Planning For Growth - A Model Scenario - Aqueous Digital Case Study
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Planning for growth: a model scenario “ you looked for ways to create something that would genuinely add value ” Our Client Aqueous Digital are a digital marketing agency who have a strong reputation across the North West for delivering outstanding results for their customers. Specialists in online marketing, they focus on developing the overall marketing plan and creating an ethical online approach to support it. Due to the growing reputation of the agency, customer demand was racing ahead of the capacity of the existing team. Rather than simply recruit more staff, MD Jonathan Guy was determined to understand his business in more detail first. How much profit should we be making on each website build ? How long should it take to build a “back link” for a customer ? As he remarked in our first meeting “There’s no point us executing a poor plan perfectly!” The brief was simple: “ Design and build a financial model that helps us plan for rapid growth ” With significant experience partnering service based businesses we felt it was important to build the heart of the model around a measurement of “capacity versus demand”. The linkage between these two elements was key to understanding the productivity of the team’s existing work methods and really getting under the skin of the factors that drive profitability. Methodology We also wanted to incorporate plenty of features that would add additional value right from the start. The end solution included a team holiday planner, a detailed service catalogue, and an analysis of productivity metrics as well as more traditional summaries around profitability and cashflow. With a migration to the Xero cloud based accounting platform under consideration, we also built in functionality that allowed an export of the financial scenarios directly into Xero. With that migration to Xero now completed, this foresight has already paid dividends. The Brief Case Study FINANCIAL MODELLING SERVICE Page 1 / 2 smarter strategic thinking
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Transcript of Planning For Growth - A Model Scenario - Aqueous Digital Case Study
Planning for growth: a model scenario
“ you looked for ways to create something that would genuinely add value ”
Our ClientAqueous Digital are a digital marketing agency who have a strong reputation across the North West for delivering outstanding results for their customers. Specialists in online marketing, they focus on developing the overall marketing plan and creating an ethical online approach to support it.
Due to the growing reputation of the agency, customer demand was racing ahead of the capacity of the existing team. Rather than simply recruit more staff, MD Jonathan Guy was determined to understand his business in more detail first. How much profit should we be making on each website build ? How long should it take to build a “back link” for a customer ? As he remarked in our first meeting “There’s no point us executing a poor plan perfectly!” The brief was simple:
“ Design and build a financial model that helps us plan for rapid growth ”
With significant experience partnering service based businesses we felt it was important to build the heart of the model around a measurement of “capacity versus demand”. The linkage between these two elements was key to understanding the productivity of the team’s existing work methods and really getting under the skin of the factors that drive profitability.
Methodology
We also wanted to incorporate plenty of features that would add additional value right from the start. The end solution included a team holiday planner, a detailed service catalogue, and an analysis of productivity metrics as well as more traditional summaries around profitability and cashflow.
With a migration to the Xero cloud based accounting platform under consideration, we also built in functionality that allowed an export of the financial scenarios directly into Xero. With that migration to Xero now completed, this foresight has already paid dividends.
The Brief
Case StudyFINANCIAL MODELLING SERVICE
Page 1 / 2
smarter strategic thinking
“ frankly you did what you said you were going to do, when you said you were going to do it! ”
“ I now have a flexible planning tool that allows me to see where my business is going, assess future capacity needs
and guide future development and recruitment decisions. ”
Outcomes
The completed planning tool enables Jonathan to take a structured approach to reviewing customer demand and pricing against the resources and costs required to deliver that demand. Modelling different scenarios helps him move forward with greater precision and to progress recruitment decisions with greater clarity.
Hooper FinancialChartered Management Accountants
5 Delves WalkChester
CH3 5XG(t) 01244 470 478
We listen hard to what are clients ask for and then we play this back in the form of a clear project proposal. Every project is different because the needs of each customer are unique. The completed financial model we built for Aqueous Digital is completely bespoke and fits their needs perfectly. At the same time we used our experience to add extra features that we knew would be useful and add a little “wow factor”.
@askhooper
If you would like to talk to us about financial management please contact Chris Hooper(t) 01244 470 478 or (e) [email protected]
Case StudyFINANCIAL MODELLING SERVICE
Page 2 / 2
smarter strategic thinking
