In our series of interviews for the Future Positive Podcast, we featured Claire O’Connor, founder of Babyballet Limited and her Finance Director, Chantelle Gledhill.
We discuss the role that Chantelle plays in supporting the business and making the founder’s dreams come true.
Find out more about the business and how their finance director, Chantelle, has been key to their business success.
About the business
Babyballet has over 80 franchisees in the UK and over 20 licensees in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore and provides pre-school dance classes, parties, uniform, merchandise, books, video, music and digital content to over 25,000 children.
Unsurprisingly, with such a complex product range and growth strategy, Claire shared how she couldn’t run the business without her finance director explaining “I don’t have to worry about that side of things and Chantelle has such a great 360 view of the business she is involved in other areas, not just the finance function.”
It’s clear that Claire’s Financial Director is key in supporting her and her business,giving her the confidence to be able to scale her company. However, many businesses don’t reach the size in order to require a full time Finance Director and this is where accountants and advisers can fulfil that role for all business owners.
Besides the tasks relating to recording the financial transactions, it was interesting to understand what areas Chantelle covered in her daily role. These areas of support were in-fact similar to those which many accountants are now developing in their own product offering.To provide advisory services to more of their clients.
These included:
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Updating projected cashflow forecasts
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Evaluating impacts on the working capital position
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Having strategic discussions to consider various business plans and the impact on the business’ cashflow and profitability
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Considering the funding requirements to achieve business plans
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Reviewing credit scores, and helping to improve it to improve funding terms.
Chantelle uses the credit tools available on Capitalise for Business platform and, despite her qualifications and experience, is still learning how many factors can influence the business’ credit score. Stressing that credit scores are increasingly important for companies to track in this digital age of algorithms and automated assessments of risk.
Claire comments on the Capitalise platform explaining “those are numbers that even I can understand, it’s powerful!”
As accountants seek to develop their relationship with their clients from that of a reporting accountant to a forward-looking mentor and coach, being able to match the tasks carried out by in-house finance directors can provide a solid blueprint for a range of advisory services which all business owners would value.
Listen to the full podcast or take a dive into the platform and explore the credit tools and funding options available on Capitalise for Business
