Integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems provider, Sage, has appointed sales veteran Robin Chao as the Vice President of Sage Software Asia. According to the company, Chao will lead sales, business strategy development, personnel management, and scale business and sales performance for Sage in Asia.
A 22-year veteran in the IT industry, Chao has experience covering sales in IT and outsourcing, product marketing, new market expansion, GTM build-up and partner development and management. Based out of Singapore now he will be growing and managing Sage Software Asia’s partner ecosystem handling the entire portfolio of segments from startup & small businesses, and scale-ups to enterprises.
In his previous outfit, Chao was Regional Sales Director for South Asia at Epicor Software Asia, where he spent close to a decade. At Epicor he was responsible for ASEAN direct and indirect quota development, strategizing on GTM plans, partner enablement programs implementation, driving ASEAN market expansion, managing and guiding a team of regional country managers and building up both the business and partner community, resulting in growth for the business.
Chao has also held various positions in sales at several IT organizations catering to SMEs and enterprises such as Powermatic Distribution and Singapore Computer Systems and also co-founded an online business in the past.
“In some parts of Asia, such as Singapore, small & medium businesses account for 50% of GDP growth and two-thirds of new employment. At Sage, we want to recognize the contribution these businesses make to the economy and support them with awesome technology,” said Blair Crump, President, Sage.
“Robin will bring to this mission his extensive field experience in sales, partner management, marketing and business operations, and a proven track record in developing and motivating successful sales teams.”
Sage also announced the appointment of Jennifer Warawa as the Executive Vice President of Partners, Accountants, and Alliances, reporting to President Blair Crump. Warawa is beed with Sage for a decade and an accountant by trade. In her new role, she will take responsibility for leading the tech company’s network of partners and accountants as they grow their businesses with Sage, as well as leading on crucial technology alliances with partners like Microsoft and Salesforce.
“I am honored to be given this opportunity – I am looking forward to delivering on our ambition to help business builders in this region manage everything from money to people with brilliant technology,” said Chao.
“These solutions will be essential in mapping the transformation of Asian countries into a fully-fledged digital economy, with pervasive use of new technology in analytics, cloud and bots.”
Along with these appointments, Nick Goode, currently EVP for Product Management at Sage will oversee a merged Product Marketing and Product Management organisation, and take the role of EVP Product.