Meet Team PKF SCS: Sage Consultant

Support, Sales, Consultancy, Marketing and Development. These are more than just departments at PKF Smith Cooper Systems – they are teams of people that have brought the company to where it is today.

Many of you may not have interacted with any of these departments or you may have interacted with them all! Either way, this series is intended to introduce you to the people behind the titles and give you insight into the people who make up Team PKF SCS.

Today, we’re hearing from Tim Holton. He’s one of our Sage Consultants – and if you contact us, there’s a good chance you’ll speak to him!

Keep reading to find out more about Tim and how his PKF SCS journey began.

We have also featured a range of other team members, so to catch up on our past articles click here.

How did your journey start at PKF SCS?

I am one of those that never planned to join PKF SCS. I was working as Marketing Manager for Uniq Systems when Smith Cooper took the company over. You always hear stories of bad experiences when a company is taken over, but this was not the case. The process was seamless and at every stage, I was made to feel very welcome by my new colleagues.

What does the role of a Sage Consultant entail?

Although my title is Sage Consultant, the role has morphed into more of a Telesales Executive. Based in our Reading office, I spend most of my time on the telephone. We have an extensive database on Sage CRM and we use the data to target companies depending on the current campaign, be it Sage 200, Sage Intacct or third party add-ons. I also get involved with seminar registrations.

Did you always want to work within software, specifically within Sage?

Absolutely not. I spent the first 7 years working at Rumbelows. If you are not old enough to remember them, they had over 500 high street stores selling electrical items. At the time they were larger than Currys!

I then joined an ex-colleague at AST Europe – a leading manufacturer of PCs back when the fastest machine was a 286! Next came a short spell at the bridge manufacturer Retix (also long gone). My next move was into software as a Marketing Manager at Computer Associates. During that time I launched a version of SuperCalc – at one point with more than 50% market share, before Microsoft and Excel came along!

Uniq Systems was my first taste of Sage software. I am expecting PKF SCS to break the trend and still be around when I retire!

How did you find the transition from your previous roles into this one? 

Having been responsible for managing the telemarketing team at Computer Associates, I already had the knowledge required, so it was a very seamless transition.

What changes have you noticed in your role or your relationships with customers during the pandemic? Do you think these will continue in the longer term?   

The issue during the pandemic was the number of people working from home.  When I have been making calls, a significant number of companies didn’t have the ability to transfer calls to colleagues working remotely. They could take messages, but realistically, given the pressures everyone was under it was never going to be a top priority to call someone back who wanted to sell an upgrade. 

Going forward, just about every company is back in the office. Those offering flexible working have telephone systems in place, so calls can be transferred seamlessly just like we can do at PKF SCS.

That is all for this time around, thank you very much for reading and a huge thank you to Tim for sparing the time to answer our questions!