Thought you might like to read my article published today in Outsource Magazine. Which “Shore” is the right “Shore” for the SME: onshore, nearshor or offshore?
Archive for the ‘Outsourced accounting’ Category
Onshore, nearshore or offshore?
Friday, January 6th, 2012A Very Inventive way of Raising Investment
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012Just before Christmas I caught up with a client who was looking to raise a not inconsiderable amount of funding – $70m. Given, the current dearth of investment money I was delighted to hear he had negotiated and secured the full amount. The source of funding is so inventive I thought it was worth sharing this raising investment story with you.
The investor is in fact a Chinese province and the investment was negotiated by the province’s very entrepreneurial Mayor (do the words Mayor and entrepeneur usually go together?). This Chinese province is looking to acquire and control the intellectual property, move our client’s manufacturing to China and provide gainful long term employment to the workers within the province.
It is truly a sign of the times when a growing UK technology company is unable to find funding in Europe or America! Sadly in this situation the IP, the jobs and the future profits are all going to China. I suspect we will be reading a lot more about inventive funding in the decade to come.
Is Sheffield the Politest City in the UK?
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011Its now been four months since my first introduction to Sheffield and I am going to vote Sheffield the politest city.
Independently those members of Isosceles personnel who are working on Sheffield related activities have all commented on how polite the people of Sheffield are. A recent email campaign resulted in an unprecedented number of replies – not necessarily positive, but replies nonetheless. Similar campaigns ‘down South’ are at best ignored and at worst receive a verbal rebuke.
I am so glad we chose Sheffield for a second office.
Mike O’Connnell, CEO, Isosceles Finance
When is the RIGHT time to outsource accounting?
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011I am often asked “how will I know if outsourcing my finance and accounts is right for my business?” This question is akin to “how long is a piece of string?” – there are no hard and fast rules because of the variables of each individual business. There are however tangible business drivers and it will be one of these which, probably subconsciously, has provoked the questioner to ask this question in the first place.
If you relate to one of the following, now would be the right time to outsource part or all of your finance and accounting function:
- Rapidly growing or contracting businesses (quite often wanting to vary the costs of finance and accounting)
- You want a smaller highly focussed team concentrating 100% on developing great products and services and delivering these profitably – all the other clutter of business you want someone else to take care of.
- The business cannot afford a full-time Finance Director so the CEO is trying (and often failing) to fulfil this role – whilst also trying to grow the business
- Lack of, or poor quality, management finance and accounting information
- Experiencing high rates of staff turnover or skills shortage
- The business needs to generate operational efficiencies
Incidentally outsourcing doesn’t require firing existing staff and starting again, or binning the in-house finance systems. At Isosceles we provide our service at our site or yours, on our web-based systems or yours, using your personnel and/or ours. We also deliver a service tailored to each clients individual requirements – this is not a ‘one service fits all’.
Isosceles Opens Northern Office
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011
Dave Eaton, Manager Sheffield Office, with Claire and Aiysha
I am delighted that we have opened our second office, in the very welcoming city of Sheffield.
We have successfully supported over 100 ambitious companies from our South West London Head Office but we are now ready to implement the next stage of our growth strategy.
I haven’t used the term ‘welcoming’ lightly in my opening statement. I cannot thank Ann Allen and her team at CreativeSheffield enough for their welcome, guidance and the quality of their city briefing and information pack. They were without doubt instrumental in our choice of Sheffield.
If you are not familiar with CreativeSheffield, they are the city’s economic development function, funded by Sheffield City Council with business growth its core activity. Between 2008 and 2011, CreativeSheffield leveraged over £75 million of private sector investment and assisted in the creation and safeguarding of 5,000 jobs. Not bad eh?
The man who fought to preserve war time technology dies
Tuesday, September 20th, 2011I was saddened to learn of the death of Tony Sale. I met Tony when Isosceles were awarded the contract to provide an outsourced accounting service to The National Museum of Computing earlier this year.
He was a quietly brilliant man. He lead the rebuilding of Colossus the first modern computer. He masterminded the campaign to keep the spirit of wartime Bletchley Park alive, when it was in grave danger of disappearing under redevelopment. He also co-founded The National Museum of Computing which is dedicated to showing the development of computing in its broadest sense from the pioneering war time efforts that resulted in Colossus, to the products and systems we use today.
It was fitting that he should be remembered so publicly, with the full force of the media showering praise for his work. The physical link may now have been lost but his magnificent contribution to British history and the world of technology really does live on in The National Museum of Computing.
What is the True Cost of an Employee – Part 3
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011At last here is the final instalment of my What is the True Cost of an Employee? If you missed it click here is Part 1 and Part 2
What is the true cost of an accountant?
The true cost of a £60,000 accountant is actually closer to £100,000 or £445 per day during their first year. So what is the cost if you incur all the recruitment and training costs and then you find out after six months that you have recruited the wrong person?
I feel another blog coming on.
(Click here to see table for my full calculations)
What is the True Cost of an Employee – Part 2
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011Here is the next instalment of my What is the True Cost of an Employee? If you missed it click here is Part 1.
Getting up to speed
In terms of training and induction, the heaviest load will be the first three months. There is usually a month’s handover with the member of staff being replaced at zero productivity. The cost of getting up to speed is therefore £5,000 (plus NI and loaded costs).
Tools for the job
The cost of office space, rent, rates, service charges, utilities, reception, photocopier, fax, is about £50 per square foot in the South East; an average desk space per person is about 75 square feet per person. So the cost per annum is £3,750 per person.
Productive time
The other issue that employers fail to take account of is the actual productive time of an employee. There are 260 working days in the year, however after holidays (say 25 days) bank holidays (8 days) sickness, company meetings, appraisals and training days it is unlikely that there are more than 220 working days.
Employee management
The final issue is what is the cost of managing and developing an employee? This includes the cost of appraisals, setting objectives, informal one-to-one meetings to discuss career aspirations or providing feedback on progress. This is likely to absorb at least three days of management time (£1,500 cost or £3,000 opportunity cost) across the year and much more than this if issues arise.
Final instalment coming shortly ………
What is the True Cost of an Employee – Part 1
Tuesday, July 19th, 2011When I am in a ‘sales’ situation explaining the benefits of outsourced accounting or a part time FD, one of the thorny issues I have to deal with is the question, “what is the real cost of an employee?”. In fact, just the process of looking at outsourcing part of a business process is healthy because establishing the cost of an employee is one of the central questions that a business manager needs to know the right answer to.
Once a business manager knows the real cost of an employee they can then answer the even bigger question, “what is the value of my employee?”
Finding the answers to these two questions is not as difficult as one might think, but what may surprise is how cost effective outsourcing some parts of the business really is.
In order to calculate the cost of an employee we need to look at the true cost of employment and the cycle of employment. First the individual must be recruited and inducted; secondly they must be trained both through formal and on-the-job training; and thirdly there is a period of getting up to speed. Once up to speed there is the cost of managing that individual, setting objectives, appraising performance against these objectives whilst bearing the burden of personnel and administrative costs of holidays and sickness, etc.
An employee also requires certain tools to do the job. They need a desk, phone, mobile phone computer, software, a network to store documents, a printer and paper to be able to print documents off and general stationery. Our employee also needs internet access and a clean safe environment in which to work.
Design Inc Win Isosceles Cup ….. again!
Tuesday, July 5th, 2011It was a beautiful Summer’s evening that welcomed ten teams to the second Isosceles Cup football tournament. As the players descended from their team coaches with their brand new kits, their tracksuits and their branded water bottles there was a keen sense of anticipation.
The teams included most of those from the last year; Solsis (now amalgamated with Tax Computer Systems to form SolTax), Isosceles, InsightSoftware, Design Inc, Line Communications; together with the new teams: Digital Barriers, Waterfall, Protean, Mint Design and MetaPack.
Support for the teams was terrific with close to 100 people either participating or supporting.
The Isosceles team looked confident having been unbeaten in all matches since last year’s final, but realistic after Roger Federer had been knocked out of Wimbledon the very same day – Julian’s warning to us that the most beautiful football does not win tournaments turned out to be more prophetic than we imagined.
If bonus points could have been awarded they would have been awarded to Mint 
Design – in their ‘mint condition’ strip, this was their first outing as a team and the only team to field female players. They were also weighed down with this season’s new range of jewellery – at least they looked like premiership players.
Being aqua turf pitches they were lovely and soft underfoot, but at ¾ of a mile long by ½ mile across they were a little on the large size, those players sporting grey highlights or indeed no hair at all exchanged anxious looks and mumbled under their breath.
The teams split into two leagues. In the first league after the first couple of straightforward matches we reached the first spicy game of the tournament – Digital Barriers against Waterfall. There was much riding on this derby game, the first time the two companies had played each other 
(both part of the Digital Barriers Group) with bragging rights at stake as well as three points. It was a tight affair with much energy, grunting and skill involved Waterfall pinched a 1-0 win and Digital Barriers looked crest fallen. Ian McLaren was heard whispering to Dan Lomas “how come we didn’t learn about this during due diligence?” MetaPack were showing some early form and looking like certain qualifiers until a controversial final game (apparently the final whistle was blown after only 90 seconds) put them in danger of going out. 
SolTax seemed to play well in patches, but not have the results to show for it.
Meanwhile in the second league Protean were busy demolishing the opposition – they arrived like an Eastern European team in the 1970’s – unheralded, quality unknown, but their well used kit containing the odd faint blood stain said “we don’t take prisoners” and so it proved. InsightSoftware arrived like a team from the Middle East – mildly delighted to have a team in the first place and surprising themselves with some quality goals and some good results before reality stru
ck – the truth is they did surprisingly well for a team that hadn’t played together even holding last year’s champions to a 0-0 draw with Ronnie showing goal scoring ability throughout. Line Communications meanwhile were busy putting right some of the wrongs of the previous year winning two matches – they missed one or two chances in crunch games – no names (Jonathan). It is worth noting that Line’s two defeats were both 1-0 and against the eventual finalists. Mint Design tired as the heat of the evening took its toll, Sonia showed some glimpses of class up front and Chris showed 
surprising aptitude in goal. The final Mint match report reads “carnage, players sitting in the pitch, rugby tackles and the first injury” – I’ll say no more.
We were then left with just four teams – Isosceles who had won three matches and drawn one, MetaPack who qualified on goal difference, Protean who had ominously won all their matches and Design Inc who had been extremely lucky to qualify.
The Isosceles/Design Inc semi-final was a repeat of the previous year’s final and early on all the negative memories from last year played on Isosceles’ mind as they quickly fell two goals behind. However just in time and shortly after Mike was substituted off (hmmm) Isosceles remembered what a quality side they really were and dominated, equalising and missing a number of chances in front of goal – Design Inc were holding on by their finger nails. It went to penalties and despite some heroics from James in goal Design Inc converted their final penalty to go through very luckily to the final.
The Protean/MetaPack semi-final pitted the two most competitive teams of the tournament together. Protean weren’t about to compromise now and MetaPack could give as good as they got. Unfortunately in an accidental collision Karl, the MetaPack goalkeeper, suffered a nasty knock to the ribs – in fact a fracture was later confirmed at A&E – ouch! Protean eventually won through 2-0.
The final was therefore Protean against Design Inc. Protean had already beaten Design Inc in the league and did I mention how lucky Design Inc had been in the semis? Protean were the fancied favourites. The final 
was a tight affair, Protean seemed to tire and whither and the ecstasy of Design Inc’s unexpected semi triumph seemed to spur them on (did I mention how lucky they had been to get to the final?). Ultimately both sides cancelled each other out and we went to penalties. I have to say that both teams took the best set of penalties I have ever seen for two English sides – each one leaving the goal keeper no chance whatsoever. In the penultimate penalty for Design Inc the goalie saved but then fumbled Paul’s shot, fortunately for him, into the goal – the ball just slipping under the goalkeeper. Protean’s final penalty taker missed and it was all down to Jon. After three hours of blood, sweat tears, fractured ribs and broken finger nails it all came down to this last kick. J
on took a long run up before blasting the ball into the back of the net. Design Inc had won (yet again!) and although they had been very , very lucky (did I mention that?) to win the cup for two years in succession, can be no accident. The truth is Design Inc richly deserved their victory and the unbridled joy on their faces after both the semi and final wins will live long in the memory. Not since George Michael, has it been so gratifying to bring so much pleasure to other men.
All the players and spectators were able to re-live the events and relax over a drink and a barbecue whilst Karl was ferried to hospital.
I have to say a big thank you to the teams, all the supporters, Julian and Karen for arranging such a professional and enjoyable event. I also have to say thank you to our referees Baljit, Ryan and Harry and also to Kate for taking all the team photos.
All but one of the teams will have to wait a whole 12 months to put right the wrongs and injustices of what was the Isosceles Cup 2011.
