Powering the UK economy: How PwC and Sage are putting trusted AI in the hands of small and medium businesses

Making up 99% of all UK enterprises, small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are the “engine of the UK economy”, says Derk Bleeker, Chief Commercial Officer, Sage. “By powering their growth, we’re powering the economy”. This link between the health of the SMB market and the broader economic picture extends beyond the nation’s finances. These firms are the backbone of communities, providing jobs, skills and social cohesion.

“We’re talking about local high streets, charities, universities, tradespeople,” says Amy Lawson, Chief Brand and Corporate Affairs Officer, Sage. “They’re the lifeblood of communities, they create purpose”.

This is the market PwC UK and Sage are jointly backing. Following Sage’s 2017 acquisition of Intacct, a cloud-native accounting platform, the firms have worked together through an Alliance partnership to bring it to market in the UK. This involved localising the platform and ensuring its compliance for UK operations.

Now, the partnership is focused on supporting UK firms by automating financial, HR and payroll systems and layering this with insights through Sage Intacct’s market-leading AI technology and software. The ambition is to “super-charge” their businesses, explains Johan Jegerajan, Partner, PwC UK. “SMBs don’t necessarily have the spending power or bandwidth to invest in AI, but this partnership puts it into their hands”. And in doing so, they gain back time to focus on the activities that grow their business.

Speed to value

Already, PwC UK has supported the roll-out of Sage Intacct across over 550 UK businesses, from local charities to football clubs and pizza chains. This is made possible by PwC’s implementation centre, a hub of expert knowledge and delivery support, aimed at helping businesses integrate Sage Intacct and see value from ‘day one’.

The process is adapted for each client, typically involving a series of workshops to understand the client’s ambitions for the platform. The outputs then inform design and testing, ensuring existing systems integrate with Sage Intacct, tailoring and optimising the platform to each business. Customers are also supported with a “partner for life” approach, providing ongoing training, reporting and best-practice guidance to help them get the most out of Sage Intacct and stay with Sage for the long term.

And now, powered by agentic AI solutions, the partnership is looking to accelerate the speed at which customers see value back from their investment. “We have co-invested in how we build an agentic workforce to deploy Sage’s solutions,” explains Jegerajan. 'We are now able to significantly reduce implementation times, delivering value more quickly, at higher quality, providing better insights for the end customer.”

With Sage Intacct, SMBs can reduce administrative tasks such as chasing invoices or generating quotes for their customers. It’s also designed to streamline and automate financial processes including expense management.

But as Jegerajan explains: “It's not just about accounting and record keeping. It's about providing end customers the information they need to enter new markets, drive new revenue streams, and deliver better service to their customers”.

Take CFOs for example. Their role is no longer simply reporting numbers. “They’re using insight from Sage to influence the business and how it grows,” Jegerajan continues. One such client is Pizza Pilgrims. After successfully adopting the platform, Sophie Gilchriest, Finance Director, Pizza Pilgrims says: “The quality of the information we’re giving our teams is so much higher and more reliable. It also enables the business to make really informed decisions without the fear of any inaccuracies in the data.”

By removing layers of admin work, employees gain back time to spend on expanding their business and put insight into action.

Taking a human-led approach

It’s clear the partnership is centred on people. “This is about those using the technology,” says Hatti Sudell, Sage Alliance Lead, PwC UK. “It gives them time back to focus on other aspects of running a business, or to invest back into their communities”.

And there’s an understanding that those using the software aren’t usually technologists. “They’re not looking for technology,” adds Bleeker, “they’re looking for answers.”

This recognition underpins the human-led approach PwC and Sage have taken. “PwC has helped us refine what our customers need,” Bleeker continues. The firm’s in-depth sector knowledge has been paired with Sage Intacct’s technology to ensure business needs are at the forefront of the platform and how it’s adopted.

A trusted partnership

The longevity of the relationship between PwC and Sage has been “critical to the success”, says Lawson. “If you've built a lot of trust over the years, you can really show up to the customer as one team.” PwC and Sage also have “shared values and a shared opportunity in the UK,” says Jegerajan.

This shared opportunity has been the foundation of a trusted partnership and a formal Alliance since 2020. “PwC were there with us when we acquired Intacct, they then helped us localise the product when we took it to the UK,” says Bleeker. “Since then, they've helped us scale. They've built capabilities to help implement Sage Intacct with customers. They've been a true partner all the way through, and they're a big contributor to the massive success that Intacct is today in the UK”.

Testament to the strength of Sage’s technology, PwC’s Finance Managed Services capability, which provides full-spectrum finance function outsourcing and transformation, is delivered using a combination of Sage Intacct and PwC’s multidisciplinary expertise.

Transparency in AI

“Trillions of pounds are running through Sage technology every single day,” says Lawson. For a FTSE-listed company supporting organisations across more than 20 countries, that scale brings a responsibility to build trusted, robust systems to a high degree of accuracy.

Building trust in the technology and ensuring that the CFOs, business owners and teams using it know exactly how it can add value to their business has been integral to the Alliance partnership. “We’ve had AI in our products for years,” says Lawson. “But in this latest wave of generative AI we have domain specific LLMs”. This means the AI is fine-tuned on data to perform tasks with high accuracy within industry specific fields, which has been combined with PwC’s deep sector knowledge.

Sage also uses deterministic AI, which gets users to the right answer rather than simply the most likely answer.

“It’s not a black box, it’s a glass box,” explains Bleeker. “You can check how AI has got to the answer with an audit trail, documenting exactly how the platform has worked it out”.

Championing SMBs to succeed

Being on the side of UK SMBs continues to drive the Alliance partnership between PwC and Sage. “We want to bring the best technology to our clients,” says Sudell, and by going to market together, the firms can successfully put AI at the heart of UK businesses.

In the future, the companies hope to have greater impact for customers. “We want to deliver even more powerful solutions for them to help their businesses grow and become more productive, more resilient,” says Lawson. “Our ambition is to bring even more value to customers by building out a trusted thriving network, powered by AI”.

By putting market-leading technology in the hands of everyday businesses, PwC and Sage are helping the people behind the numbers to build stronger organisations and thriving communities.