The Power of Partners: Wipfli on Success with Sage

Wipfli is a nearly 100-year-old accounting technology integrator and consulting firm, specializing in several niche verticals and supporting major ERPs, cloud and security services, and other solutions.

The firm’s decade-long strategic partnership with Sage has delivered strong outcomes for mutual end customers. In this interview with Channel Insider, Ken Kortas, Partner at Wipfli, explains how partnership has built better opportunities for their clients.

How partnerships make tech ‘real’ for niche industries

Wipfli is laser-focused on a few key industries and is arguably the strongest in its support of accounting practices. The firm, according to Kortas, has found success in getting deeper into a few areas rather than having a more surface-level understanding of many industries.

“All organizations are trying to figure out how to close deals faster and get more out of core systems. Those are universal truths, but there are then specific needs tied to industries that we can really bring added value to,” Kortas said.

“It’s the layering of industry best practices on top of our technical backgrounds that make us such a strong partner for our clients,” he added.

While the provider supports a wide range of industries, from tribal governments to construction and healthcare, it has a particularly deep legacy in accounting. Kortas says that their approach is to leverage platforms like Sage Intacct to solve today’s business problems, including the demand for accounting teams to perform more while being perhaps less staffed than ever before.

“What gets people really excited is us showing how they can do more without necessarily needing more technology or more people. Our integrations and business expertise mean we can show how to use AI and automations to do more with less,” Kortas said. “One of the challenges in accounting, especially, is that there are just fewer people going into the industry, but the work is no less important to companies than it’s ever been.”

Kortas also says partnering with strategic vendors like Sage is a crucial component of how the team can provide tech services and solutions to accounting firms and their other clients. 

“Sage is probably our most crucial partner in our technology services for clients,” Kortas said. “We were pushing hard at one point for Sage Intacct to take on more capabilities relevant to our construction clients, for example, and the Sage team worked with us to build those into the platform so we could support our clients even more than we already were.”

Wipfli’s integration and services offerings bring added value to legacy systems

A core facet of Wipfli’s value to its customers is its ability to build and manage integrations between leading technologies, enabling businesses to maximize the benefits of their deployments. They rely on Sage Intacct with many customers, and Kortas says the partnership has grown beyond simply leveraging technology.

The two companies frequently discuss what Wipfli needs from its technology and how Sage plans to innovate. This, Kortas says, has saved Wipfli from costly and time-consuming internal development projects, because the team has been able to clearly understand whether Sage is already devoting its own resources to a new capability.

“We run into situations where we’ve used our own time and resources to build a new capability out through integrations or just our own proprietary tech, only to learn a few months later that a certain vendor was working on that same thing the whole time, and it’s now just readily available. That has never happened with Sage,” Kortas said. “They’re really open with us in terms of roadmap and where they’re going.”

Sage’s VP of Partner Sales, Nancy Sperry, views open and transparent communication with strategic partners like Wipifli as a vital component of the company’s success. To her, partners unlock new opportunities for the adoption of Sage technologies faster than Sage could pursue on its own.

“It just creates such a great outcome for customers, and that’s the ultimate goal for everyone here,” Sperry said. “Wipfli has really unparalleled expertise that allows us to go faster as we enter new markets, and the deep integrations we work on together a win-win for both of us in terms of growth.”

Sperry also highlights examples of Wipfli building an integration or capability to support clients working in Sage environments as a mutual success.

“Transparent communication and joint planning is key to our success, and we’ve had discussions in which we have said, ‘here’s something we need help with,’ and that hes led to Wipfli addressing it with its own IP,” Sperry said. “There’s an acknowledgement that we’re in this together, so it’s incredibly important we’re transparent and focused on what’s best for the customer.”

Why Sperry and her team see partnership as a growth opportunity

Sperry has shared her vision for Sage’s channel partners with Channel Insider before, and she remains focused on delivering value to end customers through the channel. To her, the partnership represents the success she wants to achieve with all partners, ultimately growing alongside them.

“Being able to work with partners like this and ask how we can deliver more solutions is crucial to us. It also allows us to bring forward to our partners what we see happening in tech generally,” Sperry said. “The fun part of this work is in being creative and thinking about what’s next.”

“You can never rest on your laurels. We’re always thinking about what’s next, and we know Sage is, too. The only way you’re going to be successful is by continuing to look forward and challenging yourself,” Kortas said. “We’ve had a strong year and we’re going to continue to grow, and part of that is going to be through continuing to work with Sage.”

The Sage Intacct platform is available through the AWS Marketplace. Learn more about the new category dedicated to agentic AI.