Overview:
David Lee, a Growth Strategy Consultant, works with Springfield Mobile Limited, a family-run modular building manufacturer. Despite consistent performance, the company lacked monthly financial management information. Implementing the VFD Pro reporting suite provided comprehensive financial reports, improving visibility, forecasting, and decision-making.

As a result, Springfield now has a concise KPI report to monitor critical business metrics.

Lyndsey Duggan, MD of Springfield Mobile, praised the VFD Pro reports for providing a thorough understanding of financial aspects and a complete business health-check.

David’s use of the VFD Pro platform has boosted his credibility and confidence in working with other clients.

In David’s words…

I have been working with Springfield Mobile Limited, manufacturers of modular & portable buildings, as a Growth Consultant for a number of years. It is a well-established business in its 50th year since inception and a family run business with Lyndsey Duggan the current MD having taken over from Dad, Ken Britner around 10 years ago. The business has seen significant growth under Lyndsey’s control and is currently approaching an £8 million turnover from just over £2M since she took command.

The business is clearly extremely well-run and been profitable throughout its history, a testament to the disciplines laid down by Ken from the very beginning of the business and maintained by Lyndsey. These disciplines have created an almost metronome level of consistency in the critical KPI’s in the business with GP, Labour & Overhead cost along with Net Profit remarkably reliable and as budgeted for each and every financial quarter.

However, as a business advisor I was always a little uneasy with the absence of financial management information available on a monthly basis, particularly as the Company began to develop and grow. My background has always been in Sales & Marketing and more recently developed into Growth Strategy, so getting a grip on the finances in the operation was not something I could provide and the predictability of the key numbers meant an expensive FD was an expense we couldn’t justify.

“Fortunately, I was introduced to VFD Pro software which has turned me into a trusted financial advisor in a matter of weeks!”

We were able to use VFD Pro to interrogate the Sage package already in place to deliver comprehensive reports on every aspect of the business at the touch of a button. We now have full financial visibility of the business on a monthly basis and produce meaningful reports on cash flow, forecasting, forward planning, analysis along with identifying business trends and supplier and client analysis. The Major KPI’s remain consistent but we now have the insight to quickly make the little “one per cent” changes in areas of the business that add up to constantly improving results and have been instrumental in helping the business to record profits in the last couple of years.

The benefits even extend to the marketing information collected which enables us to make judgements on our substantial marketing spend ensuring we spend every penny wisely.

Springfield now have a double sided A3 KPI report which tracks every critical business driver from turnover, profitability and overhead cost through to transactions, value, new, retained and lost client numbers, debtor & creditor figures and full supplier and customer activity analysis.

Finally, I have to add that whilst my access to the VFD software gives me a certain financial credibility and my client an Accountant level of information should I ever need support from the VFD support team, that support is available, prompt and accurate, giving me the confidence to use the software with many other clients.

David Lee – UKBA Growth Strategy Consultant