Challenge
Friction when building and sharing financial insights
While spreadsheets and manual models often contain the relevant data to convey financial insights to their clients, Smart found the data wrangling arduous and time consuming. Certain clients struggled to grasp the detail in these spreadsheets—particularly those who didn’t come from a financial background. Smart was keen to avoid spending time going back and forth checking data and trying to convey financial information, rather than using their time to go deeper into the story behind the numbers with their partners. Manual, siloed processes reduced the effectiveness of Smart’s time and limited the potential of their business partners to make the best possible financial decisions. “As financial consultants, people are coming to us to understand their financials and make savvy business decisions, so sometimes looking over financial statements and pouring over Excel models can be really overwhelming”, says Stephanie Nance, Manager of Business Strategy at Smart Business Concepts.
Solution
Effortless, beautiful data visualisation
Fathom’s financial analysis and reporting tools allow beautiful, visually-led insights to be shared with ease to stakeholders across any level of financial acuity. With a range of charts and customisable reporting templates available, Smart is able to present and explore results that highlight the critical findings with their clients. A wide range of analysis tools—comprising KPIs, profitability, cash flow, and divisions—means that reports can be sure to measure what matters to each client. Meanwhile, Goalseek allows stakeholders to quickly see the impacts of changes to crucial business drivers. “Opening a Fathom report makes me feel better about my business. Smart provides reports that allow us to get quickly to the insights and past a lot of the insignificant details that can slow you down when you’re trying to make decisions. Smart has guided a ton of major decisions throughout the years of working together” says Ross Cromartie, President and CEO of RBA.
“The caliber of our advisement is so much more in-depth, because we’re not spending time crunching the numbers themselves and making sure things are up to date. We’re able to sit down with our clients and decide ‘what’s next?’”
Stephanie Nance, Manager of Business Strategy
Impact
Looking to the future
Smart has been a long-time advocate of Fathom to help their clients reach decisions with confidence. The future-focused functionality that Fathom provides is a key area beyond reporting that the team at Smart continues to lean into. Stephanie shares an example, “RBA has worked with Smart and Fathom for a number of years now. One of my favorite things we’ve got to do with them is implement the possibility of profit sharing with their employees. Using the Scenario function, we were able to map out exactly the number that they needed to do that and how much time it would take to get there.”
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