Smaller accountancy firms should give up providing IT advice because the pace of change in the technology market is too fast for them, according to Graham Wylie, founder of FTSE100 software company Sage.

Wylie, now chief executive of software reseller TSG, said:‘It has become hard for the profession to keep up. When the underlying technology changes, they start to struggle.

‘We just provide the technology. [Accountancy firms] don’t want to invest to train people in IT.’

Wylie helped found Sage back in 1981, and saw the company reach the FTSE100 in 1999. After 22 years at the software giant, he decided to change direction.
Six months after departing from Sage, he set up TSG from the acquisition of Joynson.

TSG has expanded rapidly over the past two years, and through regular acquisitions of other resellers now covers the north of England as well as Scotland. Its presence is also spreading into the south of England with its Basingstoke-based office.

But although it retains close links with Sage, TSG also offers software from Microsoft (Navision), Iris (Exchequer), SAP (Business One) and Systems Union (Pegasus).

Wylie said Microsoft was pushing for his company to use its CRM and Navision products more often, but said that ‘these things take time’. He added: ‘We are continuing to grow our Sage and Pegasus brands.’

TSG is focusing on providing customers with ‘vanilla products’, rather than making bespoke solutions for particular industries and sectors.

‘SMEs are relying on us to make sure it all works, so it’s very hard to offer bells and whistles,’ he said.

Despite suggestions that smaller businesses are increasingly looking to use internet-hosted applications to manage accounting and sales information, Wylie said that he was not seeing clients making the move from running server-based business software.

‘Most clients are still storing accounts data on their hard drives rather than using internet-based applications,’ Wylie said.