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Incisive Financial Understanding

'A' LTD

An £8m turnover lighting design and manufacturing company - a profitable business on the brink of insolvency.  Despite factoring, the company had run out of money by virtue of being continually advised on previous occasions to grow sales to head-off mounting cash flow pressures.  The possibility that this could happen with a factoring or invoice discounting facility in place, is something that many people struggle with. We cover problems with factoring and invoice discounting elsewhere.

Despite their very best efforts the directors found the business sliding away from them. Unbeknown to us at the time, the position was so dire that they were no more than a couple of weeks away from losing the business entirely.

So in these acutely pressing circumstances we showed the directors, in a 1-day bespoke training session, how certain changes to the financial design of the business could be made and start to immediately impact the situation. And in hindsight, having set this new strategy in motion, the MD conceded that even after just one week he could instinctively feel that the change in focus was right.

To support this change in strategy we carried out a detailed analysis of product line profitability over the following months. Fully reconciled this was no small job. Out of this, the primary focus fell on targeted margin improvements, rather than the conventional slashing of overheads, and the results were ongoingly reviewed on a line by line basis. As is the norm, it certainly threw up some unexpected results and gave the directors some dilemmas their compeititors would love to have had!

From having run out of money, borrowings were subsequently halved (down some £1m) over the next 18 months.

 

What does this case demonstrate?

That cash flow can be quite a subtle art and the impact small changes in financial strategy can make in the hands of fundamentally talented management teams.  The business has emerged to become a leading player in its sector. 

 

Working with you - the benefits

 

We look to make an immediate impact whatever the starting point. You can count on our proven cash flow and profit improvement expertise

  

We do what it takes to get to the answers helped by extensive cross-sector experience drawn from both our financial support and training work

  
         
 

We put your interests first and stand shoulder to shoulder with you, through the ups and downs, until you have what you need

  

We make ourselves available, including outside normal working hours

  
         
 

Unlike others, our financial support is geared to making you more self reliant not more dependent.

 

We understand funding issues better than most - particularly what's achievable and what isn't. We can also help you quantify what you need, put together the business case and help you access what you need quickly

  
         
 

You will find us extremely cost-effective. With the benefit of e-mail, scanners and sending information in pdf form, off-site and largely virtual support is usually entirely workable

 

We are as happy to look at small, one-off exercises as larger more complex turnarounds. The variety of case histories hopefully gives you a flavour of this range.

 

 

Working with you - How we charge

 

Free initial meeting (in confidence and without obligation)

  

We offer a quick initial viewat sometimes reduced rates to establish if a business can be made viable or has gone too far

 
         
 

We can work on a day-rate basis. Tends to be where work is one-off or short-term in nature or in situations that, at the time of our involvement, are inherenetly uncertain

 

We can work based on a monthly retainer where the relationship is envisaged to be ongoing or have a duration of 6+ months. Examples include non-executive finance roles or detailed profit improvement programmes

  

 

 
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