Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Sage's Kelly: 'Digital Heartbeat' of Small Businesses (Audio)

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Sage's Kelly: 'Digital Heartbeat' of Small Businesses (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: Global business news twenty four hours a day at Bloomberg
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  Speaker 1: This is a Bloomberg Business flag from Bloomberg World Handquarters.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Charlie Pellett. That's the Bloomberg Business flash you're listening to.
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  Speaker 1: Taking stock with pim box in Gatlin Hays on Bloomberg
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  Speaker 1: Radio technology in the United States compared to perhaps the
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  Speaker 1: United Kingdom. Here to tell us more is Stephen Kelly.
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  Speaker 1: He is the chief executive of say Age and he
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  Speaker 1: can be followed on Twitter at s Kelly CEO. And
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  Speaker 1: the Sage is the world's largest accountancy software supplier. It
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  Speaker 1: process is more than a billion pace slips every year
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  Speaker 1: and it also provides help to more than three million
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  Speaker 1: businesses in more than twenty countries around the world. Stephen Kelly,
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  Speaker 1: thanks for being here. Great to be here. Now, I
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  Speaker 1: didn't check. Are you wearing the lime green socks? You
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  Speaker 1: got it? Oh, the lime green lining to the jacket.
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  Speaker 1: Tell people about the lime green and why that's important,
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  Speaker 1: and then maybe just give us a hint of what
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  Speaker 1: you just came from a performance in front of I
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  Speaker 1: think fifteen thousand people in Chicago. Yeah, we um thanks
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  Speaker 1: for asking him. And we've just come from Chicago, which
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  Speaker 1: is the Stage Summit, which is the largest conference on
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  Speaker 1: the planet for entrepreneurs, and we had fifteen thousand entrepreneurs.
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  Speaker 1: We had people like Gwyneth Poultro, Eshton Kutcher, Richard Branson
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  Speaker 1: and a whole host of other sort of celebrities. Speakers,
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  Speaker 1: ran a sharp tank session, so quite a lot of
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  Speaker 1: fun and father that was obviously the Sage brand is green,
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  Speaker 1: lime green, shining green, and I've got a suit here
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  Speaker 1: and completely on brand on message at the Stage Summits.
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  Speaker 1: So it was really good as well to have Bloomberg
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  Speaker 1: Radio there and people like Curry also Blomberg Advantage well
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  Speaker 1: even telling list. There's a little bit more about safe.
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  Speaker 1: There's so many companies now that do online accounting and
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  Speaker 1: services for company. There's a lot of companies that have various, um,
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  Speaker 1: you know, services for entrepreneurs, for small and medium enterprises.
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  Speaker 1: What makes you unique? What is it that's different or
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  Speaker 1: what are you trying to do for entrepreneurs other companies
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  Speaker 1: are doing. Yeah, I think there's probably a couple of assets, Kathleen.
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  Speaker 1: One is the essence of what SAGE is the digital
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  Speaker 1: heartbeat of the small and medium business economy, and therefore
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  Speaker 1: we look after all the stuff around the movement of money,
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  Speaker 1: you know, collecting cash from customers, pay and supplants, plan
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  Speaker 1: and pain employees, and you know, the what we're seeing
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  Speaker 1: through the sort of digital revolution and particularly the their
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  Speaker 1: absolute amazing capability of smartphones and the internet is allowing
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  Speaker 1: entrepreneurs to run their business from the part of their hand,
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  Speaker 1: just like we do as consumers. So you know, whatever apps,
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  Speaker 1: you personalize it to your smartphone, your iPhone or the
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  Speaker 1: Samsung and we're seeing through stage software now that same
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  Speaker 1: capability for an entrepreneurs. And it's a very exciting time
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  Speaker 1: really to make sure that our entrepreneurs get awesome technology
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  Speaker 1: because these guys, just remember, they create two thirds of
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  Speaker 1: the jobs across the USA. All that I've just come
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  Speaker 1: up from Atlanta and just in that city, of all
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  Speaker 1: jobs are just created by tech startups. So it's just
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  Speaker 1: a vibrant time for the US economy through startups, through
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  Speaker 1: small and medium businesses, and these are the true heroes
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  Speaker 1: of the economy. So we do play a significant role
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  Speaker 1: as being their voice and their champion as well. Now,
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  Speaker 1: before you got the stage, I know that you were
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  Speaker 1: the chief operating Officer for the UK government, the senior
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  Speaker 1: executive responsible for I T digital programs, small business as
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  Speaker 1: communities previously at Oracle, Kordient, micro Focus. What is different
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  Speaker 1: at a technology company based in Britain versus perhaps a
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  Speaker 1: technology company that does most of its business in the
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  Speaker 1: United States. Yeah, I guess. I went to the teaching
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  Speaker 1: hospital Oracle back in the eighties and nineties, which spawn
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  Speaker 1: people like Mark Benny Off, Craig Conway, just loads of
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  Speaker 1: great executives, and I'm very proud to have worked with him.
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  Speaker 1: I think there was a blueprint that was established in
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  Speaker 1: the earlies and nineties of how to build a global
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  Speaker 1: technology company. A lot of it about conviction, confidence and
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  Speaker 1: also aspiration. So one difference I'd say is that probably
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  Speaker 1: European companies have a mentality where they grow to a
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  Speaker 1: certain size and then they start considering exit options, whereas
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  Speaker 1: US companies think about how do we go global, how
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  Speaker 1: do we get bigger, how do we consolidate the market,
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  Speaker 1: how do we become the category leader? And that's about
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  Speaker 1: conviction and confidence. But what I would say, you know,
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  Speaker 1: this is I think a golden ear for technology companies,
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  Speaker 1: both in the US and through the digital economy. In
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  Speaker 1: the UK, we see a more startup coming to the
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  Speaker 1: UK tech scene than ever and you know, overnight people
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  Speaker 1: like micro Focus on HP getting together for a bit.
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  Speaker 1: So I think it is a time where there's unprecedented
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  Speaker 1: opportunity for tech companies, both in the US and the UK.
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  Speaker 1: And the acceleration and the speed of technology disruption we
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  Speaker 1: see it as consumers every day. I think ten years
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  Speaker 1: ago there were no smartphones on the planet and now
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  Speaker 1: there's two billions, just crazy statistics, like the data has
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  Speaker 1: been created in the last year just amazing and because
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  Speaker 1: and there's two couple of sides of this one as
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  Speaker 1: well as be a tech company, you know, start attach company.
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  Speaker 1: Another one is used technology and of course this transition,
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  Speaker 1: you're trying to help people get on the cloud. How
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  Speaker 1: many small medium businesses aren't on the cloud? And why
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  Speaker 1: are Stage making such a big pusher? Yeah, probably lessen
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  Speaker 1: the smaller medium businesses are on the cloud, and actually
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  Speaker 1: a lot of smaller medium is its Candidlycathleen still use
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  Speaker 1: like spreadsheese and word processes to issue invoices. So through
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  Speaker 1: the power of UM, I think the smartphone, we can
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  Speaker 1: give them the capability through the part of their hand
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  Speaker 1: just to use technology very intuitively to run their business.
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  Speaker 1: You know, in the back of a cab, tuition invoice
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  Speaker 1: with one press of the button, to see what their
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  Speaker 1: cash flow is for the month, to see if they
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  Speaker 1: need to get a revolving credit extension, all these sort
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  Speaker 1: of things they can manage from their smartphone just as
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  Speaker 1: they would as consumers. And I think what Sage has
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  Speaker 1: done over the last couple of years is leap frog
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  Speaker 1: anybody in the marketplace in terms of really exciting technology.
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  Speaker 1: Is just interesting. One of the things we launched at
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  Speaker 1: SAVEE Summit a product called peg which is a chatbot
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  Speaker 1: and it's machine learning AI. You know, it's it's kind
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  Speaker 1: of gobbled gooop, probably to people who are not in technology.
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  Speaker 1: But what does it mean. It means that you can
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  Speaker 1: sit on your smartphone and you can from Facebook, Messenger
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  Speaker 1: or Slack you can actually have a human relationship with
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  Speaker 1: the smart as sistant called PEG to your accountant engine
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  Speaker 1: and say you can say just how much cash have
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  Speaker 1: I got in my account at the moment, and it
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  Speaker 1: tells you immediately you know how much, how many invoices
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  Speaker 1: of the outstanding? All these sort of questions you wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: know as an entrepreneur in a fast movie, in environment
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  Speaker 1: where you're typically on the move, you know, literally in
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  Speaker 1: the palm of your hand, and it's very exciting time
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  Speaker 1: to technology. Well, I wish we could play some video,
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  Speaker 1: but this is radio. Have you taken a stage at
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  Speaker 1: the Stage Senate with the rock band The Killers taking
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  Speaker 1: a microphone? We'll have to We'll have to be there
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  Speaker 1: PM the next time to Tee mckelly does that. Stephen,
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  Speaker 1: thank you for joining us today. Thank you very much. Kathleen,
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  Speaker 1: thanks to he is the CEO of Stage. I'm Kathleen Hayes.
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  Speaker 1: Along with PM Fox. This is Bloomberg coming up. Bloomberg
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