James Oliver Conservatories & Windows had been operating for nearly 40 years with minimal budgeting, reporting or visibility of their finances. However, with an ever more challenging economy, they knew this needed to change.
As a small business, James Oliver Conservatories and Windows had done what many businesses do – focused on delivering an excellent service to their clients.
They were successful as a result but over the years, their accounting function had become isolated from the rest of the business and, as a result, they were lacking in management information with which to make decisions plus the visibility needed to understand cash flow and budget accordingly.
It was clear to the leadership team that they couldn’t make the most of growth opportunities or even be assured of financial security in the long term because they simply didn’t have the management information available to them.
As soon as The CFO Centre’s Adrian Dorr began working with them, he could see some immediate actions to take to ensure the business could gain clarity with the right systems and reporting structure.
From this starting point, more analysis would be possible across all business expenditure to work out whether savings and efficiencies could be made and there were some quick wins such as savings on card payment fees, insurance and energy costs.
With new forecasting, budgeting and management reports in place, the business gained a much needed, more modern approach to its financial processes, enabling them to have the visibility of revenue and profit required to ensure they remained in positive cash flow and could make the right decisions to maximize their performance.
Due to the lack of management information, the business didn’t have visibility of monthly turnover, their cost base or profits until they received their annual accounts at year end.
The first step for Adrian was therefore to put an official monthly accounting and reporting process in place and recruit a management accountant to take ownership of that.
Now that process is running smoothly, the leadership team know their turnover and profit numbers within a few days of each month-end.
As a result of having access to management information, it was possible to start analyzing expenditure and one of the first changes was to the company’s energy contract and the process by which they took card payments. These two changes alone saved considerable costs every month.
Other processes related to the finance department, such as payroll, were also outdated and therefore taking more time than necessary to complete.
Improvements to these have since saved considerable time and money, freeing up the leadership team to focus on client delivery.
Managing Director, Tom Oliver, says running the business is now more enjoyable and rewarding as they are able to deal in facts and figures rather than unknowns and assumptions.
The business as a whole is running more efficiently with joined up internal departments and clear processes which set expectations with the team.
This has, understandably, had a positive impact on morale with all team members more motivated by the knowledge and visibility of the company’s positive performance.
Having embedded the new processes, Adrian is now focusing on more granular management information, such as helping the business to understand the profits they make on each individual job. He also continues to mentor and upskill the team.
The value given to the business by Adrian is tangible and continues to evolve with the flexible nature of the fractional CFO model.
We’ve noticed the impact ofAdrian’s work throughout the business, from forecasting to staff morale and beyond. He’s even generated a significant amount of sales for us!”
Tom Oliver – CEO, James Oliver Conservatories
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