Right Brain Insights (RBI), based in Melbourne, Australia, provides outsourced CFO services to industrial, manufacturing, and trade service businesses. They have been using Fathom software to engage clients with relevant insights, management reporting, and KPI analysis since 2012. 

The Challenge 

RBI helps business leaders understand and manage the financial health of their business by planning for the worst, striving for the best, and making strategic decisions that drive financial performance.  

RBI has a client who is one of Australia's largest providers of operational services to the renewable energy sector. Beginning in 2019, the client has experienced rapid growth in a competitive industry.  

The key challenges experienced by the client included an aggressively growing market, a cash shortfall caused by investments, debts and delayed receivables, and RBI’s need to bridge a gap of financial understanding for business owners who hadn't had financial training. 

The Solution 

RBI was able to use Fathom for financial data visualisation within client scoping sessions and ongoing client engagement. Fathom helped RBI's business owner clients understand current and historical performance and key performance indicators (KPI's) that could improve future performance. 

Leading RBI's team is founder and director David Maher. He's an economist by training who has worked as an economist, financial analyst, banker, and CFO. 

David says, "By using Fathom on a screen, we showed our client how their business makes a profit and how it makes cash. We identified their goals, and then, based on the profit and cash, we played with the various financial levers in the business to show our clients how they could achieve their goals. 

"It's super easy to set up, not very expensive and ultimately the most well-designed system in the market that makes sense to our clients." 

"Fathom makes the complex simple. The platform has nailed the science and the art. Fathom can report on the past, present, and future, and that's ultimately what business owners want: 'Where will we end up in the future?' That all comes together in the Fathom process." 

The Result 

In one month, RBI was able to help their client gain greater control of their finances, going rapidly from losing money to making it.  

Additional performance results and benefits for the client included: 

• Fivefold improvement to the current ratio; 
• The client is maintaining market share with month-on-month profitability for ten consecutive months; 
• Halved accounts receivable days; 
• Instantly enhanced level of financial oversight and control; 
• Able to properly assess acquisition offers, and 
• Reduced stress for the business owners and more control over their lives. 

In David's words, a "standout result" for RBI is helping this client understand and know what is happening inside their financials by seeing on-screen data visualisation.  

This client better understood their financial health through Fathom's data visualisation capabilities. RBI used Fathom to show the client that the business had spent too much on travel. Within a week, the client cut their travel expenses by two-thirds. 

David says, "As an outsourced CFO providing help to business owners, I see that what happens in the business affects their personal life so that matters. This client is not out of the woods yet, but they know they're moving in the right direction. It's been ten months, and they're coming out of the survival phase now." 

RBI says that the most important result has been the client knowing what they must do to move the business's financials in the right direction establishing a base level of financial health. Business owners can now link their decisions and actions to a plan. 

The tools to accelerate business success 

Now proudly part of The Access Group family, Fathom is a platform purpose-built for accounting practices and financial professionals to confidently measure and track past, present, and future financial performance.  

Fathom's platform is known for its simplicity, beautiful design, ease of use, and globally awarded customer care. Chat with our team to see if Fathom is the right fit for you.  

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Want to learn more about Fathom - and how your accounting practice can replicate the business advisory success of Right Brain Insights? Current Access Group customers who sign up to Fathom today can receive an exclusive discount on their Fathom subscription. Get started with a free trial today.