Sage Blog

This year, the rules for our team’s Secret Santa are as follows:

•         £10 spend limit (we’re feeling flush)

•         All pressies to be under the tree by 9am 19 December.

Guessing the identity of the giver is as much fun as unwrapping the surprise (or in some cases, shock).  It took me a while last year to work out the Secret Santa responsible for popping my edition of ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ under the tree…surprisingly good if you like that kind of thing.

How much are you contributing to your workplace pension?

There’s a place for anonymous gift-giving but employee benefits definitely isn’t it – especially not in a challenging economic environment.  A study of 5,200 employees, published by Scottish Widows in September 2011, revealed that over a quarter of respondents (28%) don’t know how much, or even whether, they are contributing to their workplace pension scheme, and worryingly almost 4 in 10 (38%) have no idea how much their employer contributes.

What a waste!  It’s like going to the effort of buying the perfect Secret Santa gift but forgetting to put it under the tree (by 9am 19 December – did I mention that our Secret Santa organiser takes the role very seriously).

Attracting and retaining talent

In tough trading conditions we are all looking for our expenditure to work harder for us but could there ever be a decent return on investment on employee benefits expenditure?  Yes; the Scottish Widows UK Pensions Report went on to reveal that more than half of the respondents see a pension scheme as a reason to stay with their current employer and consider the pension offered by a prospective new employer before bonus potential, flexitime, a company car and overtime pay.  Attracting and retaining the right talent for your business can make the all-important difference in challenging times so make sure your employees (current and prospective) understand the value of the employee benefits you are providing and that your business gets the credit it deserves for offering them.

Guide to setting up a pension

Significant pension changes are on their way, one of the most talked about is auto-enrolment; this new law will make it compulsory for all employers to auto-enrol qualifying employees into a company pension scheme and make employee contributions. If you’re yet to set up a pension scheme for your employers check out our plain-English guide to Sage Pensions.

Our Sage Employee Benefits provided by mercer-elect offers a wide range of employee benefits (including pensions, private medical insurance and income protection) tailored to the needs of smaller businesses.  What’s more the service helps you to communicate the value of those benefits to your employees by providing an online portal through which employees can see the total value of the benefits provided to them.

And finally, for any stumped Secret Santas out there, check out www.thepresentfinder.co.uk, put in your budget and a range of quirky gifts appear (your colleagues will thank you for sparing them the usual bottle of wine or bath salts!)

Lucy Cook, Sage Benefits Team

Our SageCover customers have just received the latest copy of their exclusive magazine, Solutions. It’s packed with loads of business advice from web design to how to create a happy workforce…as well as technical tips for Sage software. SageCover customers can log in to see your Solutions magazine now. Why not find out more about the benefits of our SageCover membership, and in the meantime here is a sneak peak from the latest copy.

Snow and stress are just some of the things businesses need to think about as winter sets in. Having a plan in place can help to prepare for any difficulties the colder months may bring… whatever the weather.

Severe weather is a common inconvenience to businesses over the winter months. There is no current UK legislation stating how employers should treat employees who are unable to attend work due to weather conditions. “Without a relevant policy or provision in the contract of employment, employers should take care to ensure that their actions are fair and reasonable in the circumstances,” advises Sage HR adviser Sam Bell.

“Care should also be taken when withholding pay as a result of absence due to adverse weather conditions,” Sam continues. “Unless there is an explicit clause in the contract that allows for deductions in salary, any money that is withheld may be considered an unlawful deduction under the Employment Rights Act 1996.” Angela Baron, adviser at the Chartered

Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) adds: “There are certain jobs that just can’t be done outside of the workplace, so it’s vital to plan in advance.” She says that all employees should know who to contact if they can’t get into work, so plans can be put into action to keep the business running.

Extra workloads

While everyone might be preparing to wind down for the end of the year, it’s usually the opposite case for workloads, with looming deadlines and last-minute requests from customers. It’s therefore important to plan ahead and think about how many people will be required to keep things running smoothly. This should be communicated with everyone so they can plan ahead.

Recruiting part-time or temporary agency workers or, if there isn’t the budget for this, asking existing employees to work for more hours, could help. However, don’t forget the potential consequences of this, advises Sam. “Extra burdens and longer hours can often lead to stress – it’s important to consider the problems that this can cause.”

Spotting stress

To reduce the chance of stress affecting your workforce, employers should conduct a risk assessment with their employees, identifying and taking action against any potential stress factors. Things to look for when identifying stress include high levels of short-term absence, poor timekeeping and customer complaints. Employees should also feel they can approach their manager with any problems they may have, says Sam. Once any potential stress factors have been identified, steps to reduce the pressure can include prioritising work and providing ample warning for urgent activities, rotating jobs to encourage interest and develop new skills, and providing support systems for employees at all levels. Being able to openly discuss any concerns in the early stages will help to prevent any future stress-related problems developing further and worsening.

Offering bonuses or incentives for overtime can also boost morale and productivity. And, of course, team events such as a Christmas party shouldn’t be overlooked just because times are tight. On that note, what if some people get a little too merry at the work Christmas party? “Letting employees come in an hour or so later would probably pay off dividends in performance levels,” suggests the CIPD’s Angela Baron. “It’s all about give and take and treating people fairly.”

Melissa Beckett, SageCover Team

Formerly a sales promotion and business adviser, Worcestershire-based Mark Edwards is now an acclaimed adviser and public speaker on low-cost, low-carbon eco-heating – after building a revolutionary new home for his family using Sage ACT.  Mark talks to us about how he managed such a mammoth project.

As a recent dad to two sons, Mark tells us that his awareness of the world and his surroundings has become increasingly more acute.  The more the media reminded him of the expanding global population, dwindling natural resources and the inevitable increase in domestic heating costs, the more he felt compelled to act.  Mark set to work on a major project: building a new, eco-friendly home for his family that would be low-cost to run, and  that would last for generations.

But it wasn’t enough for the house to be energy efficient and eco-friendly.  Mark was determined to prove the point that renewable eco-technology which would lower fuel consumption and expenditure could still look great.  Taking the Gherkin in London as his inspiration, he planned a home full of curved structures, natural light and character – a far cry from the builds of the traditional cottages and Georgian houses in the area, and costing only a fraction of the heating bills to boot.

The project wasn’t a walk in the park.  The plans took Mark to Germany to meet a renowned property developer, and it was during this visit that Mark learned that his projected energy savings were indeed possible – but that they were yet to be achieved in the UK.  Full of determination, Mark attended no fewer than eight trade shows to learn how to integrate the latest industry technologies into his new home, all the while networking with a large number of German, Italian, Belgian and British suppliers and industry specialists along the way.

Every step of Mark’s journey involved a huge list of new contacts, new information and new actions and, to manage all of this information, Mark used Sage’s leading CRM and project management tool: Sage ACT.  This software helped Mark to:

• Manage contractors, provide training and track results
• Track 927 points of contact from his idea, the trip to Germany, project and business planning, reporting, and seeking additional funding
• Access Sage ACT on his smartphone, enabling him to send pictures and specifications of new products to architects and advisors while on the move – without the delay of arranging meetings

Thanks to Sage ACT, Mark had full oversight and control of his growing database of suppliers, their details and their updates.  Commenting that it was ”easy” to manage and analyse transaction and action history, and to always have a clear overview of his next steps, he used Sage ACT to schedule and track his progress, review proposals, make decisions and build and cement relationships.

Mark believes it would have been impossible to complete such a revolutionary new home on budget and on time without the use of Sage ACT.  Sage ACT was crucial to maximising Mark’s productivity and making his new eco-friendly home, Valley Views, a huge success for him and his family for many years to come.

Here’s a tough nut to crack for all you social media aficionados, how many tweets are considered ‘too many’? Most twitter users will have followed (and probably subsequently unfollowed) users who have crossed the line from a reasonable numbers of tweets, to spamming your stream.

If you run a Twitter feed, you have to work hard to build a loyal follower base and ideally you don’t want to start losing followers purely because of the volume of tweets you post. From a strictly mathematical stance your ideal volume of tweets could be worked out something like this:

According to recent research, on average every twitter account has 126 followers*. The majority of Twitter users either have a 1:1 following to follower ratio, or worse. If you assume that each of the accounts they follow tweets once per day then you can assume that their stream will receive a minimum of 126 tweets per day.

* http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/29/twitter-users-average-api-traffic

Using this method to prevent your tweet volumes appearing spammy, I would advocate aiming to avoid having two of your tweets appear in the most recent display on Twitter when a user logs on. i.e.:

I’ve created a diagram here to show how that mathematical principle would work:

Personally speaking, I think that this kind of approach is a bit too formulaic. We’re talking about human social interaction, not engineering! After all, the reason we all use twitter is to follow people who say or discuss interesting things. I’m not going to stop following them just because they throw out a couple of extra messages a day.

It’s when a Twitter user is no longer producing interesting content that I would start to consider my options. Overall I would suggest that good content planning is more conducive to retaining followers than concerning yourself too much about a ‘golden’ number of tweets to deliver.

Try to think about your end user’s experience, review your twitter profile and read your stream. Are you adding value to your users by providing them with important content, or are you just retweeting other news sources? More often than not, you will find followers will decide to take their content from the horse’s mouth if you aren’t adding value to it.

My advice would be add your insight and comment to stories you share, that way you aren’t just aggregating other people’s content, you are creating your own.

Which after all is kind of the point!

Alex Walker, Sage Accountants’ Team @alexatsage

QR Codes are something of an enigma, you may not have even noticed that they exist yet, but they are starting to become more and more prevalent in the print media spaces across the country.

Random garbles or brave new world?

To many they are random garbles of black and white, small boxes of nonsense adding another layer of complexity to an already challenging visual marketing space. To some they are gateways, portals to a brave new world of targeted content allowing you to effortlessly engage with specific adverts.

A QR Code is a new way of taking a potential customer from Above-The-Line, to Below-The-Line. In simple parlance, it allows someone with a smartphone to scan a type of barcode which takes them to a website URL of your choice. The QR Code can be on a poster, direct mailer, newspaper, magazine or even a TV advertisement (possible since the advent of pausing live TV).

QR codes and consumer behaviour

As marketing developments go, it sounds pretty small fry, after all URLs have been around for a while and any marketer worth their salt will have known how to set up tracking URLs for hyperlinks.

What has changed though is consumer behaviour, where previously on a smartphone you had to manually enter URLs, now you can use your camera to capture the data and send you straight into a web browser.

This ‘convenience factor’ has been central to the success of QR Codes, certainly in the B2C arena. Another contributing factor has been the creativity with which QR Codes are being applied, for instance:

• Chocolate Café QR Code: http://www.how-do.co.uk/node/10773
• Korean Virtual Tesco: http://youtu.be/nJVoYsBym88
• Mystery Gift: http://www.thebiggerexperience.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/QR3.jpg

The QR code key to success

The key to the success of using QR Codes is to ensure that you provide your user with an engaging destination, after all thy have taken the effort to go beyond the face of your campaign, so you need to ensure they feel suitably rewarded for their efforts.

In return you will record data so rich it is astonishing, are your users more likely to engage on the high street, or around the corner? On the 12:15 to Euston, or the 13:20? Do they prefer page 5 or page 7 and whether they preferred the mailer in pink or blue?

The measurement possibilities for this mechanism are very powerful, especially when you consider that in a lot of instances it would be very difficult (or even impossible) to measure engagement with these campaigns, you would either be relying on someone to quote a campaign code and for that to be properly recorded or for someone to use a campaign specific phone number.

At Sage we’re currently testing the possibilities for using this technology in the B2B arena, to see how and where we can use it to enrich our customers experiences and also to give us rich data feedback from our campaigns.

Keep your eyes open, you never know where you might see a QR Code waiting to be scanned!

Alex Walker, Sage Accountants’ Team

Earlier this year we were delighted to win a Business Intelligence award with our finance, CRM and business intelligence software Sage 200. A question we’ve always strived to answer with Sage 200 is “What’s the point in having loads of data across your organisation if you can’t access or interrogate it to get the information you need to make those key business decisions?”

Having business critical information at your fingertips is essential to ensure your business keeps running smoothly. It also gives you the ability to act quickly and make better connections between different areas of your business.

Are you getting the insight you need from your business software?

There are a few key questions you need to ask yourself to identify whether you’re getting what you need out of your system

• Can you interrogate data easily?
• Can you easily change views and create dashboards?
• Can you quickly and easily customise reports?
• Can you easily drill down into more detailed information within a few clicks (or do you need to re-run reports and start from scratch)?
• Can you automate the regular reports and dashboards you need?

If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’ then you need to rethink the system you’re using.

Visibility is essential

Good business intelligence should be at the heart of every organisation as it can provide increased control – visibility is essential. Do you know who the best performers are? Can you easily identify areas for improvement? Is stock going missing and you can’t identify where it’s going? Is there an error in your accounts and you need to drill down to invoicing or billing quickly to make your P&L balance – can you do this in a few clicks or do you need to re-run a report that takes forever?

Turning data into actionable information

Analytical tools can give you the insight that you need to achieve real business agility as they can provide increased visibility of your financial prospects, help you better understand the implications of an investment, and can make and analyse connections between different areas of your business. Business Intelligence helps you to embrace strategic planning for business growth, by identifying key trends and patterns in your data and gain a better understanding of your business, transforming data into actionable information. You can be more responsive and can support future planning with the ability to identify opportunities to increase revenue or to reduce costs.

Improve efficiency

AND the most important reason to have good Business Intelligence is that it can improve efficiency within your business and as a result increase productivity. Simple, easy to use tools that can be used by anyone across the business can help you share information across different departments, enabling you to save time on reporting and analytics. This is particularly essential if you have regular reports you need to run e.g. monthly executive reports where you need the same information each month. Sharing information reduces duplication of data and means all your figures match up. It allows you to get on with the more important things like running your business.

Here at Sage we feel that having good Business Intelligence tools is one of the most important things to get right for our customers. Jane Naish, our Principal Business Analyst for Sage 200 gives us her thoughts…

“In my past experience of implementing ERP systems for a small, growing business, I noticed it was easy to get data into the systems, but far too difficult to get information back out. I formed the opinion that you go to all the bother of inputting data for one reason alone: so that you can use it.  I felt the systems I was implementing only did half the job. They were an effective system of record but you did have to work very hard to get your data out again.

The value of Sage 200 Business Intelligence, is that it uses what we call ‘cubes’ to easily shape data. We’ve done lots of customer testing to make sure that you don’t have to work hard to get the data out of your system and it’s easy to interrogate data and we’ve put a lot of thought into making the data meaningful. We know we’ve succeeded when we see people get genuinely excited about the patterns they can see in their own data.”

Vicky Ferrer, Sage 200 Team

Sage 200 offers mid-market businesses the opportunity to share data across different departments and allows users to interrogate it quickly and easily to get the information they need. Want to know more? Email us or call us on 0845 111 9988

This week we’re delighted to welcome Alison Mead as our guest blogger. Alison is a Sage Business Partner at Silicon Bullet. As a Business Partner Alison works directly with our customers to make sure they get the advice they need to select the right software, make sure everything goes smoothly when implementing their new software and gives them the ongoing support their business needs. You may well have spotted Alison on Twitter, or Facebook or even her newly launched Silicon Bullet blog [btw I thoroughly recommend a visit to her blog; it's packed with loads of useful advice for all Sage customers].

What do customers look for in their Sage Accredited Reseller? How can we add to the overall Sage experience?

Well, as ‘The Sage Lady’, as I am often called, I hope I can shed some light on this.

You can never get a full picture of a company and how they work, what their ethos is, and what they need until you meet them face to face, and that is what the network of resellers are able to do.  When a company wants to see someone in person, on their own premises, we are the ones who can turn up on the doorstep and help them out and drink their tea.  We are the human side of Sage.

Sometimes, with the best will in the world, a large company can’t understand quite how small companies and sole traders work. Many resellers are small companies themselves, so we are able to offer advice based on our experience of using the Sage products as an end user rather than just as a developer or trainer. Often we know if their IT infrastructure will support Sage and how to fully integrate the products with Excel and Microsoft Word, as well as offering other complementary services.

The Sage training given on site can be one-to-one and bespoke, so instead of learning just how to raise or edit an invoice in Sage for example, a trainer can help the customer design an invoice with logos and html links, decide on the specific form that product codes should take, and run through real life examples that really mean something, and as part of the training session start sending real invoices out to customers.

As a social media user myself I am able to advise on how Twitter links and Facebook pages could be used in the business and added to invoice designs and statements, which is something I am being asked about more and more by clients. After all, what better people to market to than people who have bought from you already – and why waste all that white space on your pdf invoice when you could have a handy logo that could be clicked on, alongside that excellent Sage Pay ‘Pay Now’ button?

I do find that these one-to-one sessions need to be short – 3-4 hours at most, as they are quite intensive, and I see people’s eyes glaze over and half expect their heads to start spinning if I go on for too long.

One example where I feel I really added value recently was for a company who had been using Sage for a while, but the nominal structure was designed more for producing year end accounts than making day to day management decisions. Sitting down with the company, I was able to understand what they really needed, and then offer a solution, taking them through the changes required step by step.  Now the desired reports for making decisions can be produced straight from Sage instead of in Excel, and all the previously required number crunching and manipulation is a thing of the past.

I have recently started writing a blog with hints and tips about using Sage to share my expertise. My blog combines Sage hints and tips on things I often show people during training with more general articles about running my own business and networking. Hopefully this is another way that we at Silicon Bullet can add value to Sage customers and other resellers through shared knowledge.

Alison Mead, Silicon Bullet

So firstly, why blog? Why not advertise your practice in the local Yellow Pages or Newspaper?

My answer to this is simple, think about the last time you needed to know something, not specifically a business query, but anything.

What did you do? Where did you go to find information?

I’d be amazed if more than five percent of you didn’t think ‘I Googled it’. Research is showing that our behaviour is changing; we are now much more inclined to trust internet search engine results ahead of paid-for directory listings, and we trust higher ranking websites ahead of those below them. This change is going to be reflected in the behaviours of your target audience, so you must consider search engines as integral to developing your business.

So the next question has to be, how do I rank higher on search engines?

Websites are regularly indexed by mathematical algorithms which calculate their ranking position, the precise indexing algorithm is kept top-secret but it considers factors such as Keyword Density, Meta Content, Age of Content, Inbound Links and Richness of Content.

High ranking websites will be rich in relevant keywords for the given search string, well built, updated regularly, referenced regularly and contains a healthy mixture of images, text and videos. These attributes are also typical of blogs, and so they can be invaluable to improving your website’s performance on search engines.

So, now you understand that having a blog can add value, we come to the crucial part, content. A lot of people are concerned about creating content; they assume that because they are not journalists or writers, that no-one will be interested in what they have to say. I argue to the contrary, regardless of whether you are a secretary, accountant or bookkeeper, what you are is an expert in your professional field and someone whose experience and insight has value to your peers.

Thought leadership

In Sage we refer to this as ‘Thought Leadership’, being seen by your industry as a reliable source of relevant information. Writing a blog isn’t easy, far from it. Your content needs to be accurate, relevant, engaging and most importantly original. Once you get into the habit of writing though, it becomes a lot less challenging and you will actually find that there are lots of topics out there for you to discuss.

What are the latest developments from HMRC, has using software helped your practice become more efficient, how will VAT changes impact upon your clients, how has working with your practice helped resolve problems for a client. There are a handful of topics ripe for blogging, which you can have on me!

Ideally I’d recommend keeping your blogs fairly short, something like 300 words is about right, and should only take you around half an hour to write. When you start, don’t overstretch yourself, try to write a blog once a fortnight, perhaps while you’re having a sandwich over your keyboard. Don’t expect instant results, but keep writing anyhow, the more relevant content you create, the better. The key part is that if you persevere, you will get results.

If you use other social media like Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin, then share your content there as well. Every click and inbound link will add to your blog’s authority and help to improve search engine performance.

Once you’re feeling confident in your blogging, you could even guest blog on Sage’s blog, we’re always interested in hosting content, which by linking back to your site will add to its authority. Just let us know if you fancy giving it a go!

Alex Walker, Sage Accountants’ Team @alexatsage