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Alastair Barlow is CEO and co-founder at Flinder. He has experience working with fast-growth businesses, transforming finance functions, writing for AccountingWeb, and being a part of global accounting and technology panels. In this episode, Alastair and Stuart discuss data analytics, the current position of Flinder and what’s in store for the future. They also share some interesting thoughts about rugby, ski trips, and the importance of relationships with your clients and colleagues.
Join Stuart McLeod as he interviews the world's top accounting leaders to understand their story, how they operate, their goals, mission, and top advice to help you run your accounting firm.
Stuart McLeod 00:00:05.599 [music] Hi. I’m Stuart McLeod, CEO, and co-founder of Karbon. Welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast, the show where I go behind the scenes with the world’s top accounting leaders. Alastair Barlow, welcome to the Account Counting Leaders podcast. Now, it would be remiss of me not to kick off and ask if you’ve been following the cricket, of course.
Alastair Barlow 00:00:30.964 So I’m actually a Scott, right? [laughter] So to me, I’m completely oblivious when England play, so.
Stuart McLeod 00:00:38.600 So says all English people. [laughter]
Alastair Barlow 00:00:41.136 Yeah. Exactly.
Stuart McLeod 00:00:43.487 And I know from your background you’re more rugby too, than other sports, aren’t you?
Alastair Barlow 00:00:49.378 Yeah. Well, I don’t really have anything to write home about the football either, so I think it leaves the rugby to follow, doesn’t it? A big international fan. So yeah, Scotland have been playing pretty decent over the past few years under Gregor Townsend. So yeah, hopefully, we have a good Six Nations in-- well, hopefully, Six Nations happens in February. First hurdle, I guess. But yeah, hopefully, it’ll be good. We had a decent autumn as well, which was good.
Stuart McLeod 00:01:14.734 When’s the Six Nations and where’s that supposed to take place and--?
Alastair Barlow 00:01:19.119 So normally it’s kind of Wales, Ireland, Scotland, England, France, and Italy. So it’s just Northern hemisphere. It’s normally for the second week in Feb it kicks off and then plays for about six, seven weeks or so depending on COVID and what happens there. But yeah, normally it’s pretty good. Pretty exciting.
Stuart McLeod 00:01:36.957 Well, speaking of COVID, I mean, we were just saying it’s been-- we thought we’d seen the back of it when I saw you in person, which was amazing, right, back in November.
Alastair Barlow 00:01:48.323 November. November, maybe.
Stuart McLeod 00:01:50.047 It was a bit of a lull then. It was kind of pre this latest strain and we were able to travel not too bad. And we were kind of celebrating a little bit and we got out. We had a few pints and now here we are. The world is going backwards again.
Alastair Barlow 00:02:05.652 Yeah. In hindsight, it’s crazy when you look at it, isn’t it? So I guess back in November we were all out and about in London - most restrictions were off - enjoying ourselves, enjoying life. Now back in the UK where I think it’s Plan B, we’re on the charts are going up. As I was saying before, if it was a revenue chart, you’d be pretty happy. But unfortunately, it’s not. And then we’re back to some restrictions in place. But hopefully, this time around, it’s considerably milder. We’ll have to see how it pans out. But yeah, it just came from nowhere I guess this one, didn’t it?
Stuart McLeod 00:02:35.080 Most people are trying to do the right thing and get their boosters. And at least it seems those that get it, as you mentioned, it’s a bit milder. But I don’t know about you and the circles that you go out; I think people are just generally just completely and utterly over it. And it’s so hard to make plans and try and contemplate the disruptions. The flights all over the world are canceled not only for COVID and crews going down, but where we are there’s weather right across the Western aspects of the U.S. and there’s more coming. And it’s great for our skiing, but not great for flights. [laughter]
Alastair Barlow 00:03:15.760 Being in Europe, we have disruptions. So we have all the countries having their own rules. So as Brits, we’ve been stopped by the French visiting France. So I had a trip just after Christmas to France to my parents, and that got stopped. And then there’s a bunch of probably about 15 of us accounting leaders in the UK that are hiring a chalet or were hiring a chalet in France and going out there for a week of skiing and a week of brainstorming and kind of trying to propel each other’s businesses and challenge each other and that sort of thing. And that’s obviously being halted because the French government won’t allow us Brits in. Thankfully, their neighbors in Switzerland are a bit more amenable to us.
Stuart McLeod 00:03:50.761 They’ll take your British pounds. [laughter]
Alastair Barlow 00:03:53.612 Exactly. Exactly. So it looks like we’re going to be heading to Switzerland for a bit of skiing in a couple of weeks instead. But, yeah, it’s still disrupted. It’s very difficult to plan. Really difficult to plan anything, I think, at the moment. But hopefully, it peters out pretty quickly and we can get back to some form of normality, anyway.
Stuart McLeod 00:04:09.475 I imagine 15 accountants going skiing there’s an enormous amount of work that gets done. A lot of strategic planning. [laughter]
Alastair Barlow 00:04:18.959 In the bar.
Stuart McLeod 00:04:20.151 In the bar. [laughter]
Alastair Barlow 00:04:21.999 Lots of work in the bar. It’s normally pretty good fun. But also, it does really kind of-- it is a very easy environment. I think one of the greatest things is to be sat on a chairlift chatting to someone about some of the business problems you have. And that’s when the real creative juices really start to flow, rather that kind of an artificial brainstorming kind of flip chart session. But when you’re actually on a chairlift, just chatting day-to-day about what you do, what’s going on, and kind of the direction you’re going to take the business in and some of the challenges you’re seeing, it’s pretty powerful, I think when you start to just get those creative juices flowing among those leaders. And we’ve got a few tech companies coming as well, or we did have. But, yeah, it’s pretty cool. Pretty cool to do.
Stuart McLeod 00:05:02.182 If you ever need a sponsor and a representative, we’re always available for strategic sessions in Switzerland. [laughter]
Alastair Barlow 00:05:10.374 For, yeah, ski lessons in Switzerland. [laughter] I mean, we’ve been doing this now for a couple of years. So ever since we started-- ever since we started flinder, we did our client and staff ski trip, right? We did the first one a couple of months into flinder, which is just under five years ago. And basically, it was just an excuse for me and my co-founder Luke to go out and go skiing together. And then so it built on from there, from the two of us, and then as a team. So we take the team out every March, and we bring them out for four or five days and then we send them home and then we invite a bunch of clients out. And it breaks down barriers for clients and again, fosters really good relationships, and it’s just a really great fun thing to do. And then a couple of years ago, we introduced this kind of accounting leaders’ ski trip as well. So we call it flinder Takes [inaudible]. And then so we organized a chalet and took out 12 or so accounting leaders. Now, we’re up to 15. And each year we want to grow it into something bigger and kind of ultimately get to like a think tank session and maybe with sponsors paying for the drinks in a bar or that sort of thing. But yeah, no, overall, it’s just great fun. But also, to actually develop some-- think a mini-Davos, right, but a lot more alcohol.
Stuart McLeod 00:06:21.538 I think there’s a fair bit of grog that goes on in Davos from what I’ve heard and a whole lot of other stuff, but we’ll leave that to them. As you mentioned, flinders been five years in the making so far and hammering along very nicely and created an amazing spot in the market for yourselves in the UK. So congratulations on all the success of flinder thus far, and I’m sure plenty more to go. What’s the magic between you and your co-founder, Luke, that you think has led to the success that you’ve had so far, and where do you see the business in the next five years?
Alastair Barlow 00:06:59.632 It’s a question I’ve never had before in terms of kind of, what’s the magic potion between us? I think flinder, whilst we’re almost five years old, actually, we’ve been in the making longer than that. And the reason for that and part of the answer to your question is that Luke and I actually worked together for three years in PwC before that. And so I think we’d already developed a very strong relationship of how things worked in PwC between him and I. And actually, sharing the same vision, the same passion for the direction that we want to take flinder in and kind of what we set up with flinder, I think that that has probably been one of the strengths that we’ve had between Luke and I. We have our own individual roles. We’re not a partnership in the sense where I have my clients and I have my favorite staff and he has his clients and his favorite staff, and we come together for a common roof and a common name. We have proper structured C-suite roles.
Alastair Barlow 00:07:51.136 And so he’s got his strengths and his kind of attributes and I’ve got my strengths and my attributes. And there’s obviously some overlap there because we’re both chartered accountants, but actually, we’re really clear on what we both individually do. And I think that’s really propelled us both-- propelled the business forward and continue to go from strength to strength. So I think that’s probably part of it. And also, I think, I’ve seen a bunch of accounting firms set up and it’s one person. And my view is you always need at least two people to set up a business and grow fast because everyone has good days, everyone has bad days, and everyone has strengths, everyone has weaknesses or development points, as we call them. And so I think playing to each other’s strengths and kind of being the Yin to the Yang really works and really helps. So understanding where your weaknesses are and kind of plugging that gap, I think is important. That’s probably the first part. I can’t actually remember the second part of your question.
Stuart McLeod 00:08:41.296 About where are you at today and what are your plans over the next five years of the business?
Alastair Barlow 00:08:47.205 Yeah. So where we are today, I think if I’m really honest, probably a bit of naivety, we’re probably behind where I would have wanted us to be five years in. But 40% of that we’ve had COVID shutting a lot of the country down. And the first 12 months was about getting the tent set up and getting processes in place. So really not that much traction the first 12 months. Accelerated traction. So it’s probably a little bit behind where I wanted us to be. Where are we now? We are 40 people in the business. So whilst I say that for a service business and accounting firm, to get 40 people, is still probably pretty quick to do. We’re a couple of million revenue pounds is where we got to. We’re across three different locations. So predominantly we’re based in London with the majority of the accountants or training accountants, chartered accountants. We’ve got a small data ops and tech hub in Northern Ireland. We’ve got four people there. So three back-end developers and a front-end developer. And we’ve got probably about 12 people in an offshore shared service center doing some kind of data processing, bookkeeping things. So that’s kind of where we are today.
Alastair Barlow 00:09:54.592 We essentially work with fast-growth and complex businesses in and around London and the Southeast. We run the full finance function for them. We call it a smart finance function. So it’s everything from kind of what the right data structures for those clients in Xero or in other applications that are relevant to finance or getting finance data in and around the business or connect the data. Do all the bookkeeping. Do all the kind of payment runs. Processing of payment runs. Month-end close. All the typical stuff around VAT, payroll, compliance things. And then kind of where we really get excited about is this concept of a portfolio CFO. So that’s kind of us having-- don’t want to belittle the role of a virtual CFO, but it’s more than a virtual CFO. It is truly having challenge and a voice in the boardroom and challenging and supporting the board in the direction of the strategy.
Alastair Barlow 00:10:48.517 So very different to just somebody kind of, “Here’s the cash flow, and I’ll sit and listen to the rest of the meeting, and these are what your numbers are.” It’s kind of like, really, what do the numbers mean for the business? What should the business-- what action should the business take out of it operationally and should they invest in different areas?" And really challenging that. So that’s one area we get excited for with kind of the fractional CFO, portfolio CFO role. And then moving into kind of the data analytics giving much richer depth of insight into our clients from both financial and operational data from different kind of systems, cloud systems, in and around the business. And the reason for that is we’ve always been passionate.
When we set the business up five years ago was to take it beyond just the PNL and balance sheet or kind of analytics on a PNL and balance sheet. It’s all around what are the relationships in the business from different sets of data and what does it mean? So not just are my margins going up or down or my cash is going up and down? But why is it going up or down? Is it because I’ve sold more? My average selling prices is higher? Have I sold to different geographies? Have I sold to customers that will give me different margins? Am I direct consumer? Am I wholesale? How am I squeezing margin? What’s my unit economics look like?" So there’s all kind of getting into the granular detail around the business and not just the finances. Like, what does it actually mean? And so that’s what we’re really passionate about.
Alastair Barlow 00:12:06.717 In terms of direction of where we’re taking it, it’s kind of more growth in-- we really have two sides to the business, and it’s more growth in that smart finance function to what I just described. And that’s really kind of we want to grow it at real pace. So we’re probably looking at 3 years’ time revenue of about 10 million, right? So double-ish again and then kind of get to around about 10 million or so in three years’ time of revenue. And then at the same time, heavy emphasis on kind of the data analytic side of things. To the point where we’re investing in our own technology and developing our own technology because we’ve got a certain view on what we want to provide to our clients, and what we’re seeing in the market doesn’t really fit the sweet spot. So a bit like many-- there’s quite a few accounting firms these days which go, “Oh, I fancy something a bit different. I don’t really see something doing it. I’ll go and play myself and see what I can get to.” And then actually they end up having legs and a product themselves. So we’ve probably seen that in quite a few accounting firms that have spun off into developing tech.
Alastair Barlow 00:13:07.257 There’s an element there where we want to facilitate the better production of this kind of real-time analytics in our clients across the business, but then also for clients that we don’t deliver anything to do with finance, we want to just sell them software as a service. So there’s an element of that. I mean, first off, first and foremost, kind of UK penetration - we’re only in London and the Southeast - by expanding across the country. We’re in two sectors at the moment, which is fast-growth tech SaaS businesses and fast-growth eCommerce businesses. They’re the kind of two key sectors that we focus on. So there’ll be more sector expansion there as we grow or as we look for growth. There’ll also be national growth, and then the kind of data analytics, which is territory agnostic, we’ll look to expand internationally once we’ve got that product, once we got that right, basically in the market. Yeah.
Stuart McLeod 00:13:56.422 It’s an interesting aspect of your business getting into these analytics, understanding the data. I guess, am I right in sort of saying that because a lot of your customer base is just in those two sectors, in the fast-growth SaaS and eCommerce, that there’s some pattern recognition happening? The data starts to look similar after a while. The aspects, the KPIs of those businesses are probably similar, and you sort of get to a deeper understanding of what those businesses need and what the drivers are?
Alastair Barlow 00:14:30.408 Yeah. So you get into the realms of-- you didn’t say the word, but you get into the realms of niches or, as you guys say over the pond, niches.
Stuart McLeod 00:14:38.206 Verticals, mate. Verticals. [laughter]
Alastair Barlow 00:14:39.390 Yeah. So you’re absolutely right. I think you can really demonstrate huge value and huge cream, and actually, you can charge a much higher premium if you are consistently going, “Hey, we work with a bunch of fast-growth companies, and this is what stakeholders or shareholders, VCs want to see. These are the typical metrics you would be looking at. It’s all about MRR. And churn costs, serve costs, customer acquisition costs, lifetime value.” And if you’re able to-- if you’re able to-- I mean, we start front end. We go, “Okay. What do you need to report?” And then let’s work backwards and see where the data’s coming from." And if you’re actually capturing the data in the right systems and if the systems are set up for the right data fields. And so once you have almost like a playbook, then it becomes consistent. You bring that huge level of expertise like you would as a consultant, right? You’ve seen it 100 times. You bring that huge level of expertise to any one of your SaaS clients, although the technology they’re using might be different, right? They might be using Charge B as a billing system, one company, and then someone else might be using something different or even a build their own. And so the technology or the core data, the way it structured, might be different, but you know what you want, you know what you’re looking for, to be able to report on those same metrics and have those strong conversations.
Alastair Barlow 00:15:51.617 And it’s the same for eCommerce businesses. It might be Shopify, it might be WooCommerce, it might be a proprietary system they’ve built. But at the end of the day, you’re looking at, “Okay. What’s my total revenue? What’s my contribution margin one, two, and three? What’s my customer acquisition cost, my lifetime value, and unit economics?” And that’s what you’d be looking from eCommerce to eCommerce to eCommerce business. So you can demonstrate huge amount of credibility and consistency. And also, you’re taking what does good look like in terms of you’re not just doing this-- not just doing these kind of-- building these metrics, but actually, once you’ve got the metrics, what does good look like? What should you be looking at as a business that’s looking for growth or a business that’s looking to be kind of more steady-state? So, yeah, hugely powerful to focus on those verticals. And we will have a certain amount of where we can replay that experience from one client to another client to another client. So some of the stuff you’ve invested early on in the path of flinder is quite repeatable, to a certain extent.
Stuart McLeod 00:16:46.907 Yeah. You don’t want to reinvent the wheel for every client. There’s a whole range of skill sets required in a high-growth accounting firm like yours. Pre-COVID, probably two years ago, the hottest topic was labor and finding great staff. What’s your view of where that’s going to-- where is at the moment for you guys in the UK and London and where do you see that over the next 12, 18 months?
Alastair Barlow 00:17:12.345 For those listeners that might not be in the UK, London’s not the cheapest place to hire accountants. Probably one of the most expensive places in the world to hire accountants. That’s where we happen to be. So I think it’s not something that’s going to go away anytime soon. And I think - well, not I think. I know - hiring good accountants is going to continue being probably the number one challenge of any growth accounting firm. So you really have to differentiate yourself as to kind of what makes you different to the next accountant or the next accounting firm. We’re a Big Four firm. There’s obviously a big presence in London for all the Big Four. So it’s about kind of differentiating yourself and what your team can do at your business.
Alastair Barlow 00:17:55.527 And I think the challenge, and the demand for good accountants is only going to increase. Because I don’t really see-- there’s the competition with banks. There’s always been competition with banks. Now, there’s a competition, I think, for data scientists and data engineers. People that will be wired for-- would have been wired to go into the accountancy profession will now have that as an option as well, right? So there’s more and more of those roles. So I think the funnel of new accountants, I don’t think it’s getting bigger. And I think there’s a greater competition for good accountants. So you have to stand out, really. And we’ve tackled that. And it’s not easy to hire the right people. But in terms of tackling it, I think you have to-- I mean, what we did was we kind of did a bunch of YouTube videos on what it’s like to work at flinder. What it’s really like. None of these corporate bullshit stuff, right? I was at PwC. 16 years, right? So I know the corporate way of-- I really enjoyed my time at PwC and I took so much from it. I learnt another language. I lived in a different country and stuff. So there’s a huge amount take from it.
Alastair Barlow 00:19:04.135 But equally, I think what we did with kind of opening the doors to flinder was like, what’s it really like? What’s it like to go on a flinder’s ski trip as a team member? What are the best things to work at flinder? Day in the life of senior associates. And I think that’s appealed to quite a lot of people is because they can see this openness and really see what it’s like. What’s it’s not or what’s it like at flinder? And also a lot of the stuff we do, we’re quite open about our smart finance functions and our connected analytics. A lot of people kind of it appeals to them, and they’re like, “Oh, actually, this is different. This is kind of market-leading. I want to be at the forefront of what’s going on.” And so once we have-- it’s not always easy to get someone in front of you because there’s a huge demand just to get people in the first place. But once they’ve seen what we’re about, we have quite a choice over the people that sit in front of us because they’re already bought into our culture, our way of thinking, which has been really powerful for us actually to be able to demonstrate what we’re like under the skin.
Stuart McLeod 00:20:01.462 I guess the message there is, there’s accounting firms and there’s accounting firms, right? The ones that are passionate, that have purpose, that do their best to enjoy what they do, that work with great clients, that have great culture, that do the things like you’re talking about. It doesn’t have to be ski trips. It can be any kind of cultural bonding experience that makes your workplace appealing to spend time with, right? The world has changed so dramatically over the last two years and gone are the days of the wood mop partitions, and lifestyle and work are irrevocably inseparable. [laughter]
Alastair Barlow 00:20:46.188 Yeah. Totally agree. I think the other thing, and you touched on it, was clients. We have some really, really cool, challenging, but interesting businesses that are on great growth trajectories, and people want to be part of that, and people want to work and challenge themselves, which then leads into kind of the whole development journey as well. We place quite an emphasis on trying to help people develop themselves into really strong professionals. And we’re quite passionate about that with a bit more of a focus on learning and development than the average firm of 40 people. And certainly, the plans that we have for the business going forward in terms of a full-on L&D syllabus and program as well. So people appreciate that I think, in the team.
Stuart McLeod 00:21:29.800 No, it is interesting working on an array of clients. Fast-growing clients. Being able to take that experience and get that array of experience as well. That’s different to being an industry where you’re sort of three or four years in one place. It’s all you see, is all you know, right? And so I can see that there’s a compelling offering there for young accountants or young business graduates that are interested in numbers and working with interesting people, and I can see that there’s a compelling offering.
Alastair Barlow 00:22:03.922 And actually, it goes up the chain to kind of more experienced people. So we’ve got a couple of people that are ex-Big Four as portfolio CFOs, and one of the things they had as a frustration where they were was kind of a very kind of narrow view from the Big Four in terms of, “This is the scope and this is what your role is, and this is what we sell as a service.” Whereas we’re much more like, “Oh, if there’s an opportunity, hey, fuck it, let’s try it. Let’s have a go. Let’s--“
Stuart McLeod 00:22:30.513 Yeah. Let’s grow that out. Yep. [laughter]
Alastair Barlow 00:22:32.111 Yeah. Exactly. “Let’s kind of just run with it and see where we get to.” So we’ve got much more of an appetite to-- a bit more of a greater risk profile or kind of appetite than your average Big Four would do. And we’re quite keen for people to explore and try and exploit different solutions and different services that they deliver to clients.
Stuart McLeod 00:22:50.315 What are the obvious other vehicles that you might sort of spread into?
Alastair Barlow 00:22:54.555 As we go through our FY 22 strategy, it’s something we’re considering. “Well, what are those?” I think for 22 were probably still clear on tech and eCommerce. I think beyond anything that we go into has to be complex, right? It has to be complex, and it has to have a lot of data in it. It has to be fast-growth. And the reason for that is because we can add a premium add value and charge a premium fee. I think crypto and NFTs is an area which we’re already seeing some of our existing--
Stuart McLeod 00:23:23.606 That’s complex. There you go. [laughter]
Alastair Barlow 00:23:25.454 Yeah. Exactly. So already seeing some of our clients-- there’s some potential for them to get involved in stuff there. So, for example, we’ve got a men’s kind of luxury shoe company, and some of what they do are one-off designs. And so one of the guys who’s really passionate about NFTs is, “How could you turn this into an NFT because these are one-off bespoke designs?” So potentially something around that. We do have a fair few people in the business that are really interested in crypto and blockchain so there may be something there. I think also maybe something like digital agencies could be interesting. I see a few companies, a few firms focused on that. So that could be something that’s quite interesting. You can benchmark those quite easily, one against another. Yeah. There’s a few different options that we can look at. But what we would do as a business, when we went into eCommerce, we started off with SaaS.
Alastair Barlow 00:24:19.981 When we went into eCommerce, we did a proper analysis of the market in terms of which other accountants are doing [well?]? Who’s leading the way? Who’s got lead magnets? Who’s got signature systems like methodology that they talk about? Who are they partnering with?" All this sort of stuff. There was a big gap there, to be honest. And when we’re picking up eCommerce clients, we’re picking them up off generalist accountants that, in the politest possible way, don’t really understand eCommerce and what they need, the metrics they need, and how they need to be-- even something like inventory, right? So something like stock. Just for your American listeners, inventory just isn’t managed properly most of the ones we pick up. So there’s quite a lot you can add value with on day one, basically. And we talk about our first 50 days with flinder, and in that first 50 days, we get all sorted, basically, and get you onto kind of a good business as usual format.
Stuart McLeod 00:25:11.205 Yeah. Onto a good operating platform.
Alastair Barlow 00:25:14.364 Maybe I’ll throw it back to you and say, “What do you think would be--“ given your experiences and what you see for Karbon and all your clients, who do you see is the ones that would work with complex sectors? What are those complex sectors that are data-rich that are in growth areas?
Stuart McLeod 00:25:28.206 I think I’d contemplate geography before expanding vertical. I’d make sure that you got UK sorted out and then I’d think about other countries. Because particularly the money that’s pouring into SaaS and crypto and eCommerce here, the rise of Etsy, and all of that kind of stuff through COVID is just extraordinary. And there’s so much room here for quality accounting. And I think the expertise that you’ve established are 99% compatible. Just change the pound symbol to a dollar symbol, mate, and you’ll be away. [laughter]
Alastair Barlow 00:26:09.794 Yeah. I know. It’s interesting. It’s interesting. In fact, another one that we do work with that kind of sits-- and if you have a Venn diagram, you’ve got SaaS on one side or tech on one side, and you’ve got eCommerce on the other side it sits in the middle as marketplaces. So we have quite a few marketplaces as well. So mini-Amazon, basically. They have their own complexities. They have some of the complexities that tech businesses have and some of the complexities that eCom businesses have. And one of the biggest challenges they have is around VAT reporting whether you’re the principal or the agent. So, yeah, they are also data-rich and real complex.
Stuart McLeod 00:26:42.909 There’s some complexity in there. I’m underplaying it a bit. There’s a huge amount of complexity here with sales tax and all kinds of, let’s call it like native regulatory stuff. But at its core, at its foundation, I don’t think-- look, I love accounting. I love accountants, of course. But I don’t think there’s an enormous number of firms that really understand SaaS and the metrics that go with it and payback periods and [CAACs?] and lifetime values and net revenue retention and all the metrics that we use day-to-day, we essentially built from scratch for ourselves. We use Zuora, which is probably about the most complex billing and subscription system you can use. But as you said before, the numbers are the numbers. It’s the actual understanding of the metrics that is the key capability for accountants to serve their SaaS clients. And if you understand that, and I know that you do, then there is certainly markets in not only US, but I’m sure in other countries that fly the flag on the top left. [laughter]
Alastair Barlow 00:27:56.582 We’re only traction surface even in London, right? So there’s a huge scope in London. And then there’s other parts of the country where there are tech hubs in the Southwest, in Bristol, in the Manchester area, and in Scotland. There’s just huge, huge potential really. So it’s probably maximizing that first. One of the things we’re actually looking at which serves it well to stick in a sector is almost developing an in-residence team of experts. And what I mean by that is against further differentiators, we use someone that is an examples-COO of a tech business, an examples-marketing CMO of a tech business, or an ex-supply chain expert in an eCom business or an ex-founder VC. And almost having, “This is our in-residence expert team that you can call upon and we can take out clients.” And it’s just something that’s very different from other accounting firms as well and something we put on a proposal that we might charge four times someone else does. But we put that on a proposal with a bunch of other things we do the value someone gets from that is 10 X compared to the price, so.
Stuart McLeod 00:29:01.577 Well, I’d be happy to run you through-- we’ve got an enormous number of metrics that we use. I’m happy to run you through them if there’s anything of interest that you pick up to relay back into your client base.
Alastair Barlow 00:29:12.800 I was going to say, I always like seeing under the skin of businesses and finding out what their metrics are. I’m a numbers guy at heart, so.
Stuart McLeod 00:29:20.502 By the time this comes out, we’ll probably have an announcement already done. But I better not do that because in case we can’t. [laughter] We’ve got a big 2022 plan. But we could do this all day. I’d love to do it again. Cheers, mate. [laughter] We’re running up on time. But just to finish off, what’s your prediction for the rugby coming up in February?
Alastair Barlow 00:29:46.043 I mean, you can never discount England. I’ll tell you the one prediction, Italy won’t win a game.
Stuart McLeod 00:29:50.970 Italy won’t win a game. There we go. [laughter]
Alastair Barlow 00:29:53.587 No. I think that one’s pretty much guaranteed. I don’t know who’s playing at home and who’s playing away, but so Italy won’t win a game, and then, oh, I don’t know. Ireland always surprise, I think. It’s just such a tough-- such a physically tough team, I think. Well, Scots are hard. I’ll say Scotland’s going to win the Six Nations, but they’ll get beaten one of the games. And I’ll go probably get beat by, I don’t know, one of the teams. Scotland the winner, but they’ll lose a game.
Stuart McLeod 00:30:20.793 We’ll play this back in early March and see how we go.
Alastair Barlow 00:30:24.639 Maybe it’s wishful thinking rather than reality. I don’t know.
Stuart McLeod 00:30:28.813 No, that’s all right. You’re allowed to do that. Alastair Barlow from flinder, thank you for joining us on the Accounting Leaders Podcast. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Alastair Barlow 00:30:36.462 Hey, thanks so much. I love listening to your podcast, so it’s great to be invited on. So love it. [music] And thanks again for such a great afternoon. [inaudible].
Stuart McLeod 00:30:45.035 Yeah, of course. Anytime. Cheers.
Alastair Barlow 00:30:47.732 Perfect. Cheers.
Stuart McLeod 00:30:55.019 Thanks for listening to this episode. If you found this discussion interesting, fun, you’ll find lots more to help you run a successful accounting firm at Karbon Magazine. There are more than 1,000 free resources there, including guides, articles, templates, webinars, and more. Just head to karbonhq.com/resources. I’d also love it if you could leave us a five-star review wherever you listen to this podcast. Let us know you liked this session. We’ll be able to keep bringing you more guests for you to learn from and get inspired by. Thanks for joining and see you on the next episode of the Accounting Leaders Podcast.