In-house interview: Sage executive vice-president and GC, Europe, Mark Parry

Some in the tech industry may see Sage as a software dinosaur but executive vice-president and general counsel for Europe Mark Parry is leading the charge to change public perceptions, starting with his legal team.

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“We’ve probably suffered in the past because we just haven’t been able to show how innovative we are,” Parry insists.

Now Sage is working on third-party contracts to improve its market share including “next-generation cloud-based products that are hitting the market”.

“We’re entering into deals with blue-chip providers,” Parry says. “My European function leads a lot of these arrangements.”

When Sage revamped its fragmented business and put a centralised model in place last year Parry expanded his domain beyond the UK and Ireland and took on the job of executive vice-president and general counsel, Europe. He is now one of three legal heads at Sage, alongside Asia Pacific general counsel Naseera Ebrahim and Americas general counsel Rachel Gervin.

“In fairness, I won’t say it was seamless but it was relative painless,” he comments.

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Clik here to view.Rather than each country running its own affairs and managing itself independently the 22-strong legal teams in Brussels, France, Germany, Spain and the UK now report directly to Parry. And, according to the lawyer, the company now has a global leadership that operates as a single unit.

“Our local leaders are key to our business but our corporate governance is gaining a lot of prominence because [local leaders] aren’t now accountable for the things they would have been before,” he explains. “That’s all managed globally. They are now focused on growing the business.”

This means an opportunity for the legal team to grow into the business.

“It’s important for us to be seen as an enabler and build valuable relationships with the business leaders,” Parry explains. “We don’t talk about the business and us – we are the business. Yes, we have technical expertise but we are business people as well. We need to understand what we want to achieve. We are accountable.”

Integrating into the business has not been an issue, Parry argues, because his team does not mind fielding questions from non-lawyers.

“I’d like the business to come to us with any issue they’ve got. If they think it’s a legal issue, come to us and we can decide whether we are the best people to help or not. We’re seen as a signpost – if people don’t know something they will pick up the phone and ask.”

Sage, which saw a 9.5 per cent jump in turnover to £1.44m last year, is now in expansion mode. For the legal team this involves dealing with regulators far more.

“Regulation is big for us,” says Parry. “In the UK our business forms around the ‘global triangle’ which is: accounting software; HR and payroll services; and payments.”

Because of this range of business-to-business services, Sage is in fact subject to two types of FCA regulation.

The most important thing on the horizon for his team is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), put forward in 2012 to “make Europe fit for the digital age”.

“Clearly, we are a tech company and we manage a lot of personal data because we have a lot of cloud solutions,” he says. “As a payroll software provider there’s also a lot of employee data from around the world. They aren’t necessarily based in the UK, or even in Europe.

“We spend a lot of time and effort making sure the FCA angle is implemented right.”

A&O, BLP, Ward Hadaway top advice list

Sage uses Allen & Overy (A&O), Berwin Leighton Paisner, Pinsent Masons and Slaughter and May on a European-wide basis, as well as UK firms Bond Dickinson and Ward Hadaway.

In this “informal roster” A&O, BLP and Ward Hadaway are longstanding advisers, while Pinsents and Bond Dickinson begun to advise around two years ago and Slaughters was added in the past 18 months.

Parry does not favour a formal panel as he says he cannot guarantee work to his advisers due to his changing requirements.

What he demands of external advisers, however, is rock solid.

“Know our business – don’t just say you know it, know it,” he says. “We can help. It’s not at my interest to keep you at arm’s length.

“We want the flexibility to go out and get more advice if we need it. We forged closer relationships as we started to rationalise the way we work with external advisers.”

Parry is rethinking the relationships the company has with its external law firms, and part of that process is finding ways to maximise the work that can be done in-house.

“I’m looking at  ‘turn-on, turn-off’ resources – lawyers who have left practice and are working as consultants”

Historically, Parry operated a “finger in the air” system to see whether anyone from his legal team could do work before sending it out. Now, he wants to be more effective and see if there is an opportunity for his team to “skill up” and be given the choice of work first.

“We have three lawyers in our organisation to deal with significant things now,” he says.

Parry is also turning to options that allow him to bring in extra legal resources on demand. In the past 12 months he has regularly relied on former Squire Patton Boggs partner Caroline Churchill, now a consultant.

“I’m looking at ‘turn-on, turn-off’ resources,” he says, “Individual lawyers who have left practice and are working as consultants.”

Ambition

This is an interesting time to lead the legal team at Sage.

“We’re transforming our business like we’ve never done before,” Parry says. “Our new CEO and leadership see potential that is untapped in our business and have ambition of how we want to move forward.

“We have a different strategic focus on how we deliver products and put the customer at the centre of everything. This is generating a phenomenal amount of legal work.

“I want to review our resource where we have it, look at gaps that I have to deliver in our strategy in the short to mid-term and locally in Europe, but we’ve got to measure for the future.”

The key thing for Parry is “bringing disparate teams of individuals together as one, to operate in a consistent and quality manner”, but he still has work to do.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he concludes, “this isn’t the end of the line.”