Sage Blog

While dusting off the bunting, making my son’s ‘prince outfit’ for the Royal-Wedding-dressing-up-day at school and preparing myself for the ‘wedding of the year’ on Friday, I was struck by a series of tenuous links between the Royal Wedding and the story we’re telling here at Sage in our latest marketing campaign.

You may have seen our new materials focusing on our 30 year heritage as a British software company – if not, take a look here – www.ourbusinessnation.co.uk. The brochures, emails and website celebrate the best of British business and focus upon a handful of the 800,000 British organisations we are proud to support through our business software and services. Together we’ve come a long way over the past 30 years.

In the beginning

Like the Middleton family business which was built from the ground up to become the successful, profitable business it is today, Sage was also borne out of humble beginnings. Having started following a dinner time conversation between four like-minded people in Newcastle 30 years ago, the company now has a customer in every postcode area in the UK, supports 1/3 of the FTSE 100 and is the engine behind many of the most innovative and entrepreneurial British businesses.

Down to earth

Whilst the Royal family has often been criticised for being out of touch with the British public, here at Sage we pride ourselves on truly understanding the needs of British businesses. With a global Business Partner network that covers 50 countries and stretches every part of the UK, we are never far from our customers. Together, we are dedicated to building intimate and long-lasting relationships with our customer base to help and support them every step of the way, from initial implementation to managing growth and change. We have learnt how much our customers value the business expertise we and our Business Partners provide. Working together, we build competitive advantage into everything our customers do.

Uniting a nation

The Royal Wedding will unite a nation. Personally, I’ll be furiously waving my flag, coo-ing at ‘that dress’ and weeping at the “I DO” moment. But even if you’re not a monarchist, you may at least be celebrating a long weekend off work!
At Sage, we unite our own nation – one of remarkable businesses under Our Business Nation. We’re proud of our heritage as a home-grown British business and are honoured to support such a diverse range of organisations through our CRM, ERP, HR and Payroll software. They number hundreds of thousands in the UK, but here are just a few:

• The Eden Project which welcomes over 1 million visitors a year
• National Assembly for Wales which represents the interests of Wales and its people
• Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill with over 300 years of heritage
• Playdale Playgrounds, a family run and owned business, since 1735
• Knights of Old, a leading transport and distribution company, which is over 100 years old
• Shaws of Darwen who have been manufacturing sinks for over 100 years.

So as the big day approaches, I will be watching the proceedings with baited breath. And remembering that from relatively humble beginnings, amazing things can happen…

Sarah Croft, Sage Mid Market Team

How to successfully complete London Marathon or a CRM project – not so different!

CRM expert, Duncan Wood (middle)

I feel like I have been on a long journey since last June when I applied to run London Marathon 2011 for Guide Dogs. So I felt compelled to write a blog article about it and how what I have learnt can apply equally to implementation of a customer relationship management (CRM) project as running a marathon.

I have broken out some of the key points that helped me achieve what I set out to do and hope they may help you if you are interested in CRM or running, or both!

1. Start with an end in mind!

Decide what your high level goals are. For me this was twofold: 1. raising some money for charity; 2. be more healthy. The next trick is to make those goals measurable, actionable and optimistically realistic (don’t be afraid to reach high). The way I did that what was to apply to run the London Marathon 2011 for Guide Dogs, this meant that I had to run 26.2 miles and raise £1500 – definitely measurable. At the time, I did not know how I was going to do either but I knew they both had to be possible. In business, exactly the same applies; you might want to improve profitability by 3% or grow revenue by 10% next year – at the time you are not quite sure how you will do it but you feel that it is possible somehow.

2. Eat the Elephant – bite by bite

At first a big goal can seem very daunting. Many others have referred to this as the “eating the elephant” analogy which seems impossible at first inspection but can actually be achieved over a long period of time by eating a little bit every day. The easiest way to do this is to come up with a plan. For me, somebody bought a book on how to run a marathon with a ready-made plan inside, I read it and I did it – it was almost that simple. Every day I woke up and I followed the plan whether that was resting or running 10 miles – except when I could not, read on for more on that topic. In a CRM project this will involve coming up with a strategy and plan, for example, mapping out the business strategy, user engagement sessions, software selection and finally project implementation plan and rollout.

3. Get the right support

You need the right tools and people on board to achieve the tasks you have set out in your plan and therefore achieve your goals. I needed to get the right running gear. I needed a supportive team of friends, relatives and sports professionals to help when I needed help, for example, raising money, giving advice on running, treating injuries and emotional support when things got tough. In a CRM project the team is everyone affected by the CRM project in the organisation and any outside help required to boast the skills for the project. Getting the right people around you is critical and getting them to understand what you are doing and why makes all the difference. I had an amazing experience both running and fundraising – the people that helped me where wonderful and constantly surprised me with their wisdom, generosity and humanity. Ask questions and really listen.

4. Stuff Happens – Be flexible

It is all very well having the goals, the plan, the tools and the team in place for success. However, life has a funny way of moving the goal posts on you when you are not looking! I managed to pick up two injuries since last June when I embarked on this journey. One was through bad advice and the other through bad luck. The point though is that when circumstances change the “bury your head in the sand approach” or “carry on regardless approach” does not normally work very well. You need to take a good look at your plans and goals and decide on what you can optimistically do. In my case, I was able change my training plan to incorporate enough rest to recover from my injuries and still complete my goal of running a marathon but it did require me to change my plans and rethink a few things. Sometimes however you might have to revise your actual goals – don’t do irreversible damage to you (running) or your business (CRM project) if things have radically changed.

5. Enjoy it – every minute or most of them!

I cannot recommend enough running London Marathon – I had the best time, from the time I filled in the application form to the time I crossed the finish line on Sunday. I have to admit there were hard times and I did not particularly enjoy yesterday – had you seen me walking up my stairs you may have been amused – it was quite a sight. Today, I am better. I achieved my goals and I feel great! I raised over £3.2k and ran 26.2 miles in 3 hours 56 minutes and 22 seconds. You can see my finishing picture cuddling Molly (13 week old Guide Dog puppy) – what a brilliant 10 months of my life http://www.justgiving.com/DuncsDogRun. In the end the final day (running the marathon) was just part of the whole experience.

So whether you are taking up running, swimming, canoeing or embarking on a CRM project I hope some of my reflections on the last 10 months will help you!

In summary:

Decide on your goals and define them in an actionable and measurable way

• Running – maybe this is a half marathon, marathon, or improving your 5K time by 5 minutes in 3 months (try www.parkrun.com free 5k trails in your local area)
• CRM – look at what your business goals need to be, for example, growing revenue by 5%, improving customer satisfaction by 10%

Come up with a plan

• Remember don’t be daunted by a “big” goal – break it down into achievable chunks and tasks set out on a timeline

Get the help you need

• Build the team you need and get the advice and tools required to deliver on your plan

Expect change and adapt

• Things do change – hopefully you can adapt your plan to cope with the new circumstances and still achieve your goals. If not, don’t do permanent damage – come up with new goals (there is always next year).

Enjoy it

• CRM or running is all about the experience – don’t forget to also enjoy and celebrate the smaller achievements along your journey.

Duncan Wood, CRM Expert (and marathon runner)

www.twitter.com/SageUKCRM

www.justgiving.com/DuncsDogRun

As part of our Sage People Advice service we keep our customers up to speed with HR, employment law and health and safety advice. One of the top topics with our customers lately has been the changes in paternity rights and what they need to do to make sure they tick all the boxes.

Matt Forrest, Small Business Team

Paternity rights; what’s changed?

Recently, paternity rules changed, meaning that new mums can transfer, or donate, some of their maternity leave over to the child’s dad (or the mum’s partner).

If you have any eligible new dads, they can potentially take up to 26 weeks’ additional paternity leave, on top of the two weeks’ ordinary paternity leave they are entitled to, after the birth or adoption of a child.

They’re also entitled to additional paternity pay, if the mother (or other adopter) has returned to work with at least two weeks of their statutory maternity or adoption pay outstanding.

How will this affect my business?

At this stage, it looks like the number of dads who actually request additional paternity leave (APL) or pay will be quite low. Remember that this extra right can only be taken instead of their partner’s maternity leave: she’ll have to return to work.

However, it’s still a good idea for you to prepare for the possibility of this happening: if any expectant fathers tell you that they want to take APL, will you be ready?

For instance, you’ll have to make sure that you have the resources ready to cover any male employee’s APL, just as you would for maternity leave.

To make sure you’re not discriminating against anyone, you’ll also need to make sure that your maternity packages are matched by your paternity packages.

Likewise, as with women on maternity leave who have the automatic right to “jump the queue” for a suitable alternative job in a redundancy situation, men on APL can now enjoy the same right.

Dads on APL also have the same right as women on maternity leave when it comes to keeping in touch days: make sure you offer them this opportunity.

What do I need to do now?

In addition to preparing for any APL requests, there are practical things that you can do now. If you haven’t already, you should update your maternity policy, your paternity policy and any related documents and forms to reflect these changes.

Matt Forrest, Small Business Team

Sage People Advice: For help with HR, employment law, Health & Safety advice for your business contact our Sage People Advice team on 0845 111 2450.

Well, it’s that time again where we’re asking for your help. If you are an online retailer – we need your help in gathering information so that we can provide you with a report focused on checkout conversions and the factors that contribute to visitors dropping out of the purchase process. We’ll then compile our report helping you to navigate through what successful businesses do to maximise their conversion rates.

By taking part this year, you could also be in with a chance of winning an Ecommerce health-check worth £1000 or £500 towards your business or one of 10 £50 Amazon vouchers! You will also receive a complimentary copy of the report once it has been published. We’re closing the survey on the 25th April, so why not take part in our E-business Benchmark Report survey now?

In case you missed it last year, our very first E-Business Benchmark Report was a study of views and opinions of over 2000 online businesses currently operating in the UK. This report uncovered what makes an e-commerce business successful – from attracting people to a site through to delivering the goods.

The secret to success

If you didn’t manage to download a copy of last year’s report, you can find a summary of our top tips below:

1. Providing on-site reassurances such as customer testimonials, next day delivery and a money back guarantee will improve checkout success. We found that if your e-business doesn’t offer any value added features, you are twice as likely not to complete the sale. However, be warned, loyalty points appear to not add any value in terms of promoting sales conversions.

2. E-businesses with fewer checkout pages convert more sales. Reducing this number of pages, can improve conversion and won’t cost the earth.

3. Successful e-businesses customise their payment pages. Suddenly being forwarded to a payment interface that has a different look and feel could cause shoppers to be concerned and drop out of the purchase.

4. Providing multiple payment methods, to give people more choice in the way they pay, improves transaction rates.

5. Social media can heavily influence purchasing behaviour by building trusted relationships and subsequently loyal customers.

Amy Monro, Sage Pay @amy_sagepay

Download our first E-Business Benchmark Report

Be part of this year’s report and take part in our survey.

Over at our sister blog xbrl with Sage they’ve recently been celebrating iXBRL day!

To anyone outside of the world of accountancy “XBRL” is the tagging of financial data. Every bit of data on your financial statement is tagged so that computers can easily select, collate, analyse and exchange the data. Add an “i” onto your XBRL and you have “iXBRL” the human readable format of this financial data. Phew, easy.

So, what is so important about iXBRL and why do we need to know about it?

From the 1st April this year all companies filing their Corporation Tax Return with an accounting period ending on or after 31 March need to do so in an iXBRL format. This means that accountants can no longer file tax computations or final accounts using PDFs or documents such as Word or Excel.

At Sage we’ve been working overtime making sure everything is in place. For accountants it means new ways of doing things; thankfully our software takes care of most of the challenges for them.

Jayne Archbold our Accountants’ Division MD cuts through some of the rumor and speculation around iXBRL and sets out the facts and figures of Sage iXBRL software, showing exactly what is involved in making sure the we have the right accountancy software and support in place to ensure things go smoothly.

This month’s topic on HR Vision explores ‘The Ideas Economy’.

Sian Harrington debates the issue of the transition towards an ideas based economy, and the need to create a culture of innovation within an organisation.

But what is innovation and how can a business utilise it? What does an innovation culture look like? Will creating an innovation culture require greater investment from HR? And can technology help make innovation happen?

Here are Sage HR & Payroll’s top tips on creating a culture of innovation:

1. To be innovative, you need to support innovation

For businesses looking to their people to generate ideas to give them the competitive advantage, they must make sure their company fully support the ideas process. For an employee to show innovation they must first feel empowered to think differently within their role.

HR is central to driving empowerment initiatives in an organisation. Start by giving individuals greater accountability for what they do and provide regular opportunities for them to be involved in a wider range of work.

2. Cultivate the appropriate working environment

For innovation to thrive HR must take charge of creating the appropriate working environment. This means moving away from hierarchical structures which sees employees working in constrained roles, to more delayered structures that give people the option to work across departmental project teams.

Having a flatter structure will provide greater openings for cross-departmental collaboration and give people the flexibility and freedom they need to develop ideas. Encourage offsite working for both individuals and teams and consider the technologies needed to facilitate collaboration across the board.

3. Reward and recognition

It may sound obvious but people are more inclined to do what they are actually rewarded or motivated to do. If a business emphasis is cost-cutting and streamlining processes then people will not be inclined to develop new initiatives, whereas a business with an incentive scheme based around innovation will encourage creative thinking as part of day-to-day practice.

Create a clear reward and recognition policy to motivate your employees and recognise individuals or teams who have been involved in new projects – even if they’re deemed unsuccessful.

4. Lead by example

Although HR will drive empowerment initiatives, management also need to take accountability for energising the workforce. They must take an active role in supporting and sharing new ideas and align employees to a shared vision.

Ensure your leadership team promote business wide collaboration, listen to new ideas and actually embrace change with your organisation. Your leadership team need to champion experimentation through coaching and mentoring, and be prepared for smart risk taking, as with every opportunity, there is a chance of failure.

5. Removing obstacles

Many organisations struggle to develop an innovation ethos mostly due to cultural barriers or process-driven hurdles. Often a fear of being punished for failure, barriers preventing collaboration or a lack of appropriate infrastructure for learning and sharing can impede innovation.

HR must take responsibly to uncover obstacles and pioneer change across the board. Simple tools like an ideas board on your company intranet can help learning and sharing, whilst applying a non-judgemental approach to all ideas and actively embracing the risk of failure will help shift culture barriers.

6. Practical processes

It’s all very well encouraging lots of new ideas but what are people meant to do if they’ve had one.  A clear process for capturing ideas and helping to turn them into practical solutions is vital – an innovation culture requires that people believe that their ideas will be listened to.

Implementing an online forum where employees can post new ideas provides a platform for developing concepts across an organisation. Line managers can also encourage the ideas process by holding regular discussion groups and brainstorming sessions.

7. Turning ideas into reality

Businesses need to provide the appropriate resources to ensure that good ideas have the chance of becoming innovative solutions. It is important to recognise the negative impact it may have if a lack of resource or organisational barriers mean ideas cannot be taken forward.

Having a flatter structure will make your organisation more adaptable to new projects, allowing for employees to attach themselves to different projects or work in secondments or job rotation roles.  Allocating time away from the day job will encourage employees to develop ideas, whether working individually or in teams. Encourage secondments and job rotation

8. Time

It is important to recognise that cultural changes will not happen overnight and in particular nurturing innovation rather than an operational way of thinking will require dedicated time and resource.

An innovation culture can easily become the ‘latest HR fad’ if it is not managed with clear objectives or a consistent approach.

9. Measuring innovation

It can be challenging to measure exactly how innovation has impacted your business and not every new idea will have clear tangible results connected to it, but attaching measurements will make rewarding employees, board-level buy-in and strengthening the innovation culture easier.

Innovation metrics should be tied in to your business or departmental strategic goals and consider individual or collaboration successes, resources or delivery timescales. Remember it may be significant periods of time before clear financial results are seen but this doesn’t make the project any less successful.

10. Celebrate success

Celebrate! Innovative organisations are places where people enjoy their peers’ work. So make sure your business encourages teams and departments to regularly share their successes and milestones achieved. Celebrating and sharing these events, both large and small is part of creating the innovation culture.

Why not encourage managers to organise offsite days to give individuals and departments the opportunity to talk about and present their work to others across the business?

Katie Slater, Sage HR and Payroll Team

We think that the new features and improvements in Sage Instant Accounts 2011 will give our customers (that’s you) more time to take care of your business. We also thought that you’d have some great tips on how to spend this extra time giving your business a boost and asked for you to send them in so that we could share them with other small businesses.

Well after much deliberation we have collated the top 50 tips and put them into a nice little booklet, handily title 50 Top Tips to Help You Take Care of Your Business, which is now available to download for free from our website – take a look and see how they can help your business

In the booklet you’ll find tips on everything from how to keep your workforce happy, social media and customer services to ordering stock and the importance of cash flow.

We’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who submitted their business tip, and congratulations to our three lucky winners who’ll soon be receiving their Amazon Kindle:

• Sue Davis, Design Advantage
• Jermaine Edwards, Speak First Ltd
• Hilary Hinks, Arrow Project Services

Some of my personal favourite tips to take of business are;

“I try to nurture good dynamics and harmony in our team by ensuring that everyone is aware that they are equally valued, whatever cog they are turning within the big machine. We all fill our individual roles efficiently, support each other when necessary, and together we make it happen.”

Julie Kemp, High Tide Camber Sands Limited

“Embrace Social Media. Businesses need to be aware that sales and conversations about their brand or product are occurring whether they are present online or not. These conversations are happening millions of times per day on social media sites. Businesses that recognise this will be more successful.”

Joseph Leishman, d&e Office Solutions Ltd

“Follow up, Follow up, Follow up! Whether, you have met someone at a business event, spoken to a prospect on the phone, or made a commitment on email. Put a reminder and notes in your diary for a future time. People will remember you over your competition.”

Michael Gottlieb, The Smart Information Consultancy Ltd

We hope you find our 50 Top Tips guide useful. We’d love to hear from you, so let us know what you think.

Jack Ford, Small Business Team

Since joining the Sage HR and Payroll team I have come to completely admire payroll professionals. I am sure we are all guilty, including myself, of forgetting, or not even really thinking about the people that make the reason we come into work a reality.

The payroll function is so much more than just ‘pushing a button’. Payroll professionals control a business’s biggest controllable cost – the salary bill – and they protect the company’s reputation by ensuring compliance with a vast range of legislation. And yet how often are they thanked or even acknowledged?

Payroll professionals are highly skilled, technical and accurate and work to probably one of the most important deadlines in an organisation. They also have to work to continuous change. This is particularly true at the moment with numerous changes on the horizon that they need to be prepared for. Including changes in legislation, shared parenting, the default retirement age, childcare vouchers, not to mention all the changes required within the organisation.  These can include annual salary increases, increasingly complex benefit packages and bonuses.

So the next time you open your payslip take a second to think about who made it happen and give them a thank you!

Share this article with your colleagues to raise the profile of the ‘unsung heroes’ in your business.

Adele Bennett, Sage HR and Payroll