Sage Blog

If you’re into social media or cloud computing, you’ll have felt right at home on our blog recently. We’ve tackled both subjects on a number of occasion, and given the popularity of those blogs, I thought it was about time we addressed one of the more feared topics is this area – security.

In the first part of this two part series, I’m going to look at passwords. I know the topic has been done to death everywhere from Lifehacker to AccountancyAge but it’s important so, here we go again!

Almost everything you do online and in the Cloud, will need a password. Passwords are the lock and key that keeps us secure from a shady underworld of identity thieves and internet highway men.  We construct complex and difficult to crack passwords to secure our on-line lives.

Or maybe we don’t.

The top 25 passwords

SplashData has revealed the top 25 passwords of the year, taken from a list of millions of stolen passwords posted online by hacking groups, selected password “highlights” are below:

1. password
2. 123456
3. 12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123

Complex and difficult to crack I’m sure you’ll agree.

Given the amount of information we’re compelled to give when we sign up to websites, it seems some people aren’t doing a great job of “securing” their personal details. Incidentally, if you are using 123456 as one of your passwords, can you change it please? For me.

Password formulas

The holy grail is surely a password that you can easily recall and that is hard to crack. More often than not, people tend to opt for the “easy to recall” part and don’t really bother with the “hard to crack” part.

With so many passwords to remember I can see the temptation to use the same password for everything (hint: This is never a good idea). A suggestion put to me to address the problem was to use a password rule. A way of generating long complicated passwords that are easy to remember regardless of how infrequently you visit a website.

Had I found the holy grail?

Maybe, maybe not.

It works like this: You devise a single rule that you will use for every password, then append part of the website address to it to make it unique. My password rule might be this:

The first 4 letters of the website name (capitalised)  + Underscore + Head office postcode + the % sign + the head office dialling code

Therefore, if I had a myspace account, my password for would be MYSP_ne139aa%0191 (it isn’t by the way). If I were to sign up to e.g. knights.co.uk I would use KNIG_ne139aa%0191. I only need to remember my rule and I can remember the password for each and every site I visit.

Easy enough to remember once you have created your “rule”. Given the length and variety of characters involved it’s going to be pretty difficult to crack. The main problem I see with this method is, if one of my passwords became compromised, my secret is out and all my accounts are at risk. It’s surely better than 123456 though.

No matter which way you look at it, the best thing to do is create passwords unique to every account you have, long complex passwords.

Password management

They’ll be difficult to remember though, so take a look at some of the password management tools that are out there. Lastpass.com and Keepass are two that spring to mind – but please, do your own research and pick the best solution for you. Heck, it’s even OK to write them down as long as you keep them somewhere secure.

Have a password audit for 2012, think about what you are securing online and if your passwords are good enough, if they aren’t consider changing them. You’ll feel better for it.

Mark Knights, Accountants Team

Our guest blog comes from mercer-elect’s Simon Griffiths. You might know Sage for our  business software, but with mercer-elect we’ve recently started helping small businesses with their pension plans. So, Simon knows a thing or two about pensions and can tell his “asset classes” from his “fiduciary”. Here Simons slays some pension gobbledygook.

January 23^rd saw the arrival of the Chinese New Year and, in best Bruce Lee tradition, we now find ourselves in the Year of the Dragon.

Whether you are from the Dungeons and Dragons generation or one of the more recent Hungarian Horntail aficionados from Harry Potter; dragons portray a magical, mysterious, mythical image of scales, spiked tails, huge teeth and claws, not to mention the fiery breath destroying most things in its path. It is also true that this image generally comes unstuck at the hands of a fairly simple dragon slayer – armed with nothing more than a short sword or a broomstick. 

Pensions – let’s keep it simple

The same logic can be applied (with a little Harry Potter based imagination) to the myth that shrouds the pension environment. Mention a pension and everyone immediately thinks complexity, confusion and runs for cover. Even the National Employment Savings Trust Corporation (NEST), set up to manage the pension scheme designed as a result of the Government’s aim for individuals to have their own personal pension account, has produced a phrasebook to help individuals understand some of the phrases in common usage. It tells us they will:

• Avoid using phrases like “asset classes” to describe different types of investment or;
• “Fiduciary responsibility” to describe the legal duty to act in a member’s interest,

only to introduce other phrases like:

• Consolidation phase – to describe one of three NEST retirement date fund phases

All perfectly clear then – and this is before you even get to actuaries, longevity swaps and annuity rates!

Think of your pension as a savings plan

Why do we have to think it is so complicated? At its basic level a pension is a savings plan for when you retire, nothing more, nothing less.

Forget the retirement aspect for a moment. If you are lucky enough in the current environment to have some spare money at the end of each month, or have some savings that you want to put away, and you were faced with the following choices, what would you do?

What are your options?

OPTION A: Use a service that charges a high fee every year to cover their set-up and running costs, thus reducing the amount of your money that is left to be invested and, even then doesn’t pay any attention to what how your savings are growing.

OR

OPTION B: Use a service which has a low fee, thus leaving more money available to be invested – and has experts checking to make sure that they are getting the best rate of returns available

Simple – go for option B. So why is a pension any different?

That is why Sage Pension, provided by mercer-elect, has been established. To act as the simple myth slayer to make sure you can get good value and simplicity when you want to start saving for later life.

Auto-enrolment

Auto-enrolment may have been delayed for organisations under 50 employees (watch this blog for more information on this week’s announcement), but all other organisations will still have to ensure something is in place. Even if you employ less than 50 people, why wouldn’t you want to start saving and benefiting from the tax advantages sooner rather than later? For more information download our pension guide or visit the website at http://www.sage.co.uk/sage-pensions

So “Gong Hei Fard Choy!” as they say in Macau and Hong Kong or “Xin Nian Kuai Le!” in other parts of China to welcome the Year of The Dragon and remember, when you are looking to slay the complex pension myth – we’re here to help.

Let’s hear your confusing pensions terms

In the meantime, what are the most confusing pension terms you have come across? Add a comment and I’ll try and translate them for you.

Simon Griffiths, mercer-elect

You know your business inside out, but do you know your customers inside out?

Acquiring new customers is five times more expensive than keeping the ones you already have, so customer turnover could be the largest financial burden for your business. By getting to know your customers and learning how to make them feel special, you build up a detailed picture of them and take steps towards retaining their business.

So, what CRM software can you use to help you know your customers better? How can you increase customer satisfaction? And what can you do to make customers feel special?

We’ve recently produced a guide to improving customer loyalty and here our some of our ideas for making your customers feel special.

What is customer satisfaction?

In short customer satisfaction is a measure of how your business meets or surpasses customers’ expectations.  It means retained customers generate long-term business for you, delivering positive feedback and great testimonials. Without it, customer churn increases and reputation risks damage through negative word of mouth marketing. In fact, in our recent customer experience survey we found that one in three consumers would ditch a company for good after just one below-par experience.

How do I increase customer satisfaction?

Understanding what your existing customers want and delivering it to them effectively is the best way to satisfy; meaning you can secure repeat orders, keep and retain your customers and benefit from positive word of mouth. Ways of doing this might include;

Customer loyalty schemes

You can immediately make a customer feel special and valued with a reward or loyalty scheme that offers them perks throughout the year…and they might even tell their colleagues and friends about it too! For example, we gave our lucky SageCover customers their very own VIP area at our recent SageWorld event.  Nice armchairs, trendy bags and tasty cakes all round!

Analysing customer data

Use the data you are gain everyday to find out a little more about your customers – like their propensity to buy at certain times of year or previous products they have bought – anything that might indicate their purchase preferences and behaviours. Then tailor your marketing to fit with the profile you have built up of them – something personalised or highly topical to them is much more likely to get through. Getting the right CRM software, or Customer Relationship Management software, can help with this.

Encouraging customer feedback

Giving your customers a chance to engage in two-way dialogue with you is vital. This could be through feedback surveys, social media, review meetings etc. It shows that you are more than just a business; it shows you have empathy and that you want to develop a relationship with customers – no bad thing! Here at Sage we try to do as much as possible.  We’d love you to hear from you through our Sage UK Twitter feed, our Facebook page or even by commenting on this blog.

Effective complaints management

Customer complaints can be telling, so it’s essential to deal with them efficiently, fairly and ensure the customer receives a satisfactory response and follow up. If a complaint is handled effectively, it can give you important root cause information that may help you to predict future issues or trends.

Improved customer service

Customer service needs to be sincere for it to be effective, so it’s vital to ensure that your staff are trained to fulfil this. If your staff can consistently treat all customers with respect and show efficiency, you will gain customer satisfaction and are sure to retain their business in the long-term.

Iain Ramsay, Small Business Team

Although our head office is in the UK, Sage ERP X3 (as a global product) is part of an international community that collaborates on product development, with an international team to aid global product deployment and after sales support through shared knowledge, skills and resources.

Our global conference

This month the Sage France team played host the Sage ERP X3 Global Sales conference, inviting over 500 Sage ERP X3 staff and business partners from 17 countries around the world over to Paris, making it the largest Sage ERP X3 event held to date. This event is billed as a conference, but the underlying raison d’être (picking up the lingo already!) is networking.

A networking natural?

Now, some people thrive in a ‘networking environment’ – effortlessly floating between colleagues old and new, picking up business cards and drinks like this event is their single purpose in life. Managing to juggle nibbles, a glass of champagne and picking their next victim in one easy swoop.

Other people find networking awkward and unnatural, struggling with the notion of polite ‘chit-chat’ and are just not comfortable working a room. Networking takes a lot of effort and a certain degree of practice, and we have all been guilty of standing in the corner with our colleagues rather than meeting new people.

But does networking, really work?

Business networking is an effective low-cost marketing method for developing sales opportunities and contacts, based on referrals and introductions – either face-to-face at meetings and gatherings, or by other contact methods such as phone, email, and increasingly social and business networking websites.

Social media has, in part, taken away the personal aspect of day-to-day networking, and enables us to meet contacts at a distance, but surely online networking can’t replace the value that face to face contact brings? And one would assume that the quality of relationships would be diminished through the lack of the human contact and rapport building.

Social networking can bring us closer to people and communities that we would never have the opportunity to meet in the ‘real world’ but in actuality it  doesn’t replace a face-to-face conversation, but more acts as a soft introduction.

Working for a larger business, with a wider social ecosystem the need to network face to face becomes more necessary. The key here is identifying the reason, or a goal for being at the networking event and stick to it – do you want to meet your counterpart from a similar organisation? Track down the supplier that messed up your order? Or perhaps find new job opportunities?

Networking can bring us better deals, higher value service, invites to more social events and new Linkedin contacts, but in my opinion the most important thing it brings us is trust. Trust that our colleagues, suppliers, partners are on the same path as us and are looking to achieve a common goal.

Julia Commons, Sage ERP X3 team

Payroll Real Time Information

I’ve been sitting back with great interest both absorbing and reflecting certain people’s viewpoints on whether HMRC’s introduction of Real Time Information for Payroll is a good idea or not.

What is Real Time Information?

Real Time Information (RTI) is a HMRC initiative to improve the accuracy of PAYE, reducing the need to send out corrections for overpayment or underpaying and the possibility of fraud.

Under RTI employers will be required to submit information electronically to HMRC on or before they pay their employees instead of just once a year.

Goodbye Payroll Year End stress

Having run a payroll for a small business prior to working for Sage my initial thought was “well that means a lot more work submitting more than 52 times a year if I process weekly and monthly paid employees”. But after some reflection I realised the medium and long term benefits actually go way beyond just the payroll world.

In the payroll world we all know how stressful payroll year end can get with reconciling reports, finding errors, trying to remember what I did, trying to correct errors and so on.

Without being biased, as I work for Sage, submitting more often under RTI will ensure what you are submitting is more accurate as well as removing the stress and complication of payroll year end.

Beyond payroll, imagine a world where you get the benefits you deserve and are entitled to, imagine calling the HMRC or any other government body being able to resolve your queries quicker as they have up-to-date information. RTI will help deliver this.

RTI may seem disruptive in the short term, but I believe that RTI is absolutely the right thing to do for all involved to move us all dragging screaming and kicking into the 21^st century.

How would you like to be RTI Ready?

We’ve all heard of High Definition televisions and the term HD Ready right?  I’m a typical male who always leaves things to the last minute, but if my business could get a change to be RTI Ready before April 2013 even I would jump at the chance.

Well, you have that chance!

You have the fantastic opportunity to not only be RTI Ready but also help shape how HMRC and Sage provide on-going help and support by getting involved in our pilot. If you are interested simply click RTI Pilot Registration and we will be in contact soon.

In my next blog I will be talking more about Sage’s plans to make the transition into RTI as simple, seamless and pain free as possible, but in the meantime you can find more information about RTI and we are doing on our website at www.sage.co.uk/rti

Neilson Watts, Sage Payroll Expert

When was the last time you said ‘thank you’? Sometimes it’s a thing we take for granted, yet the impact of saying it can be huge.

Here at Sage, saying thank you is a big part of our culture and we have great policies and incentives in place that encourage a happy workplace. We have a great employee recognition scheme in place whereby you can nominate a colleague for a ‘Guiding Principle’ award, acknowledging them for a job well done. There are many ways to say thank you though and sometimes it can be as simple as saying those two words. So why say it?

Motivation

Saying thank you to the people you work with motivates them to do a better job. If you’re motivated, your levels of productivity naturally increase and you’re more likely to repeat the behaviour.

Happy customers

If your staff are happy, your customers are happy. Think about a time that when you had a great customer experience and what impact that had on your future dealings with the company. Did it make you more or less likely to use that company again?

Repeat business and word of mouth

When an experience leaves you feeling great you’ll want that experience again, leading to repeat business. You’re also more likely to tell others about it generating business through word of mouth.

Here in the Sage One team in UK and Ireland we recently launched a great new payroll service to the market along with our brand new website. This involved a lot of hard work and extra hours from the team so when our first birthday came around last week it gave us a great opportunity to say thank you to the team. We headed out for a few drinks and nibbles after work and, although our heads were slightly foggy the next day, we all returned to the office feeling motivated and ready to work hard and spread the feel good factor!

So once again I’d like to say a big THANK YOU to my colleagues across Sage for a great team effort in delivering a great service to our Sage One customers.  And channelling my inner Kate Winslet I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my family for making me who I am today, my friends for their support over the years, the family dog for being such an inspiration in my life, the postman for delivering my mail, GHD’s for giving me straight hair, the city of Newcastle for giving me The Forth (best drinking hole ever!), Friday’s for giving me the weekend……..

Abby Goode, Sage One

Tips for an easy self assessment

Like it or not, tax season is just around the corner. And as a small or medium UK business owner, this means that if you haven’t got your accounts in order, now is most definitely the time. We’ve created a guide to having a successful tax return season but I’ve covered some of our top tips here to help you.

Company accounts for the year 5 April 2011 must be prepared and filed online by midnight on 31 January. The first installment of your tax liability must also be paid by the same deadline.

Update: HMRC have announced the following The SA deadline remains midnight on 31 January. But HMRC will treat all returns that come in by midnight on 2 February as though they were submitted by 31 January. No customer will have to pay interest on payments due on 31 January that are paid on 1 or 2 February. Full details are available on the HMRC website.

This means it can be a tricky time for any small or medium UK business; tracking back over old invoices, getting paper work in order and paying tax liabilities.

Now, this may seem obvious coming from us but using an accounts software package throughout the year can often take away that last minute strain for you or your accountant.  However, whether you use an accounts software package or not, there are some key considerations and tax changes that you must be aware of to ensure a successful tax return season.

Effective tax planning strategies

We may be too far into this year’s tax season to put this into place now, but something to remember for the next financial year is how important it is to know your profits and therefore your tax liability. It will give you the opportunity to view what you might owe and allow you to put money aside throughout the year to ensure cash-flow doesn’t become an issue. An effective tax planning strategy might just be the difference in keeping your business afloat or actually allowing your business to grow!

Types on income and financial information needed

Regardless of whether you run your business as a sole trader or a shareholder/director of a limited company, to complete your self assessment tax return generally you will need details of the following types of income:

• Interest income from banks and building societies
• Dividend income received during the year from UK and/or foreign equities, or from shares in your own company
• Details of any capital gains made in the year through the sale of assets, such as shares or investment property;
• Property income, such as rental income
• Income received from gilts or bonds (excluding premium bonds)
• Income from a pension
• Income from a trust, settlement or from a deceased person’s estate
• Income from any employment , self-employment or a partnership

Payroll software to help with your income details

Your business’ payroll software should also come in handy for filing your tax return. The payroll should give you details such as employment income – salary, benefits, bonuses, income tax and national insurance already paid and, so on. Shareholder directors should also make sure they have up-to-date information in their systems of any dividends paid from the company to themselves.

Changes to the tax return penalty system: don’t be late!

Making it more important than ever to get your tax return in on time, the new penalty system means that an automatic fine of £100 applies if your tax return is filed after the end of January. And the longer you leave your tax return, the more severe the penalty becomes – meaning a very unhealthy start to the year ahead if your tax return isn’t filed on time!

The top tip for successful self assessment tax return is to really treat it with respect. After all, it is a legal document on which you are declaring your income for the year to HMRC. Proper record keeping and effective accounts management should see you successfully complete correctly and on time!

If you’d like to know more about filing your tax return online then download our white paper for having a successful tax return season

Nicole Matues,  Small Business Team

Our SageCover members get a long list of benefits from technical support to business advice. They also get Solutions Magazine (log in to see your copy if you’re a member); packed with business tips and expert advice. The SageCover team have kindly let me reproduce one of their articles for our blog so we can all enjoy it!

From emailing more effectively to understanding your business priorities, Laura Dixon looks at how you can find time you never knew you had…

Time for a new start

Poor time management means that the average company of any size, in any sector, loses 20 days of work per person, per year. Getting in control of time saves money, increases productivity and directly contributes to a better bottom line. With that in mind, we asked an expert panel: What can you do to make more time in the day?

1) Find your focus

Clare Evans: You should spend at least 10 minutes at the start of each day planning what you will do – not checking emails and getting sucked into answering them. Planning is crucial if you want to have an effective day’s work. Always keep your business plan and main objectives at the forefront of your mind. Look at your short and long-term goals, and ask yourself: what do I need to do today to achieve them?

The thing I’ve found with small business owners is that they are trying to do everything, and the volume of tasks often overshadows their true work objectives. I tell them to start by thinking about what’s important and focus on what makes the biggest difference.

Leo Babauta: Most small business owners are incredibly busy, but they don’t fill their days with the most important work possible. Of course, that work will be different for every person, but the most important thing you can do is figure out the top three most important tasks to get done each day, and focus on those.

2) Avoid distractions

Dr Monica Seeley: Switch off email alerts. Wean yourself off constantly checking them, so you can focus on the tasks in hand.

Leo Babauta: Disconnect from the internet and your phone for a period of time each day. Even if it’s for just an hour, that time is still vitally important, because otherwise you’re constantly being interrupted, distracted and sucked in.

3) Know how much your time is worth

Clare Evans: Every hour you lose has a value. Work out how much your time is worth financially, and use that to frame what you do during the day. For instance, if you don’t like doing accounts and spend a lot of time putting it off, hire a bookkeeper to do it. You can then spend that time doing the tasks that only you can do.

4) Fine-tune your emails

Dr Monica Seeley: Make sure you make the most of your email features. Use rules and filters to set priorities, so what you see first in your inbox is the most important. This way, you won’t miss key mail from your important clients. Use expiry dates on ephemeral emails, so you don’t unnecessarily clutter up other people’s inboxes too.

Also, if you get your own emails right first time, you can avoid a lot of email pingpong. Start with a clear concise subject line that sums up the email. Use a professional greeting and make your request clear and concise. Include a time frame and the exact action required. Sign off with your phone number and put ‘Thanks in advance’, so no follow up emails will be needed.

And think about attachments. Ask yourself whether you really need to send the same attachment to six people – would it be easier to put it on a shared space instead? You can cut how long it takes to complete tasks by eliminating time spent on downloading information and deleting it afterwards because it overwhelms email storage space.

5) Don’t be afraid to draw the line

Leo Babauta: Reduce commitments to create space to get important work done – start saying ‘no’ so you can say ‘yes’ to this work. Set lower limits on how long you work each day, and you’ll force yourself to do the higher impact tasks during that time instead of filling your days with unimportant jobs. Clare Evan S: Don’t work until the task is finished, otherwise you will be working long hours. Have a cut-off point. Set expectations with other people too – make sure they know how busy you are and what is reasonable to expect from you.

Clare Evans: Don’t work until the task is finished, otherwise you will be working long hours. Have a cut-off point. Set expectations with other people too – make sure they know how busy you are and what is reasonable to expect from you.

Laura Dixon writes for a range of titles including The Independent, The Guardian and Business Life.

Big data is just that; huge sets of data that are constantly changing, which means that it’s really difficult to cajole into any meaningful form of information.

Wikipedia describes big data as the “term applied to data sets whose size is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, manage, and process the data within a tolerable elapsed time. Big data sizes are a constantly moving target currently ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set.”

Data warehouses

Big data is usually stored in a data warehouse – that is if you want to be able to analyse and interpret data for use in your everyday business. A data warehouse can incorporate Business Intelligence (BI) tools, which take extracts of data into a repository to allow you to access the key information you need without referring to the whole dataset. The thing is, not every data warehouse provides you with the capability you require, as many vendors are currently in the process of evolving their solutions from solely an information store to providing analysis tools for extracting more meaningful data.

Gartner recently stated that “we are seeing data warehouse platforms evolve from an information store supporting traditional business intelligence (BI) platforms to a broader analytics infrastructure supporting operational analytics, corporate performance management and other new applications and uses, such as operational BI and performance management.” This indicates that the market is shifting from storage and access to delivery and comprehension. In fact Gartner predicts that by 2013 most data warehouse vendors will offer something that is based more around information management and focuses on getting data out.

Planning for the future

If you have large sets of regular data that are input into your business systems and you don’t have the tools to manage your data effectively, you may end up with lots of data with no way to analyse trends. Modern businesses demand much more than just joining up common tasks within their organisation and are now more concerned with getting meaningful information out. A recent study from IBM showed that 83 % of CIOs have visionary plans that include business intelligence and analytics, confirming that businesses really want to act on the huge amounts of data that they have at their disposal.

Understanding business data

We believe that businesses want to gain a better understanding of their data to so they can plan for the future and make decisions made on knowledge and fact. Business intelligence is a fundamental part of any business, that’s why we make it available to all Sage 200 customers as standard; in fact you can see some of our Sage 200 case studies to find out what our customers think.

More and more businesses want to use the data they have accumulated over the years and be able to access it easily and interpret information. Business Intelligence allows businesses to have greater control and agility through better visibility of data and multi-dimensional analysis, so they can measure key metrics enabling them to spot things like underperformance and take action.

Informing decisions

In this economic climate, the ability to make informed decisions is key. Business Intelligence, such as that available with Sage 200, allows businesses to identify who their top customers are, which products are selling the most, what’s most profitable and what’s in stock/on order so they can plan effectively, ensuring that customers are kept happy and profits are maximised.

Victoria Ferrer, Sage 200 Team

For more information on our finance, CRM and business intelligence software visit Sage 200.

We’ve just sent out the latest edition of Exchange Magazine – the magazine for members of our Accountants’ Club. It’s packed with useful information to help our Accountants run their business, and we thought we’d give you a preview of one of their articles here on our blog.

If 2011 was the year the world woke up to ‘cloud computing’ then 2012 is set to be the year that mobile shopping becomes the norm. It’s the quiet revolution that’s changing the way we shop – and transforming the way businesses make and receive payments. A powerful combination of new technology, better wi-fi coverage and increasingly powerful handheld devices is now making it easier than ever to access, view, buy and sell goods online – wherever you are. And with mobile broadband services improving and extending their coverage, experts are predicting that connecting to the internet via a smartphone – rather than by using a laptop or PC – will become the main way of accessing web resources for the first time in 2012.

Research commissioned by magazine Retail Week found that UK customers are already spending a staggering £1.3 billion a year via mobile services – with that figure expected to rise to a massive £19.3 billion by 2021. Worldwide mobile phone transactions now account for £148 billion of e-commerce and experts say that figure will treble in the next five years. Food, groceries and electrical items are currently the most popular purchases being made by this new breed of ‘connected customers’ and analysts at Barclays Bank say mobile – or ‘m-commerce’ spending – is growing at the fastest rate of any retail channel.

A separate Google survey found that 79 per cent of UK shoppers now use smartphones for shopping, while 70 per cent use them to check details – including comparing prices – while in store. In September the company launched their Google Wallet in America, enabling users in key cities to download a secure application allowing them to make easy payments. And there are plans to make it available here and in mainland Europe later this year too.

What’s in it for you?

So what more do you need to know about this way of working – and what are the potential benefits for you and your clients? Using handhelds as the primary channel for viewing and consuming goods has huge implications for the way all businesses, and accountants, make and collect payments. As Angus McCarey, UK Retail Director for eBay in the UK says: “Mobile shopping represents a massive opportunity not just for retailers, but for the economy as a whole.” Subscribing to an online payments service like Sage Pay can offer a low cost, efficient way to sell goods and services. Recommending the solution to clients can cut their running costs and allow them to reach out to a new breed of customers – who will soon expect mobile payment systems as standard. In addition to quicker and more streamlined processing, you can also help clients integrate payment solutions with Sage 50 Accounts.

M-marketing

As well as selling and processing, mobile retailing brings huge potential for ‘m-marketing’ – sending marketing materials to clients via their mobile devices. As well as extending the online reach and profile of both your clients and your own practice, this can be a great way to show you are ‘ahead of the game’. It’s worth remembering that people access and view information differently via mobiles than they do when using a laptop or PC. Context is everything. People are often connecting to the web with a smartphone when they’re on the move so your offering needs to be more immediate and quick to use and navigate.

Agencies like the Mobile Marketing Association can offer more advice and tips on how to get started and the type of solutions that will work best for you.

Sheryl Thompson, Exchange Magazine Team