Sage and PwC have announced an alliance that will enable growing private business customers to combine cutting edge technology with support from leading professional services firm, PwC. The launch will combine the strength of Sage Live, the real-time social accounting solution and PwC's cloud based accounting service, My Financepartner.

In the Midlands, there are nearly 750,000 small and medium businesses - companies that could benefit from this alliance. The Private Business team at PwC in the Midlands works with many of these growing private businesses in the region, and Sage Live users will be able to benefit from tailored services from PwC’s My Financepartner.

This includes a premium implementation service to help maximise the benefit of the technology for their business, and a competitively-priced offering combining quality accounting and compliance with business advice, hosted entirely in the cloud on Sage Live.

Chris Romans, partner and head of private business at PwC in the Midlands, said:

“Providing growing private businesses with useful and meaningful data on which to base their decision-making lies at the heart of the Sage Live and My Financepartner offering.

“We are excited to be working closely with Sage and look forward to providing more private businesses in the Midlands with the insight that they need to drive growth.”

Through open Application Programme Interfaces (APIs), PwC’s My Financeparter can combine data from a variety of systems and offer real time insight on the performance of Sage Live users’ businesses.

Sage Live is fully customisable, cloud-based and can be used on any device, from smartphones to smart watches, and from tablets to the desktop. Employees can view data in real time and react as one team. With social networking at its core, Sage Live allows seamless interconnections between colleagues, customers, partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders.

Commenting on the announcement, Alan Laing, executive vice president, global strategic partnerships & alliances, Sage said:

“This new partnership combines powerful financial technology with the type of business advice that Small & Medium Businesses simply haven’t been able to access in the past.”