Sage Pegs Chatbots As The Future Of SME Accounting

The chatbot revolution is in full force, but Sage said it is the first to pull cloud-based SME accounting into the trend.

The firm said Wednesday (Jan. 25) it is rolling out several updates to its cloud accounting solution, including the integration of a chatbot via Sage One with Pegg, the chatbot developed by Sage that was launched in beta last year. According to the company, Sage now has more than 20,000 Pegg users just six months after it released the bot.

New research from the cloud accounting company, also released Wednesday, found that about half of SMEs are looking to operate their businesses using artificial intelligence and bot technology. Sage North America Executive Vice President Nancy Harris said this trend is just part of the overall progress small business accounting technology has made.

“In 2016, less than half of accounting software users were in the cloud — a number we expect to increase this year,” the executive stated. “Today’s announcement highlights our commitment to innovation and supporting the future needs of business builders. As we continue to anticipate what’s next in this industry, we look forward to expanding our smart solutions to business owners in North America based on our growing expertise in AI.”

In addition to the latest figures in Pegg usage, Sage also revealed five new cloud accounting solutions across seven of its markets worldwide. The company also rolled out more than 100 new software vendors onto the Sage Marketplace.

All of these initiatives, Sage noted, are a part of its “invisible accounting” goals, which include a vision for SMEs to have fully automated accounting solutions by 2020 so business owners can focus on growing their companies.

“Sage’s vision is to empower entrepreneurs and business owners to spend less time on administration and more time on what they love doing,” said Sage Vice President of Bots and AI Kriti Sharma in another statement. “Artificial intelligence is the answer for solutions to the everyday pain points people are facing now. Our work at Sage allows us to leverage the latest advances in technology against the immediate challenges our customers [are] facing today.”