CASE STUDIES

What this work looks like in practice.

Numbers are only useful when they help inform decisions and drive performance. These examples, from my time as Head of Finance, show that in practice.
The same work now sits at the centre of Figured Southsea.

A clear view of cash on large projects

CHALLENGE

On large projects, cash would move in and out throughout the project timeline. Due to factors outside of the business, it wasn't always clear in advance how big the gap would be between starting work and getting paid.

SOLUTION

I built a project level cashflow view that showed the expected cash position across the whole life of larger projects, so the tightest point was visible before it arrived. Having this view allowed the business to restructure it's payment terms for projects over a certain value.

RESULT

Restructuring the payment terms minimised the financial risk of the businesses, ensuring that costs and margin we covered throughout the project timeline should the project be cancelled or delayed for any reason.

Monthly reports to KPIs

The monthly accounts were accurate, but managers weren't connecting the profit figures to anything tangible that they could actually change.

SOLUTION

I translated the monthly numbers into a few simple weekly measures that each manager could directly influence, and worked through with them how those fed into the accounts.

RESULT

Department managers were proactively planning ahead around measures they knew they could control and that would improve financial performance.

CHALLENGE

Tracking investment decisions

CHALLENGE

The business was committing money to investments without a consistent way to check whether they actually delivered the return expected of them.

SOLUTION

I built a return on investment tracker that set out the expected return on each investment and measured it against what actually happened, so every decision could be judged on evidence.

RESULT

Decision making was made easier as investment decisions could be reviewed against real outcomes, bringing discipline to where money was spent.

Want this kind of clarity in your own business?