About the client
Founded in the 1980s, Askham Village Community operates multiple care and rehabilitation facilities in rural Cambridgeshire.
Through implementing effective training programmes, embracing modern techniques, and underpinning every operational decision with their principle-led, community-centric ethos, Askham has ensured excellence truly is a way of life for the company, its staff and its residents. More recently, the business has branched into cutting-edge robotics within its rehabilitation division, something that is fast establishing them as pioneers in this field.
Aliyyah-Begum Nasser, Managing Director, approached Russell when she and her management team were already considering bringing in a finance director to make better sense of the numbers, and some serendipitous outreach from Dartcell’s business development team caught Aliyyah at precisely the right time for a call.
It soon became clear that our founder and Portfolio Director Russell could add considerable value to the business.
The challenge
Askham already employed a Financial Controller who supplied Aliyyah with monthly management accounts – but, in her own words, the numbers were simply numbers. There was limited insight or analysis.
Aside from not having the financial clarity she wanted, Aliyyah felt the business was over-reliant on her and wanted to be able to step away from the day-to-day to focus on the bigger picture. She was also keen to grow the business but needed a stronger understanding of the company’s financial position – especially against the fragile backdrop of the care sector in the UK – before committing to new opportunities.
The solution
After assessing Askham’s situation, Russell began supporting Aliyyah by:
- Developing a meaningful management pack including graphs, trends and KPIs so the numbers could be communicated in a clearer way, and the team could better understand what was happening within the business over time
- Running monthly executive meetings with Aliyyah, her Director of Operations and her Financial Controller, to go through the monthly management pack and agree clear, focussed actions
- From the management pack, it quickly became clear where the team could better control costs and improve Askham’s financial performance, in line with the business’s goals
- Preparing financial justification for the acquisition of a new site and assisting the management team with their search for a viable opportunity
- Renegotiating with the bank to agree new terms for a loan
The results
The business’ performance is now tracked against appropriate KPIs monthly, for real-time insights.
Despite a challenging economy, increased statutory minimum wage rates and increased employer National Insurance contributions, operational profit more than doubled in the first year Russell was fully involved in the business. This growth was a team effort and understanding where management attention needed to be focussed financially made a significant contribution to this improvement.
Final words from Aliyyah-Begum Nasser, Operations Director at Askham Village Community:
“At the time we met Russell, we didn’t need a full-time FD, but we were getting to the stage where we knew we needed some help. We wanted to be smarter about how we were doing things, both financially and commercially.
“We are now able to look at our finances through a much more robust lens, and our financial processes are more formal and much more rigorous.
“I’m very grateful to Russell; he enabled us to spot trends and look more deeply into the drivers behind the figures, helped the team improve our financial performance, mentored our Financial Controller and has been an extremely valuable sounding board.”