Nancy Harris, who has been in charge of the Canadian operation at Sage, is leaving Canada to become essentially the new North American channel chief of the company.
Harris has been running Sage Canada for just over five years and will be replaced by Paul Struthers, who succeeds her as executive vice president and managing director of Sage Canada.
The position is based in Richmond, B.C. and Struthers plans to take over the role effective Aug. 22.
One source close to the situation told CDN that Harris plans to move back to Texas, where she is from originally.
Nancy Harris
Harris’ new role comprises several aspects such as Sage’s Construction and Real Estate portfolio along with all North American Partner Programs. In addition, she will now assume responsibility for Professional Services for North America.
At the Sage Summit 2016, worldwide channel chief Alan Laing announced the company is dramatically consolidating all 54 partner programs down to just one central program called the Sage Partner Program (SPP).
Harris was promoted in 2015 to her EVP role with responsibility for driving Canadian market strategy and growth. Harris joined Sage in 2011 as vice president and general manager of Sage 50 Accounting formerly Simply Accounting, which was only branded in Canada. The same product was branded Peachtree in the U.S.
She plans on staying on at Sage Canada until Struthers joins the Canadian team. Harris plans to work with Struthers to ensure a smooth transition.
Marc Scheipe, President Sage North America, thanked Harris for her contribution to Sage Canada and added that developing and retaining key talent is important to the vendor and he looks forward to Harris’ continued contribution to Sage in her new role.
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During her time at Sage Canada, Harris made strides to build Sage’s brand equity in the Canadian market. After she took on the Canadian leadership role, Harris moved Sage from a model focused on branding around product lines to focusing on Sage as the dominant brand specific for the SMB market. CDN recognized Harris as Top Woman Channel Executive in the leadership category in 2014.
Before joining Sage, Harris was chief operating officer at ESO Solutions, a private SaaS solutions provider servicing the emergency management services market. Before ESO, Harris spent eight years at Asure Software in senior marketing, strategic planning and general management roles. Before that Harris worked at BMC.
Struthers comes to Sage Canada after more than 15 years at Amdocs. The York University graduate was most recently vice president and GM of Amdocs in Ottawa; a post he held for more than two years. While at Amdocs Struthers developed the market strategy for the mobile software and services provider in the Canadian market.