime.

2) The second takeway was that we need more training in Saskatchewan! Yvonne brought this up in the morning and it was re-confirmed by Doris among others during a deeper discussion in the afternoon. Having Alan Cohen training sessions once a year just isn’t enough to meet the training demand in this province. It was also clear that hands-on training was a clear preference. We will definitely be taking a closer look at this. Simply needs to make it more clear to customers exactly who are business partners are across the province as many of these business partners (we have over 300 business partners in Saskatchewan) provide training to their clients.

The Saskatoon attendees were a fun bunch and one other suggestion for us to improve the session for our next stop that resonated with me was “more dancing”! Get ready Winnipeg, because Hugo is going to put together a routine that is going to blow your socks off!

Thanks again for a great day Saskatoon!

Jamie