Sage calls on government to launch £350m fund to encourage small businesses to invest in new technology
Sage has called on the government to launch a fund of up to £350 million to encourage small businesses to invest in new technology.
The software giant claims £230bn could be added to the economy each year if smaller businesses adopted time-saving technology such as digital invoicing as it would make them more productive.
A one-year small business Digital Growth Fund that would allow companies to buy software and offset it against their corporate income tax – based on a similar scheme in Australia – would cost between £300m and £350m, the FTSE 100 giant estimates.
Claim: Sage says £230bn could be added to the economy each year if smaller businesses adopted time-saving technology such as digital invoicing as it would make them more productive
The fund is part of a series of policy proposals outlined in a strategy Sage presented to senior politicians last month.
The company, which employs 11,000 people worldwide and is worth nearly £10bn, warned that Britain risks falling behind other hi-tech countries in the race to go digital.
“What we’re telling the government is we can’t just do nothing and wait and see,” Sage boss Steve Hare told the Mail on Sunday.
“These businesses power more than half of our GDP and if you want Britain to grow, you need small and medium-sized businesses to grow.”
“If you’re not in the digital economy in the future, you’re not in the economy.”
His comments were echoed by Nicola Hodson, IBM’s UK-based boss, who said: ‘Small and medium-sized businesses are the backbone of the UK economy, supporting millions of jobs and providing tax revenue that helps fund public services such as the NHS. It is essential that they adopt transformative technology.”