Businesses across the 海角视频 are being invited to be part of an experiment designed to find out how tech can improve their growth, in a project launched by two of the North East’s biggest organisations.
The scheme will see Northumbria University and Sage work together provide free training to accountants around the 海角视频. The training will focus on showing them how digital technology can be used by their clients to grow and increase productivity.
Research by Sage suggests that small and medium businesses lose around 5.6% of their business time to admin, costing them around £40bn a year. Many businesses still use paper-based admin and spent an average of 120 days a year on these tasks.
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The partnership has received £281,000 of funding from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
Speaking about the project Sabby Gill, Sage’s managing director for the 海角视频 and Ireland, said: “It’s called MADE (Make Accounts Target Enabled). It is a joint initiative between us and Northumbria University and it is one of only six projects funded by BEIS.
“We have a productivity issue in the 海角视频 where the vast amount of time is spent by SMEs on administrated related tasks and if you take that admin rated time frame and put a cost to it, that’s £17,000 a year tat could be saved by an SME.
“What we are looking to do is to try and use accountants as the enabler to enable small and medium businesses to adopt technology. The problem is that accountants don’t necessarily have the skill set on how to engage, talk to, and train SMEs to adopt technology.
“This programme is a partnership to train the accountants so they can provide that expertise to SMEs to increase productivity and growth.”
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Sage will provide technology that can be used during the trial, but Mr Gill said the programme would not be limited to tech developed by Sage.
Over the first 12 months of the trial, the partnership will be working with 390 accountants and 1,950 businesses to try and figure out what techniques work best to increase productivity.
Explaining the university’s role in the programme Dr Matt Sutherland, senior lecturer in marketing at Northumbria University, said: “From the university’s perspective they have released a team of 10 of us to work on this project. On a day-to-day basis we are working on the blueprint of a randomized control trial.
“We are working with Sage colleagues to recruit those accountants and give them all the information about the trial and to gather the data.”
The university has developed six different training programmes for the accountants, which work at a different intensity so that the researchers can discover which one increases the productivity the best. The trial will also include a control group of accountants that will not be given the training to help their clients. However, once the experiment is over these accountants will receive the training that has been found to work best.
Claire Bennison, head of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants 海角视频, said: “We’re pleased to be partnering with Northumbria University and Sage as the end results should offer valuable insights on how SMEs can be better supported for national and international success.
“Accountants are a crucial business partner to SMEs, helping them to grow their business and better understand the environment in which they operate, which is increasingly reliant on digital technologies. This project is surely a win-win for all involved.”