Sage hit by Tenon's deal with Microsoft

Sage’s dominance of the SME market for accountancy software suffered a blow
this week as Tenon
signed a deal to use a ‘stronger’ Microsoft offering as the basis for outsourced
finance functions.

The deal comes in the same week that
Sage saw its share price
fall by 6.8p after analysts JP Morgan downgraded the company’s stock to
‘underperform’.

Tenon already uses Sage, but backed the Microsoft technology as better.
Richard Fifield, head of outsourcing at Tenon, said: ‘Although we have a
partnership with Sage online as well, Microsoft is stronger and has more
offerings than Sage. The other difference between them is that through this
platform Tenon can run the system ourselves, but we can’t with Sage.’

‘We are giving SMEs more choices with different functionalities.’

Sage was unavailable for comment, though Tenon is expected to continue using
Sage.

The service using
Microsoft
will be used to offer SMEs a finance function by paying a monthly fee instead of
buying an annual license.