SAGE ADVICE

Orange County Business Journal, Oct 20-Oct 26, 2008 by Tolkoff, Sarah

Executive Plucked from Telecom to Lead Big Software Maker

When telecommunications veteran Sue Swenson got a call from a recruiter to head Sage Software Inc.'s operations in Irvine, she thought it was a mistake.

"Have you read my resume?" Swenson said to Paul Walker, chief executive at Sage's British parent, Sage Group PLC. "I wanted to make sure that he was aware of my history."

Walker wasn't looking for another software expert, Swenson said. Sage had plenty.

"I need someone who can lead and manage a big organization," he told Swenson. "I'm looking for someone with that track record."

Swenson, 60, is known as a fixer.

After more than 30 years in telecommunications, she has a reputation for diving into fast-paced turnarounds and implementing big changes at companies in need of a strong leader.

Sage, which sells software that automates office tasks in accounting, human resources and customer relationship management for small businesses, hardly is in trouble.

The company, which has 500 workers here, reported about $1 billion in sales for the 12 months through September 2007. It's set to report results for the 12 months through this September next month.

"I have an opportunity here to take a great set of assets and optimize them," Swenson said. "I'm tasked with taking it from where it is today into a different phase."

She was brought in to help Sage through some growing pains from a restructuring and to double sales in the next few years.

Last year, the company decentralized U.S. operations to help independent resellers of its software work more efficiently with Sage's some 2 million customers.

The company's structure has changed dramatically as it digests 20 acquisitions it's made in the past 10 years.

Its decentralized model, which consists of business units in Irvine, Beaverton, Ore., Tampa, FIa., and McLean, Va., has caused roadblocks for Sage's workers.

"Sometimes the way we are organized gets in the way of them really serving customers," Swenson said.

Workers were running into trouble getting customers in touch with the right people to take advantage of chances to sell them on other Sage products.

Swenson conducted focus groups with workers to come up with a way to foster communication.

A quick fix was to put the appropriate contact people on a special network used by Sage's workers.

"We've been able to bridge the gap with technology, but it's really a stop-gap until we can be better at serving our customers more broadly," Swenson said.

Executive Changes

Swenson also was brought in to shake things up a bit after some big changes in the upper ranks.

Former Sage Software chief executive Ron Verni, who led the North American unit from Atlanta, and former chief financial officer Jim Eckstaedt, were ousted last year by Sage's British board.

Sage Group's Walker cited low profits and sluggish growth excluding acquisitions as the primary reason for the overhaul.

"We've tended to be a little bit insular," Swenson said. "We need to take a more strategic view of where the market is going, who the competition is and where we are positioned. It helps frame for people the scope of what you need to do and the order that you need to do it in."

Swenson joins the ranks of just a handful of female chief executives in the area. She is one of the few women to head a major technology company here.

She said she's been received "with a little bit of questioning because my style is very different."

"I was intentionally brought in for that reason," Swenson said.

"I learned a lot from her," said Matt Carter, general manager of Irvine's Boost Mobile LLC, a unit of Sprint Nextel Corp.

Carter worked under Swenson at San Diego's Leap Wireless International Inc., a provider of prepaid cell phone service.

"She was a very operationally focused executive," Carter said. "Leap was an entrepreneurial company. She came in and knew how to scale it. She's an accomplished executive."

The pace at Sage is slower than in the wireless industry, where Swenson also worked at Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile USA Inc.

"I came from a 24/7 business where I needed to worry about whether the networks were working all the time, where you are always on, monitoring things," she said. "I thought my BlackBerry was broken the first week I was here."

Swenson 's an early riser who gets on the road before dawn, a habit that stems from her years of 5 a.m. workouts as a competitive swimmer.

"That has been my normal day since I was 12," she said. Swenson is known as an energetic, direct communicator. She doesn't spend much time in the comer office or in meetings - she prefers to visit all of Sage's operations, even its large call center in Irvine.

"People must think I'm crazy," she said. "But I've always been a fan of being close to the frontline. I get into the organization because I think you need to continuously talk to people who are doing the work to really understand what's going on."

Swenson, who lives in north San Diego County, has had a long telecommunications career.

Her first job was as a customer service representative for Pacific Bell, now AT&T Inc., when she was attending San Diego State University in the 1970s.