Sageworks
| Industry | Computer Software and Information Technology |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1998 |
| Founders | Brian Hamilton, Sarah Tourville |
| Headquarters | Raleigh, North Carolina, USA |
Key people | Brian Hamilton, CEO Scott Ogle, President |
| Products | Solutions for Financial Institutions, Accountants, Business Owners, and CFOs |
| Website | www |
Sageworks, Inc. is an American software company that develops software for financial professionals and small businesses. It is incorporated and headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Sageworks was started on January 6, 1998, by Sarah Tourville (now retired) and Brian Hamilton. From its inception in 1998, the company's mission was to increase the rate of business success by giving people information they can understand and use.
History
In the early 1990s,Hamilton and Sarah Tourville, a software programmer who is now retired, became friends. They eventually began discussing creating a program that would automate both the analysis and interpretation of financial data. The two started Sageworks in 1998 in a business incubator in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
“I was in banking and I had seen that business owners who came into the bank didn’t really understand financial statements,” Hamilton said in a 2011 interview. “When I got out of graduate school at Duke, I started a consulting business and I worked with a lot of businesses. And I really quickly came to understand that they really were good at running their businesses, they were good at operations, but they didn’t really understand financial statements. My whole idea at that point was can we automate that and get a good system that would make financial statement analysis easy to understand.”[1]
For the first two years, Sageworks’ founders worked on product development. In 2000, Sageworks filed the application for U.S. Patent 6,968,316 for the “FIND,” or Financial Information into Narrative Data, Engine Technology. FIND is artificial intelligence that converts financial numbers into plain-language, narrative financial analysis reports. It is an expandable and adaptable technology that allows for the rapid analysis, interpretation, and aggregation of financial data. Sageworks’ first flagship product, ProfitCents®, employs the FIND technology to allow accountants and other financial professionals to produce customizable, written reports that help businesses make more informed financial decisions. These reports include a narrative analysis of the business’s health and industry benchmarks. Citibank was Sageworks' first large-enterprise customer, but the firm now counts thousands of accounting firms and financial institutions among its customers. [2].
In 2004, ProfitCents won the Innovation Award from accounting and tax industry trade magazine The CPA Technology Advisor (subsequently named CPA Practice Advisor).[3] The Innovation Awards recognize advances in technologies that benefit the tax and accounting space. ProfitCents also won a 2012 Reader’s Choice Award from CPA Practice Advisor for Budgeting/Forecasting & Business Intelligence Tools.
In 2005, Sageworks expanded to the United Kingdom accounting market. The following year, Sageworks entered the banking market, tapping the expertise of former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman L. William Seidman, who served on Sageworks’ advisory board beginning in 2003. The firm developed Sageworks Analyst™, a credit analysis platform that allows financial professionals to perform global cash flow analysis on their borrowers. Analyst was the first product in Sageworks’ risk management suite of solutions for financial institutions, which later grew to include solutions to increase standardization in risk ratings, perform stress testing, automate portfolio monitoring, and quickly estimate the Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses (ALLL).
Sageworks also generates and makes available from its proprietary database real-time data on the financial performance of privately held companies. Through a cooperative data model with its clients, Sageworks collects approximately 1,000 private- company financial statements daily from accounting firms and financial institutions. The data is aggregated by industry and is used to generate the Sageworks private company indicator, which shows real-time private-company sales growth and profit margins.[4]. This data is provided to and cited by national financial media for reports related to the financial performance of private companies.
The company was named as one of the 2007 Deloitte Technology Fast 500[5] and in 2007 was named to the Inc. 500[6] list of fastest growing privately held companies in the U.S.
In 2013, Scott Ogle was named chief executive officer.[7]. Ogle was previously named one of CPA Practice Advisor’s “40 Under 40” honorees[8] for 2007 and 2009. Hamilton remains chairman.
Products for Accountants, Business Owners and other Financial Professionals
ProfitCents Suite
The ProfitCents suite of products contains 14 modules and aids financial professionals in 1) plain-language, narrative performance analysis of both for-profit and non-profit organizations, 2) automation and compliance with regulations for financial audits and reviews, and 3) performing cash flow analysis and forecasts/projections. The suite also provides access to the company’s proprietary database of private company industry data and key performance indicators grouped by NAICS code, location, and revenue ranges.
Products for Financial Institutions
Analyst
Sageworks Analyst is a credit analysis solution that financial institutions use to perform global cash flow analysis on their borrowers. Analyst can be loosely divided into two parts: (1) easy data entry via tax return input screens that map to financial statements and (2) the output, which includes spreads of all financials and an in-depth global cash flow analysis, the impact of proposed loans on financial metrics, forecasting and projection models, customizable credit memos, private company benchmarks from Sageworks' real-time industry database, and narrative analysis reports.
Monitor
Sageworks Monitor is a loan administration solution that helps financial institutions more effectively track document and covenant exceptions in their loan portfolio. It also automates correspondence generation for document requests, provides useful reports for management and necessary documentation for examiners in the tracking of documents and covenant exceptions.
Certainty
Sageworks Certainty is a loan risk rating solution that financial institutions use to rate the risk of portfolio loans using customizable templates. Each institution can create templates and guidelines to match its internal policy. Certainty ensures objective risk ratings using both quantitative and qualitative factors and provides detailed and standardized documentation.
Surety
Surety is an Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses solution from Sageworks. Surety allows bankers to have a clear, concise methodology for adhering to FAS 5 (ASC 450-20) and FAS 114 (ASC 310-10-35). Users of the product have the ability to import FAS 5 historic loss rates using FDIC call report data, perform migration analysis, customize segmentations of FAS 5 pools, and import macroeconomic data from the Federal Reserve. Surety also provides detailed documentation for management, auditors, and examiners.
Clarity
Sageworks Clarity is a portfolio stress testing solution, which financial institutions rely on to comply with stress testing regulations and provide internal stakeholders with actionable information about portfolio weaknesses. Clarity enables bank decision makers to stress the entire portfolio, loan concentrations, and individual loans by manipulating two types of variables: those that determine a borrower’s ability to service their debt and those that determine the potential impairment faced by the bank if a borrower defaults.
Business Credit Report
The Business Credit Report by Sageworks is a credit risk rating solution that allows small businesses, lenders and corporations to gauge the financial risk of privately held companies. The report combines financial data from a company and its owner(s) to generate a concise credit score that links businesses’ and owners’ financials and risk. The score is derived from Sageworks’ proprietary predictive model, which was developed by analyzing the historical default behavior of small business loans and the financial characteristics of both the businesses and their owners prior to default. It is based on financial statements (including those of businesses and their owners) from businesses distributed across industries and sales ranges in the U.S.
References
- ^ [1] Maloney, Ross. “Sageworks: RTP-grown Rosetta Stone for raw data analysis.” RTP Blog.
- ^ [2] Rhee, Howie. “Interview with Brian Hamilton ’90, Co-founder and CEO of Sageworks.” Duke Global Entrepreneurial Network profiles of alumni.
- ^ [3]
- ^ [4] Sageworks Indicator on Fox Business
- ^ [5]Deloitte Technology Fast 500
- ^ [6]Inc. 500
- ^ [7]chief executive officer
- ^ http://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/article/10274405/40-under-40-honoree-scott-ogle-32CPA Practice Advisor’s “40 Under 40” honorees