Sage appoints Robin Chao as vice president for Asia business

By Digital News Asia June 7, 2017

Chao will lead sales, business strategy development, personnel management
Jennifer Warawa appointed as executive vice president of Partners, Accountants, and Alliances

Sage appoints Robin Chao as vice president for Asia business

SAGE has reinforced its senior leadership team in the Asia region with the appointment of sales veteran, Robin Chao (pic), as vice president of Sage Software Asia.

In his new position, Chao will lead sales, business strategy development, personnel management, and scale business and sales performance for Sage in Asia.

A key component of this strategy includes growing and managing Sage Software Asia’s vast partner ecosystem handling the entire portfolio of segments from startup & small businesses, and scale-ups to enterprises.

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.

Chao was most recently regional sales director for South Asia at Epicor Software Asia, where he spent close to a decade. Whilst there, he was responsible for Asean direct and indirect quota development, strategising on GTM plans, partner enablement programmes 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.

Prior to this, Chao held various leadership positions in sales at several IT organisations catering to SMEs and enterprises such as Powermatic Distribution and Singapore Computer Systems and understands business builders of today, having co-founded an online business in the past.

Commenting on Chao’s appointment, Sage president Blair Crump said, “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 recognise the contribution these businesses make to the economy and support them with awesome technology.

“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.”

“I am honoured 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.”

Sage also announced the appointment of Jennifer Warawa as the executive vice president of Partners, Accountants, and Alliances, reporting to Crump.

Warawa is a ten-year veteran of Sage 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.

Warawa was previously the head of Product Marketing at Sage, where she was responsible for leading Sage’s portfolio of accounting products, including the market launches of Sage’s suite of core cloud accounting technology.

Warawa joined Sage in 2008 to run the accountant business in Canada, before being promoted to various leadership roles in accounting products, partners and marketing, and product marketing.

Following the appointment, Nick Goode, currently EVP for product management will oversee a merged Product Marketing and Product Management organisation, and take the role of EVP Product.

Crump commented: ‘We have an impressive portfolio of new and improved products to help all of our partners win, and there is no-one more recognised or knowledgeable as an expert in our partner community than Jennifer.

“She will be responsible for combining her deep product knowledge, her past experience of being a partner to Sage and her fantastic relationships around the world to help our partners go further and grow faster.’

Warawa and Chao will be embarking on a roadshow of the Sage Software Asia’s partners and customers in the coming weeks.