As Sage continues to rapidly expand its AI-powered solutions, we sat down with Walid Abu-Hadba, chief product and development officer, to discuss how the Sage Platform is driving faster innovation, transforming productivity, and reshaping the future for Sage customers and partners.
In a world where innovation moves at incredible speed, Walid believes Sage is setting the pace.
“Businesses can’t afford delays,” he explains. “They need technology that delivers immediate value, streamlining operations, automating tasks, and enabling smarter decisions. But just as important as speed is trust.
“Our customers need to know the solutions we deliver are secure, reliable, and built to last. That’s why we’ve invested significantly in the Sage Platform, enabling us to deliver products to market up to 30% faster and more securely than our industry counterparts.”
The Sage Platform serves as a powerful foundation for connectivity, enabling rapid integration of AI innovations like Sage Copilot across multiple Sage products.
Rather than building solutions from scratch each time, the platform provides a consistent, reusable framework that allows quicker deployment and faster iteration.
“Our platform fundamentally changes how we innovate,” Walid highlights. “It allows us to rapidly connect new AI capabilities to multiple products simultaneously, significantly speeding up the overall innovation cycle, while ensuring every update meets the high standards our customers expect and trust.”
Unlocking growth with AI innovation
At the forefront of this AI-driven approach is Sage Copilot, which is available to over 40,000 SMBs and accountants across key markets including the UK, US, France, Spain, and Germany.
Sage Copilot automates routine accounting tasks and delivers actionable insights, empowering businesses to make smarter, faster decisions.
“Sage Copilot is transformative,” Walid says. “It removes routine tasks, freeing businesses to focus on strategic initiatives that drive sustainable growth.”
Security and compliance are fundamental to the design of the Sage Platform, incorporating robust safeguards at multiple levels including data handling, APIs, and AI models. “Security is central to everything we do,” Walid stresses.
“We’ve embedded guardrails directly into our platform, ensuring data protection and compliance while allowing innovation to thrive without compromise.”
Flexibility is another strength of the Sage Platform.
Its cloud-agnostic nature enables swift adaptation to changing industry dynamics and evolving customer needs, ensuring Sage continues to deliver innovation at the pace demanded by businesses.
As more organisations join the platform’s digital ecosystem, Sage Network, they collectively benefit from increased accuracy, quicker cash flow, and streamlined compliance.
From concept to code
The Sage Platform isn’t just helping customers innovate, it’s transforming how Sage builds and delivers its own solutions.
At the core of this shift is Sage’s AI infrastructure, which has dramatically increased internal developer productivity and shortened product development cycles.
“We’ve built an environment where developers can work smarter and faster, using shared tools, frameworks, and built-in guardrails to focus on delivering innovation,” Walid explains.
“It’s a repeatable system that accelerates time-to-market without sacrificing quality, security or compliance.”
This approach has also unlocked new ways to attract and retain top tech talent. “Our approach to AI has become a major draw for developers,” Walid notes. “As a result, we are closing roles faster than ever before.”
Sage’s quarterly AI hackathons are another key component of this internal acceleration.
Sage’s teams regularly experiment with new ideas in safe, fast-moving environments designed to promote learning and rapid prototyping.
“These events are changing how our teams engage with technology,” Walid says. “They’re not just about innovation, they’re helping us scale up faster, onboard quicker, and build smarter.”
This investment has helped transform Sage developers into AI developers, without the need for extensive retraining, enabling faster innovation cycles and more consistent product delivery.
“We’re innovating at the speed our customers require because we’ve built a platform that makes it possible,” Walid concludes. “That’s how we stay ahead, and how we help our customers and partners thrive.”
Looking ahead
Walid sees even greater opportunity on the horizon.
With the Sage Platform as its foundation, Sage is well-positioned to accelerate the delivery of AI-powered solutions, expand its connected ecosystem, and help businesses scale for the future.
As innovation continues to reshape industries, Sage is helping businesses not only meet the demands of today, but also adapt and grow in the long term.
“What we’re building with the Sage Platform goes beyond generative AI,” Walid adds.
“Sage Copilot is just the beginning. We’re already exploring Agentic AI, where intelligent agents will work across systems to complete tasks more proactively.
It’s early days, but this is where things are heading, and the platform is designed to support that future.”
This evolution reflects Sage’s long-term vision: building technology that simplifies complexity, removes repetitive admin, and empowers users to act with greater clarity and confidence, wherever they work.
As AI capabilities evolve, Sage is enabling the next wave of innovation, moving from task assistance to workflow automation and towards intelligent agents that can act proactively across systems.
By embedding AI deeper into workflows, the Sage Platform is laying the groundwork for a future where businesses don’t just react faster, they operate smarter by default.
“Our mission is clear,” Walid concludes. “We’ll keep innovating at the speed our customers require, helping them stay ahead, thrive, and achieve lasting success.”
The post A conversation with Walid Abu-Hadba: Accelerating innovation with the Sage Platform appeared first on Sage Advice UK.