PROFILE - COLIN FITTALL FCA
Since qualifying as a chartered accountant with Ernst & Young in London 18 years ago, Colin has amassed considerable experience from roles in Operational Review, Venture Capital and Corporate Recovery before creating Bottom Line Impact.
Time spent working with businesses struggling for want of cash in both the venture capital and corporate recovery roles confirmed a growing conviction that the underlying 'financial design' of a business was critical and the implications for the future not foreseen (until it was typically too late).
"If the weather report focused on the week just gone, not the week ahead, we wouldn't watch it. But backward-looking management accounts land on desks month in, month out, yet few bat an eyelid."
Inspired to create Bottom Line Impact in 1999, Colin set about rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands dirty. He has since helped start-up and established businesses, often in extremely tough competitive environments, steer their way out of (at times acute) cash flow pressures and go on, in some cases, to achieve astounding success. Regardless of the starting point, Colin has been able to highlight and ‘design-out' financial pressures and ‘design-in' the essential targets and strategies to deliver financial strength to businesses he's worked with.
Illustrative material, in a highly visual form, was originally created as an integral part of Colin's turnaround work - empowering those he worked with to be more self-reliant.
"Show people the real dynamics at play with the numbers and the impact different actions will have and they see the shortcomings in many of the traditional ratios in an instant."
The training, now a mainstay of the business, has been widely credited with bringing much needed clarity and transparency to finance.
Past work has included being commissioned to design and deliver the financial training for all (100+) advisers working for the largest Business Link in the country and numerous company directors and managers.
Colin is also focused on creating a range of financial software applications born out of the many day to day situations and problems he has seen clients struggle with.
"Virtually all those we work with have a non-financial background. They don't aspire to be a Finance Director or even a book-keeper - and why should they? But, in their respective roles, they need a level of financial understanding to help them make sense of, and address, the various practical issues they face. With the option to customise each course around a coampany's own numbers, we want clients to leave with financial insight that will have a profound impact on their everyday work."
You can gauge from clients' reviews as to whether this has proved successful.
