Last week I took two days out of Moore Accountancy to head down to London for #SageSummit UK – the first conference held by them in the UK and part of the Sage Tour across the world.
I attended as a Sage Business Expert and Influencer and learnt lots about both Sage products and business development.
The Sage staff I met were knowledgeable about the various branches of Sage. The passion with which they had for their various service areas was obvious and created a great vibe at the event.
As an accountant, I had only really considered the Sage accounting products as “the thing they did”, but after two days with them I discovered a whole lot more.
- They are great believers in getting to know a business and offering support to grow them using their accounting, HR solutions and Business Management tools. These include £3 trillion payments processed each year!
- Philanthropy – At the event, the “Big Give” was held where 3 charities pitched to everyone to secure funding from the Sage Foundation. Sage staff can also donate their time each year to worthwhile causes and whilst maybe not every member of staff can go abroad to do this (like Alan Laing), it made me realise that Sage think about developing people and businesses from the inside and are not just about selling product.
Key highlights for me were the inspirational talks from entrepreneurs.
There were many comments by the great line-up of key note speakers which gave me food for thought.
Deborah Meaden (Dragons Den), Martha Lane Fox (founder of lastminute.com) and Sahar Hashemi (founder of Coffee Republic) had insights about their own business growth and failures; including:
“focusing on the right user need”,
“enabling diversity and inclusion”,
“delighting your customers by seeing things through their eyes”
and my favourite from Sahar Hashemi is to be
“100% authentic and be yourself”.
These are all learnings which I will be trying to develop within myself and the team at Moore Accountancy.
Diversity and the Gender Gap
As a female business owner hearing these speakers and also Kelly Hoppen talk about diversity in business and the workplace was important. It brought to mind the gender gap issues across the “developed” world and how much further we have to work to minimise it.
One of the stats produced stated that a woman starting university now, would be 81 years old before the pay gap closes – as a mother of 3 girls that is truly shocking and has made me realise that not enough is being done to highlight this #GenderEquality issue and it is something I shall be researching more of from a personal perspective.
On a more positive note, I met a really great bunch of people, enjoyed networking with other small business owners, talked the ear off the poor guy from The Pensions Regulator (TPR) and had quite a few Sage Mocktails from the bar.
Did I benefit from attending Sage Summit? Definitely
Can I bring what I learnt to Moore Accountancy? For sure!
Would I attend if it was held again? Without a doubt….and so should you if you get a chance ?
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