Mohammed Bham’s 98% Score Shows Sage’s Hiring Fix

CPiO consultant Mohammed Bham scored 98 percent on the practical assessment at Sage’s 12-week Intacct Academy in Newcastle, the highest mark the programme has recorded.

The Birmingham Sage partner sent him to headquarters as a junior hire. Sage has run that academy since 2023 because its resellers could not recruit enough people who could put Intacct into a live finance team.

He Left Newcastle With a 98% Score

Bham, a junior Sage Intacct consultant who joined CPiO in 2025, finished the course at Sage’s Newcastle HQ with outstanding marks across the programme and 98 percent on the practical paper. The public account of the result, dated 8 July 2026, called it the highest assessment score the training for Sage professionals has recorded.

On 3 June 2026, CPiO’s own account, CPiO’s write-up of the result, said he posted the highest Build Lab score in his group. That is the same practical, named the way the partner talks about it.

We're really proud of what Mohammed Bham has achieved since joining CPiO.

From a self-taught Sage 50 user in Malawi to Sage Intacct Academy graduate at Sage HQ in Newcastle, including the highest Build Lab score in the cohort.

Read more: https://t.co/BFBFOfOQRP pic.twitter.com/aWsFDBUFHo

— CPiO (@CPiOSage) June 3, 2026

Glen Towers, senior partner growth manager at Sage and the academy’s programme tutor, said the course had meant a great deal to Bham from the first day, and that he already treated consulting as more than a software install.

The night before the Academy started, my suitcase was already in the car because I was so excited. It honestly felt like a dream come true.

Mohammed Bham, junior Sage Intacct consultant, CPiO

He was also marked out for enthusiasm, professionalism, and the way he helped other delegates. Those are the bits Sage wrote into the academy on purpose, because a clean configuration still fails when nobody can sit with a finance team through the first close.

The Academy Exists Because Partners Could Not Hire

Sage did not invent a 12-week residential course for fun. On 30 March 2023 it launched the 12-week Sage Partner Academy in the UK and Ireland after its own channel study found resellers stuck for people.

HOW SAGE GOT TO A PARTNER ACADEMY

1. April-May 2022: Sage’s Partnering for Success study polls 1,000 reseller decision-makers, 500 in the UK and 500 in the US.
2. June 2022: The UK cut shows 40 percent struggling to attract skilled entry-level staff and 46 percent struggling at management level. Sage later summarised the entry-level problem as more than 40 percent.
3. March 30, 2023: Sage opens the academy to school leavers, graduates, and career changers employed by participating partners, after a pilot of six people and a second intake of 14.
4. 2025: Bham joins CPiO and is sent on the same course.
5. June 2, 2026: CPiO publishes his academy result; the 98 percent practical follows in the 8 July 2026 public account.

Paul O’Riordan, then VP of Partners and Alliances at Sage UK and Ireland, put the gap in plain language when the course launched.

We know that our partner ecosystem is facing challenges in finding and recruiting the right talent into their businesses. After a successful pilot, the Sage Partner Academy is helping to fill these talent shortages by providing our partners’ new recruits with the skills needed to have a thriving career as a consultant in a reseller’s business.

Paul O’Riordan, VP of Partners and Alliances, Sage UK and Ireland, 30 March 2023

He added that people on the programme can build Sage Intacct expertise “in as little as 12 weeks.” One of the first graduates, Joel Purvis, went on to work as a lead Sage Intacct consultant at Manchester partner Phase 3. Victoria Riley, head of client services at PKF Smith Cooper Systems, said the content was extensive and that her firm’s delegate was picking up practical skills and a partner network at the same time.

Sage still uses the same pipe as a hiring channel. Technology Services Group in Newcastle has advertised a trainee Intacct consultant seat at £25,000 that includes the 12-week academy. That is the door CPiO pushed Bham through, only he arrived already fluent in older Sage products.

What a Certified Intacct Consultant Costs in 2026

A certified Intacct person is still priced like a specialist, not like a graduate on a course. US contract consultants billed $85 to $175 an hour in 2026 on KORE1’s staffing desk, with revenue recognition and platform people at the top of that band, while UK employed implementation seats were being advertised around £60,000 to £70,000.

THE INTACCT HIRING BOARD

KORE1’s August 2026 note is blunt about why the hire is awkward. Intacct is a finance system sold to CFOs, endorsed as the AICPA’s preferred financial management solution, and configured mostly by people who used to close the books. An IT-written job spec filters out the staff accountant who can defend a dimension structure to an auditor. Certification, through Sage University, is treated as more meaningful here than in most ERP markets, which is why partner firms still post when someone clears the exam.

Partners who implement and customise the product aim for the Implementation Consultant Certification. There is a separate Accounting Consultant track for partners who run transactions and reports for several clients, and an Accounting Specialist badge for customer finance teams. The academy is the on-ramp; those exams are the licence plate on the van.

May 2026 product changes did not shrink the bench. Sage made AI-driven three-way matching generally available in accounts payable, moved custom purchasing approvals into early adopter, shipped SaaS Intelligence 2.0, and opened an AI Gateway so outside tools can touch financial data over REST and the Model Context Protocol. Matching invoices faster shifts work into approval design and exception handling, which is configuration, not keying. The people who can do that still come off a short list.

He Taught Himself Sage 50 in Malawi

Bham’s path is why CPiO could send a junior and get a record back. More than 14 years ago he taught himself Sage 50 while working for a transport company in Malawi. He later qualified as an AATQB bookkeeper and built a career around Sage software before the CPiO move in 2025.

“When I first started using Sage 50, I never imagined I’d one day be walking into Sage Headquarters,” he said. Desktop Sage 50 is still the first ledger a lot of small firms ever touch. Intacct is the cloud product Sage wants those firms to grow into, and the academy exists to turn people who know the old screens into people who can stand up the new ones.

Towers’ line on Bham is the academy’s own syllabus, restated as praise: great consulting mixes technical knowledge with the ability to help a customer succeed. Bham said the same thing back, without the score attached. “The Academy showed me that being a great consultant is about more than knowing the software. It’s about connecting with people, understanding their challenges and helping transform the way they work.”

That is also why a 98 percent practical does not empty the job boards. Knowing the menus is the easy half. Getting a finance team off account-number thinking and onto dimensions is the half clients pay for twice when it goes wrong in month one.

CPiO Paid for 12 Weeks at Headquarters

CPiO is the stakeholder that wrote the cheque. Founded in 1990 and based at Fort Dunlop in Birmingham, it is a Platinum Sage business partner with 51 to 200 staff and more than 400 Sage users on the books. It sells and supports Sage Intacct, Sage 200, and Sage X3 for manufacturers, distributors, healthcare groups, charities, and financial-services firms.

Bham thanked the firm for the investment and said he wanted to keep growing with the business and help customers get more from Intacct. For a partner of that size, 12 weeks in Newcastle is not a prize day. It is how you turn a Sage 50 bookkeeper into someone who can sit on a live Intacct project without burning a client’s first close.

WHAT THE 12-WEEK COURSE IS BUILT TO DO

• Who applies: School leavers, graduates, and career changers apply to a participating Sage partner, not to Sage itself, and the course is open to all Sage partners in the UK and Ireland.
• What it teaches: Product skill on Sage Intacct, software-as-a-service commercial models, and professional development, with mentoring from Sage staff throughout the 12 weeks.
• What partners need back: Someone who can run a kick-off, configure the system, train users, and stay in the room when the first month-end wobbles.

CPiO already has proof on the client side of that bet. Huntapac, a UK root-vegetable producer moving off end-of-life Sage 1000, cut month-end reporting by 63% after the Intacct go-live, from more than 27 days to 10, according to CPiO’s case study. That kind of drop only holds if someone who understands both the old close and the new dimensions stays on the job.

The Software Still Moves at Human Speed

Intacct can be subscribed in an afternoon. Standing it up still takes a person who has passed a practical Sage is willing to stamp. Sage’s own professional-services pages put some go-lives at as few as 60 days; partner projects commonly run longer once a firm has several entities, integrations, and a finance team that still lives in last year’s chart of accounts.

UK job boards still listed 26 Sage Intacct implementation roles in September 2026. KORE1’s 17-day average to a first qualified name is the optimistic read on a pool that is mostly already employed. Bham is now one more junior in the West Midlands who can take that work. The academy can mint a 98 percent score in 12 weeks. It cannot, on its own, staff every live project that number implies.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who Can Join the Sage Partner Academy?

Sage designed the academy for school leavers, graduates, and people changing careers, and applications go to a participating Sage partner rather than to Sage directly. Notes to the 30 March 2023 launch said the course is open to all Sage partners in the UK and Ireland, and that delegates get mentoring from Sage experts across the 12 weeks.

What Intacct Certifications Can Sage Partners Earn?

Sage University lists two partner badges, Sage Intacct Accounting Consultant and Sage Intacct Implementation Consultant, each requiring recommended training plus a pass on the exam. Customer finance teams have a separate Accounting Specialist path; the 2024 study guide for that customer paper specifies 50 multiple-choice questions, 90 minutes, and a pass mark of 80 percent or higher.

When Did Sage Intacct Arrive in the UK?

Sage Intacct launched in the UK in November 2019. Intacct itself started in San Jose in 1999 as a cloud accounting system, and Sage bought the company in July 2017 for $850 million before putting the product on the UK partner channel two years later.

What Does AATQB Mean for a Bookkeeper?

AATQB is the post-nominal for an AAT Qualified Bookkeeper, awarded by the Association of Accounting Technicians. It is a UK bookkeeping qualification, not a Sage badge, and it is the accounting ticket Bham earned after teaching himself Sage 50 and before CPiO sent him to the Intacct academy.