From side hustle to SME: How Axcelerate grew its business using Sage’s business cloud solutions

Sage’s business cloud solutions offered small business Axcelerate a way to grow its business and service its clients without the expense and admin burden of fixed office and IT infrastructure.

Growing a new business’s turnover by 50% in normal times is impressive; achieving it in a pandemic with lockdown restrictions is exceptional. It’s exactly what Axcelerate, a professional services firm and accredited Sage partner, achieved in 2020.

Axcelerate specialises in streamlining businesses by implementing enterprise resource management, as well as offering advisory services, bookkeeping, payroll, tax, accounting and financial management services.

Started as a side hustle in 2017, Axcelerate became a full-time occupation for executive director Tshepiso Sekudu at the beginning of 2019. The full-time focus benefited the business: turnover doubled last year and is on track to grow by double digits this year.

One of the main pillars to the company’s growth is using Sage business cloud solutions. It allowed for working remotely from anywhere and is also affordable as no fixed infrastructure is needed.

The new normal was always our normal

Virtual offices may seem like the new way to run businesses, but for Axcelerate there was never any other option. Starting out as a side hustle meant costs had to be kept low and the business had to run virtually.

“The new normal was always our normal,” says Sekudu.

Sage’s online software solutions for small businesses give business owners the ability to organise, and make admin and accounting quick and easy with features such as integration with point-of-sale systems.

This solution also gives businesses the ability to personalise and track invoices, helping with branding and cash flow management.

Important for Axcelerate and many other businesses is that these services are in the cloud. Business owners don’t have to go into an office or have access to a fixed desktop system. They can log in and work from anywhere — something Axcelerate did last year when they moved the growing team into a central co-working space in Midrand.

“Everything was already up and running because we had been using the cloud, so when we moved in we could start working immediately,” says Sekudu.

Using the cloud also gives the business a cost advantage.

“It’s cheaper to set up infrastructure. He compares it to a pay-as-you-go model — you buy what you need and don’t incur any unnecessary or fixed costs for infrastructure that may not be used.

An easier, smarter, cheaper way to work

In addition to helping their business grow, as a Sage partner, Axcelerate has helped clients migrate to the cloud and integrate their systems, including those who were working on desktop systems.

“Migrating to the cloud makes functions such as accounting and payroll easy for these businesses,” says Sekudu.

Visit Sage for more information on how their accounting and business solutions make lives easier for business owners.

This article was paid for by Sage.