Arlene Wherrett (Sage)
Following the acquisition of Sage Group’s businesses in Australia and Asia by The Access Group, new Asia Pacific (APAC) heads have been appointed for the two vendors.
Following the completion of the acquisitions — which were first announced in December 2020 and included Sage’s Australian HandiSoft accounting and MicrOpay and WageEasy compliant payroll solutions, as well as the EasyPay payroll solution in Singapore and UBS Accounting software in Malaysia — Sage's former managing director of APAC and Australia, Kerry Agiasotis, has moved over to The Access Group.
ARN understands that Sage's enterprise resource planning (ERP) portfolio was not included with these acquisitions and, as such, remains with the vendor.
“Kerry’s significant leadership experience in the payroll and software services market, combined with our global and local resources to develop the payroll and accounting software solutions will augment Access’ growing portfolio of software solutions,” said Chris Bayne, The Access Group CEO.
Indeed, that experience includes nearly four years at Sage as its managing director and executive vice president, as well as nearly nine years at Western Union Business Solutions, with four of those as its president.
He was also previously global head of strategy for Travelex and regional vice president of sales consulting for Oracle in APAC.
Credit: The Access Group “I’m very proud of how Access has shown, not only resilience, but also huge progress and growth during the past incredibly challenging 18 months and I am thrilled Kerry will be making the transition to Access to lead the region,” Bayne added.
Meanwhile, Sage Group has promoted Arlene Wherrett from her role of vice president and managing director for Sage Asia to lead the APAC region.
Based out of Sydney, Wherrett’s responsibilities will see her work with customers and partners to continue Sage’s growth in the region, as well as drive its expansion in the cloud and ERP software market across APAC.
“I am thrilled to lead our talented team and collaborate with our strong partner ecosystem as we forge ahead capturing new opportunities in Asia Pacific,” Wherrett said. “SMEs [small- to medium-sized enterprises] will be a driving force in the recovery of the economy and ensuring they have the right technology to build for the future is an essential foundation for that growth.”
Prior to her time at Sage, which has lasted four years so far, Wherrett has spent time at CEB prior to its acquisition by research firm Gartner, Bluewolf prior to its acquisition by IBM as well as SAI Global. All up, she has 30 years of experience in leadership roles.
“With Arlene’s extensive experience leading IT and services businesses within Asia Pacific, we have a fantastic opportunity to expand the reach of Sage Business cloud and the reach of our ERP offerings, and support our customers to thrive,” said executive vice president and managing director for the Middle East and Africa Pieter Bensch.
“Asia Pacific is an emerging ERP market that is expected to achieve an exponential annual growth rate in the coming years, offering Sage a prime opportunity to help customers achieve operational efficiency and transparency across their business processes.”
