- The Story
As any good entrepreneur will tell you, there comes a time when you have to work less “in” the business, and focus more “on” the business – driving strategy, growth, and building and leading the team. Brendan hit that tipping point in 2022, when he found himself buried in bookkeeping and other financial operations, and not spending enough time on building the business.
Mapping out a highly complex integration
Company’s merger successfully brought together a vast network of stores spanning multiple countries, establishing a unified corporate entity. Following the completion of the deal, Company’s leadership made the strategic decision to reshape the company’s operating model by streamlining and consolidating certain functions. With a strong commitment to achieving synergies amounting to approximately 1% of sales within the third year post-merger, our team played a crucial role in providing a comprehensive road map for this endeavor. Leveraging the expertise of our seasoned retail professionals, we identified key areas where value could be unlocked, including:
Brendan recognized early on that diligence around financial operations was important to a business, especially a startup. He dove hook, line, and sinker into managing the finances at VirtualAd including invoicing, expense categorization, monthly bank reconciliations, payroll, reporting and analysis, accounts receivable follow-up, and managing their contract accountant for tax filings. Simply put, he was the resident bookkeeper and he was out of bandwidth.
VirtualAd was thriving, but was struggling to stay ahead of the game with regard to hiring core team members, finding new clients, and servicing existing ones. The business provided a great service, had tremendous growth potential, but wasn’t able to scale.
The Solution
Once Brendan realized that his time would be better spent growing the business, he quickly pivoted to outsourcing non-core functions, namely financial operations. After reaching out to a US-based bookkeeping firm (who was unable to provide services in Canada), they referred him to Enkel. He quickly on-boarded with Enkel who now manages VirtualAd’s bookkeeping, payroll, accounts receivables functions.
When Brendan had to juggle back office functions and client work, he rightfully put the client demands first. The consequence was that financials and reporting started to slip, and consistently fell a few months behind. Today, he gets accurate monthly financials and reporting on time, right to his inbox.
Like all good entrepreneurs, Brendan and his team set regular business goals and targets and monitor progress against them. Having comprehensive financial reporting, the team is better able to monitor and assess performance against targets, communicate more effectively, and get more granular with their insights. Today, they can see clearly which service offerings drive the most revenue so that they can re-invest in those areas, and have the visibility to see where they are able to cut costs and better optimize cash flow.