case study – BDC
Developing future strategy
Background
The BD Consultancy, based in Bristol, provides outsourced business development, as well as training and coaching, for professional services firms. The business was established in February 2008 – right at the start of the recession. Despite this, The BD Consultancy had consistently been busy with client work since inception. The company had an accountant and, as with many service firms, the business was relatively straightforward from a financial perspective.
The issue
F-works started working with The BD Consultancy in the summer of 2010. Throughout the two and a half years the business had been running, revenues had increased consistently – but profits had not. The company also found that cash flow could often be a ‘headache’. They needed help working out where money was being made, where it was being spent and what was taking up their time.
How F-works helped
To help The BD Consultancy develop their future strategy, F-works initially carried out an appraisal of where the business stood currently, assessing which activities were profitable and which were loss making. This exercise lead to the conclusion that what the company actually needed was an operations manager but, to enable this in the short-term, they would need funding.
F-works put together a funding proposition for The BD Consultancy to present to the banks, and attended these meetings to help explain the figures and talk the type of language banks want to hear. During this process one of the bank managers said ‘it was one of the best propositions I have seen, making it easy for me to support’.
“Working with F-works has been worth every penny. The assessment they carried out was a really useful exercise and they helped me see that I needed to run my business – not run around in my business. It was invaluable having someone to discuss things with, and who would challenge our decisions. With all of their advice, F-works keep the final objective in mind and appreciate this is not always just financial. Working with them helped us realise we only needed to make marginal changes to make a big improvement.”
Peter Kane, Managing Director
The BD Consultancy
