Latest news with #accounting
Finextra
20 hours ago
- Business
- Finextra
Sage expands embedded services to Europe and North America
Sage, the leader in accounting, financial, HR and payroll technology for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), today announced the global expansion of Sage Embedded Services. 0 This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author. Initially launched in the UK, Embedded Services is now available across North America and Europe enabling banks, fintechs, and software platforms to seamlessly build accounting capabilities directly into their products. This allows their small businesses and sole traders customers to save time, stay compliant, and make smarter business decisions. At the same time, it empowers platform partners to deliver branded accounting and related capabilities without the complexity or cost of developing their own solutions from scratch. Embedded Services aims to equip platform partners with capabilities that deepen customer engagement, drive loyalty, and unlock sustainable growth through enhanced user experiences. The expansion responds to a growing demand from small businesses for simplified business management capabilities embedded directly into their ecosystem within the applications they already use in daily operations. It enables access to key financial tools, like bookkeeping, reporting, and compliance, without switching platforms or disrupting existing workflows. 'Today's small businesses are demanding seamless, all-in-one solutions that streamline daily operations and manage money in real time within their natural digital habitat,' said Gordon Stuart, SVP Operations, Fintech & Embedded Services at Sage. 'By expanding Embedded Services across multiple regions, Sage is meeting the needs of banks and platforms looking to deliver accounting capabilities at the heart of the apps small businesses use every day.' Why it matters for platform partners Embedded Services offers banks, fintechs, and software providers a powerful way to differentiate their offerings by embedding accounting and compliance tools directly into their own products. This enables partners to meet more of their customers' day-to-day financial needs while delivering a unified, seamless experience. For platform partners, this is a chance to: • Accelerate time to market with Sage's headless APIs, reducing development time and lowering technical barriers to build and maintain. • Deliver tailored solutions with modular accounting capabilities, matching their specific customer needs. • Boost customer engagement by making their apps more useful, sticky, and central to daily workflows • Unlock new revenue streams through monetizable, value-added features Built for small businesses and the platform partner ecosystem Embedded Services is designed specifically for organisations that build digital products used by self-employed individuals and small businesses such as online banks, fintech providers, and industry specific software companies. The service is modular, allowing platform partners to directly embed: • Multi-dimensional general ledger • Real-time financial reporting • Customisable insights and analytics Depending on the region, additional functionality such as carbon accounting, collaboration with accountants and more may be available. All features are modular and white-labelled, letting partners control how they're branded and delivered, while benefiting from Sage's proven expertise.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Business
- Telegraph
How a ‘bulls--t jobs' boom captured the Big Four accountants
Working as an auditor at one of Britain's top accounting firms was once one of the most prestigious jobs in the City. In return for scrutinising the accounts of major companies to spot any potential fraud or irregularities, accountants were rewarded with good pay, long-term stability and steady progression. But today, jobs at the leading firms are viewed differently. Instead, in the words of one former 'big four' consultant, the roles are now about 'making money from bulls--t by pretending to be an expert in front of large corporate clients'. Critics say the decline is emblematic of the transformation of the so-called 'big four' from traditional audit and accounting businesses to sprawling sellers of consultancy services. All four of Britain's top accountancy giants – KPMG, Deloitte, EY and PwC – now have huge consulting arms that generate billions of pounds in revenue each year and employ thousands of people throughout Britain. Prof Atul Shah, of City University, London, says the pivot to consulting has fundamentally transformed the 'culture and mindset' of the big four. 'I trained with Peat Marwick [now KPMG] in the early 1980s. It was mainly an audit firm then, and the culture was one of public interest and professional scepticism,' says Prof Shah. 'Consulting has become at least a third of the revenue for the big four and this has made them highly commercial firms, with strong revenue generation incentives for partners.' He argues the firms' prioritisation of their consulting businesses has ultimately led to their involvement in a series of high-profile audit scandals involving major firms ranging from BHS to Carillion. When the big four first made a move into consulting, the market was not a new one. The consulting industry traces its origins back to the early 20th century with the emergence of companies such as McKinsey & Co, which aimed to bring a scientific approach to running businesses. The big four started building their own consulting businesses in the early 1990s, before pursuing a renewed push in the wake of the 2008 financial crash as they looked to capitalise on widespread economic volatility. Critics say this shift has locked the big four into selling increasingly broad advice in order to keep growing their revenue figures and maintain their partner payouts. It has worked so far, with the revenues of the big four being boosted and annual partner payouts at firms such as Deloitte rising to more than £1m. For these firms, there are strong incentives to keep their consulting businesses growing. Prof Laura Empson, of Bayes Business School, says: 'One of the challenges is that if you start slipping down the rankings, you can no longer rely on the loyalty of the partners to stay. They will be poached, and they will move. No one wants to work for the losing team.' Tamzen Isacsson, the chief executive of the Management Consultancies Association (MCA), says the consulting industry's recent growth is evidence that their services continue to be 'valued by clients for the independence, the transformation, and efficiency they deliver'. 'The British consulting sector has doubled in revenue over the past five years, exports have trebled and MCA member firms have supported clients in the UK and across the world with critical services during a period of unprecedented global economic disruption,' Isacsson says. However, insiders argue that accounting giants' reliance on revenues from their consulting business means they have filled their ranks with people carrying out nonsensical tasks. 'It's just educated people making PowerPoint slides of nonsense for companies,' one former big four consultant says. 'People would be working 13 hours a day to just stay slightly ahead of their clients.' He says meetings could be painful. 'We famously did one project on new laws facing the car industry. The whole time we were going: 'What are we doing?' We just really didn't have a clue. 'In the final showdown meeting with the client, we were just rambling off laws, and the clients kept saying, 'Oh yeah we know that one.' We'd basically spent hours trying to do this project and the client kept telling us, 'Oh yeah, we knew about that'. 'But there was this one really obscure law I'd found from Arizona,' the former consultant says. 'I'd found it after hours of searching and we mentioned that one, and the client said, 'Oh we haven't heard about that one yet'.' For those still in the industry, it is an increasingly rare occurrence. They say it is becoming more difficult for consultants to outsmart their clients, threatening to call time on the 'bulls--t jobs' boom. 'At one time, clients hadn't been as well educated as the consultants, they hadn't thought about strategy,' one ex-big four partner says. 'You can't pull the wool over the clients' eyes any more because they're just as smart and educated as you are. A lot have MBAs of their own.' 'Glorified outsourcing' Critics say the big four now risk falling into the trap of competing for increasingly low-level work by cutting their costs and tightening their margins at the expense of the quality of their work and their broader reputations. One Deloitte partner says the situation could see a race to the bottom in which the big four are undercut further by firms including Accenture or Tata Consulting Services, which now outsource much of their low-level work to places such as India. Already, at some accountancy giants, the consulting businesses have started to become problematic. One former HR executive at KPMG says the consultancy divisions now increasingly operate like glorified outsourcers. They say the pursuit of more low-level work has contributed to poor morale inside these divisions. The mood is only becoming more sour. Consultants have repeatedly been targeted for lay-offs during economic downturns, further damaging morale and undermining the firms' reputation for stability. McKinsey recently made some of the biggest layoffs in its history, and has cut more than 10pc of its staff over the past two years in response to the slump in the consulting industry. Luke Johnson, the chairman of Gail's Bakery and entrepreneur, says things are only heading in one direction. 'This is just the start,' he wrote in response to the McKinsey cuts. 'AI is eating these professions alive.' Widespread backlash against consultants now threatens to make the situation worse. In the UK, Labour is currently seeking to cut back government spending on consultants with the aim of saving taxpayers more than £1bn by the end of next year. The Trump administration in the US has gone even further under the leadership of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, which has slashed billions worth of consulting contracts. Trump's cuts have already led to redundancies in firms including Deloitte and Accenture. The problem the big four face is that they seem stuck with their so-called 'multidisciplinary models'. EY's own attempt to separate its audit from its consulting division by splitting itself into two failed dramatically in 2023, amid a clash over which side would take control of the accounting firm's highly profitable tax division. The failed 'Project Everest' split initiative cost the firm more than $600m (£445m) in advisory fees. Since then, all of the big four firms have ruled out future split plans, even as questions remain over the extent to which the model works. Lisa Fernihough, the head of KPMG's advisory unit, says: 'We're committed to the multidisciplinary model because it's right for our people, our clients, and our business ... This model also gives our people exciting and varied careers across the firm, including in audit.' More broadly, with consultants holding major power over the way the accounting giants work and operate, executives may have little choice but to keep pressing on. Insiders at the accountancy firms may agree that their ranks are filled with nonsense roles. But, for now at least, the big four are likely to keep the 'bulls--t jobs' boom going for as long as possible.
Khaleej Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Khaleej Times
UAE: Embrace AI or be replaced, experts warn employees
Are you worried that your job might become automated one day and you might be asked to leave the company? Employees need to train themselves on technical skills before they become redundant at their companies, industry executives warned on Wednesday. "Junior level employees need to start training themselves in technical skills. Instead of your senior coming and telling you that this process can be automated, if you are not thinking ahead of time, you will be replaced by the year. We need to train and upskill our juniors on technical skills," said Ashok Mehngi, group financial controller, NMC Healthcare. "Mid-level staff need to work not only on technical skills but also on how to collaborate with other departments. Finance can no more be a single department which will work in silos, but work collaboratively with other departments, and middle-level managers need to learn it," he added while speaking during a panel discussion at the New Age Finance and Accounting Summit organized by Khaleej Times on Wednesday. Senior employees need both technical and people management skills With regard to senior level employees, he added that strategic thinking alone is not going to serve the purpose without them also being enabled with AI. "We're increasingly focusing on improvement. The audit closing is no more a monthly thing, it might become a bi-monthly exercise because we don't want wait for month-end to see the results and then take action. The finance team needs to support everybody in such a way that, going forward, this bi-monthly reporting will happen, and people start making the decision at a faster pace," he said. He stressed on learning both technical and people management skills. "We need both of them even at the senior level. They need to learn technical skills, because, when my juniors or mid-level team members provide me with some reports, if I do not understand how these reports are made, I will not be able to make those decisions. So technical skills are required not only at a junior level but also at a senior level. It's high time firms started investing in technology and people, because going forward, nobody will accept it. It's important to have people and technical skills, both,' he said during the panel discussion, which was moderated by Anand Soni, group CFO and strategic finance and business transformation leader and corporate trainer. Sireesha Venkata, Group CFO of BPG Group, and Ramkumar Balasubramaniam, CFO of Barclays, also took part in the panel discussion. Quit worrying about your job, embrace AI Anshu Sharma Raja, banking CIO and global technology leader, said finance professionals should embrace new technologies instead of worrying about artificial intelligence (AI) taking away their jobs. "We are in the new wave of AI revolution. Digital transformation is one thing, but this AI wave is a whole new thing and that is truly happening. I can't imagine anybody not using ChatGPT and so on. People like me have stopped using Google and now go to ChatGPT and other platforms. It has democratized that technology and it is in the hands of every single one of us, from CEOs to the junior-most guy. It is not about how I can save my job, but how I can leverage that technology so that I can do my job in a more efficient, effortless way to minimize errors," said Raja. She noted that be it small or big companies, they are integrating ChatGPT and other AI capabilities into their platform. "None of our jobs will be secure in the current avatar when you have driverless cars and so on. Those things are a reality, not some sci-fi thing that's going to happen in 50 years' time. People are questioning the value of education and degrees," she said during the panel discussion, adding that a lot of times finance teams and the CFOs keep themselves at arm's length from technology and think of themselves as users of a technology platform that a tech team is providing. "I would encourage everybody to change that narrative. Get in the conversation, start driving requirements upfront and start co-creating based on what's available today. Ask your CIOs how to embrace this technology rather than getting worried about the jobs being taken away," she added.
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Dublin-based accounting platform Outmin raises €4m
Dublin-headquartered accounting software company Outmin has raised €4 million in a funding round that will help it to strengthen its engineering team and deepen its AI capabilities. The company has also appointed former PwC Ireland managing partner Feargal O'Rourke as chairman of its board. Founded by David Kelleher and Ross Hunt, Outmin provides outsourced accounting and bookkeeping services, using artificial intelligence to provide clients with real-time financial data. The current funding round, which was led by Praetura Ventures, will allow the company to build on that and broaden its international reach, particularly in England. READ MORE 'This funding marks an exciting new phase for Outmin,' said Ross Hunt, chief executive and founder of Outmin. 'It will enable us to continue our growth in Ireland and expand our presence in the UK, especially in the North West which is a hotbed of activity. It's about delivering a real system that changes how firms operate.' The appointment of Mr O'Rourke, who is currently chairman of IDA Ireland, to the board will bring decades of experience in the accounting industry to the company. 'Outmin is building something accounting firms truly need,' said O'Rourke. 'It's not a short-term fix, it's a foundational shift. The team understands where the gaps are in the current model, and they're delivering a system that helps firms scale and focus their people on higher-value work.' More than 350 businesses currently use Outmin's AI Bookkeeper platform, which automates workflows such as document collection, invoice processing, reconciliation, and reporting. 'Every accounting firm is facing pressure to do more with less,' said David Kelleher, co-founder and chief revenue officer at Outmin. 'The future belongs to firms that invest in better systems, not just people. We're already partnered with forward-thinking firms like Nexio, who are providing valuable insights to help us optimise our product and create something that gives accounting practices a real competitive advantage.'
Zawya
4 days ago
- Business
- Zawya
Khaleej Times to unite innovative thinkers to shape the future of finance
Dubai – Khaleej Times proudly presents the 6th New Age Finance and Accounting Summit (NAFA) on 28th May 2025 at Jumeirah Emirates Towers, Dubai, the region's ultimate gathering of finance leaders, tax strategists, and AI visionaries. This year's theme, 'Transforming Finance,' sets the stage for a dynamic agenda featuring powerhouse speakers from Microsoft, Anaplan, G42, Jameel Motors, Ali & Sons, RAKEZ, LinkedIn MENA, Hanson Search, BPG Group, Al Naboodah, AW Rostamani, Barclays, Mantrac Group, NMC Healthcare, Andersen, Al Tamimi & Co, MCA Gulf, DAMAC, and more. Expect gripping discussions on AI-powered CFO leadership, predictive financial insights, UAE corporate tax strategy, e-invoicing, and real-time analytics, with each session designed to supercharge your financial strategy. A crucial topic is the UAE's corporate tax regime, which has significant implications for businesses operating in the region. Asiya Zargar, Group Head of Tax, Mantrac Group, emphasizes the importance of adapting to these changes. 'With the UAE's corporate tax regime now firmly in place, it's essential for businesses to master compliance and craft resilient tax strategies. I'll be sharing practical insights at this pivotal moment in the country's regulatory landscape,' she says, setting the tone for the Corporate Tax Strategy Panel she will be moderating. The summit also promises to address the global nature of finance, with insights from industry leaders like Ted Kemp, Chief Content Officer at Khaleej Times. 'Finance is global, shipping is global, and today disruption is global. I'm excited to sit down with Gulf Navigation CFO Ali Abouda, a financial leader across these dynamics,' Kemp shares. 'NAFA 2025 will deliver insights everyone can act on.' Manish Kothari, Group Head Tax at AW Rostamani Group, will further elaborate on the intricacies of adapting to new tax regulations. 'The UAE's corporate tax shift is a pivotal step towards aligning with global standards. At NAFA 2025, I'll share practical insights on navigating these changes, from FTA expectations to effective corporate tax strategies,' Kothari adds, providing a roadmap for businesses trying to align with these new standards. The day will also unveil the UAE's Most Influential CFOs, brought to you by Qashio, and provide an unrivalled platform for C-suites and decision-makers to connect, challenge conventions, and chart a bold future for finance. With partners including Anaplan, Andersen, MCA Gulf, Cleartax, Jedox, Signzy, Tally, Al Tamimi & Co, MICS, and Qashio | Visa, NAFA 2025 is the stage where the next era of financial transformation is written. For more information, visit the website:
