Sage Summit UK - The round up!

Over 7,000 delegates gathered for Sage Summit UK on the 5th and 6th of April, hosted at the ExCel London. Alan Laing, Executive Vice President Partners & Alliances at Sage, immersed himself in the Sage brand with his super green socks and opened both days with a heartfelt thanks to Sage partners, accountants and bookkeepers. Laing took the opportunity to highlight Sage’s recent performance confirming a million customers in the cloud and that the firm processes £3 trillion every year and deal with the salary payments of 53% of UK employees.

Laing was joined on stage by the Sage Executive team including Jennifer Warawa, Nick Goode and Kriti Sharma who highlighted key developments in Sage's core product portfolio Sage 50, Sage Live, Sage 200 and Sage X3 while also showcasing the major strides the company is making in Cloud, AI and Bot technologies.

Inspirational speeches were delivered on both days with key themes centered around digital business, diversity, entrepreneurial flare and self-belief. Day 1 starred Dragons’ Den Deborah Meaden and lastminute.com founder Martha Lane Fox.

Day 2 drew the largest crowds of customers and prospects who heard keynotes from Sahar Hashemi OBE, Jamal Edwards MBE, Kelly Hoppen MBE and Matt Hancock MP.

Delegates were invited to join mentoring and business advice sessions on both days, while also meeting sponsors and exhibitors which included PwC, Microsoft, Deloitte, Draycir and Kimble.

The high energy on the floor was driven from the networking areas, exhibitors and a free bar serving Sage Mocktails.

Entrepreneurs flocked to meet the "The lads" in the The Startup Van to share their business journey or lend advice to others!

As a Sage Summit Gold Sponsor and exhibitor, the #FacesOfPinnacle were out in force so delegates could meet the team. Our people are our business, so we wanted conference goers to experience our Sage software expertise, knowledge & professionalism.

We were delighted to get a chance to showcase some of our Sage 200 customer products, as we sported our fab Polo shirts produced by The Signature Works. On our stand, competition winners got free burrito vouchers from Tortilla, notebooks from Pukka Pads and hair products to maintain the business look from KMI Brands. Big congrats to Jill McKinney, of Software City, who was the winner of our Stand Selfie competition and bagged an Apple Watch!

A highlight of Sage Summit was sponsoring "The Big Give Live", powered by Philanthropitch. During the 2 days of Sage Summit delegates had the chance to meet and greet the 3 participating charities PIP, Working Chance and Hire a Hero on the Sage Foundation Stand.

Pinnacle joined forces with Sage Partners Acuity and Datel to donate £21k to Philanthropitch, a fast-pitch competition where innovative charities pitch to win capital to scale their organization. Congratulations to Working Chance who were the worthy winners!

If what you were looking for was networking, business insight, motivation, education and fun, then Sage Summit was the place to be! Let's hope this will be a date next year!

The ones that stuck @ #SageSummit

"If you don't like change, you will like irrelevance less" @AlanLaing1

“Change can often divide the crowd”@jenniferwarawa

'A business can be future proofed, you don't need to upgrade' @nickgoode

"Once in a generation, a technology comes along that changes everything"@sharma_kriti

"Age is irrelevant; be brave & back yourself"@DeborahMeaden

"With the internet, you have a global reach without a global business" @Marthalanefox

"We are driving the digital skills agenda, we need the low end and high end digital skills'@MattHancockMP

'Act like a startup - go back to your customers and see the business through your customers eyes' @saharhas

'I realised to scale up you can't do everything'@jamaledwards

'The people you have within your company you have to let them grow and manage which will make your business grow' @kellyhoppen