Name: 2026 Priorities: Communicate with Impact, Forecast with Precision
Uploaded: 2026-01-27T12:16:08.518Z
Duration: 1 h 19 s
Description: 2026 Priorities: Communicate with Impact, Forecast with Precision

Transcript for "2026 Priorities: Communicate with Impact, Forecast with Precision": So without further ado, I'm gonna share my screen. You should be able now to see my screen. I can see that you can. Kevin, Jeremy have disappeared temporarily. So let me get to it. What can everyone on this call expect from today? So we're gonna be listening to a real turnaround story from, Jeremy of how good modeling was, able to turn bad news into good when he joined as a new CFO, in a new private equity backed business. Jeremy, says it's very important not to endlessly reforecast, and he can explain how you can avoid going back to the drawing boards. And then he's got some rules of how you should go about delivering bad news to the board to ensure you retain credibility. And then, of course, we are going to be looking at how the future or what the future offers, what technology offers to support the kind of cash flow modeling that Jeremy needed in order to to handle this situation in this scenario and how technology could have supported him were he in the same scenario today. Then at the end, very important part, as I said, and I'll repeat again, if you've only just joined, do ask questions as we go. You have the q and a on the right hand side. These sessions are much more enjoyable for all of us if you guys fill those in, so don't be afraid to ask that first question. It's always the one that's needed to get the q and a rolling, but we would love you to leave this session with your questions answered. So please do pop them in the Q and A and Kevin, who you'll be hearing from shortly, will do his best to make sure they will get answered at the end of the session. Okay. So in terms of who we are, you might be able to guess that that's me on the right hand side. I'm the head of partnerships at Agicap, hosts and sponsors of this webinar. In the middle, we have the person who we're gonna be hearing from primarily today or whose story we're gonna be hearing today. Jeremy, CFO coach, six time CFO at Clarendon Coaching Limited Executive, and then Kevin, chair, CEO of GrowCFO, CFO if you're not familiar. So now I'll do my bit before we get to the bit you're all here for, which is to explain a little bit about Agicap as a company. For those of you who have not heard of us, Agicap is a next generation treasury management solution primarily focused on the mid market. So, obviously, treasury is classically a a function of finance that is very dominant in enterprise. What Agicap has been trying to do, thankfully, reasonably successfully with our 8,000 customers, is to bring this treasury function to the mid market space over the last ten years. We are now active in 52 different countries, and we've got offices in Austin, Texas, France, Spain, Lisbon, London, where I am, Italy, Berlin, and as it says there, over 8,000 customers. For a man with a sweet tooth, AgiCap is a great company, to work at. As you can see from our client base here, if you like ice cream, Amarino, if you like Panerchocola, or if you haven't sampled OMERVAUS Panerchocola, can find this in Pancris. I'd highly recommend that you do. Also, an Agicap customer along with ATP Media you might also know. And that's what we do. We are the leaders according to G2 for cash flow management in the mid market segment. G2 is a peer to peer software review comparison site where Agicap has been ranked by users of the platform and compared by users of other platforms with the customers using Agicap more satisfied. Then the market presence bit is obviously our coverage of different markets, but also our ability to integrate to different ERP systems and different banks, which are so critical when it comes to effective cash flow management. And just to explain a little bit about what we do, why we do what we do, Agicap has been built off just one very simple principle, which is that cash flow is what drives long term success for any business. In my role as head of partnerships at Agicap, I have the privilege of speaking not just with people like Kevin in Germany regularly, but other CFOs. Many of you here on this call will be CFOs with investors. We work a lot with private equity backed funds or private equity backed businesses rather. I think 25% of the AgilePlate customer base is private equity backed, and a lot of fractional and interim CFOs come in with a specific focus on cash flow. And I always find it funny that you have this kind of contrast between what CFOs think reflected in that first quotation on the left hand side. You know? To be a good CFO, you really need to understand the flows of of cash in the business and what investors think. You know, if you want to understand the value of a business, just look at its bank account and when it gets paid and when it has to pay out, and the reality of how cash flow gets managed, which is the opinion of an interim CFO there. It's always the same. Companies often don't know what they're gonna be spending next week. And Agicap was built off that principle that managing cash flow well is very important, but too often, it's not managed well. And over the last ten years, we have built this kind of one stop shop for cash to meet all of those cash challenges that occur. So I always say it starts with centralization of data, which is an automated cash flow forecast as you can see in the right hand side. Most customers of Agicap would have this on a weekly or a monthly setting. This is the ability to integrate directly to the ERP. Any other sources, you know, non invoiced items, so for example, payroll might not be necessarily in the ERP. Planned investments might only be in the budget. Bring all of these in, so you have a forward looking view that we can then customize, to reflect individual supply payment timelines or customer payment timelines to make it really a cash flow forecast rather than just a forecast. And then you have the cash management module of Agicap, which is more of a daily cash flow forecast focused on the pinch points of the month and enabling our customers to see all of their bank accounts from all their different banks in one view, both an individual entity level and at a consolidated level. And that's kind of the first step, visibility. And then the next step of managing cash effectively is taking action off that information. Clearly, starts with having a more accurate forecast, which is what we seek to achieve in this top right and top left module. You know, if you know better when your cash is gonna come in, you don't have to take out invoice financing potentially, or, you can identify where you have short term excess cash and put that in a daily deposit. But it also is linked to the functions like payments and your collections process, and these can also now be done directly in Aggicap. Bar accounts payable automation, customers can handle their supply invoice management. So all of their supply invoices can go through Agicap directly. The OCR will extract the key details, and then they can run their payment approval and payment execution flow directly from Agicap, which means you can send actually the file to the bank without ever having to log into the bank. You just click a button in Agicap, it sends the file directly to the bank. Clearly, this has a very nice synergy with, okay, what's my cash position today? When do I who do I need to pay next week? And structuring, that payment file, according to, you know, these are my tier one suppliers. They have to be paid, etcetera. On the cash inside, we have this accounts receivable automation module where customers can identify customers of Agicap can identify their late paying customers, use the DSO analytics and the individual customer payment timelines to inform the accuracy of their forecast, and also build a kind of automated dialing process, that enables them to automate, you know, 80% of that manual chasing work that's needed to ensure customers pay on time. So that hopefully is a good overview of who we are as a business and kind of what our platform does. To put it into some kind of practical, where AdjuCat would fit into a kind of typical finance ecosystem, which roles or functions we would do, I think you could kind of think about Agicap like this. Cash management, cash flow forecasting, absolutely classic. There's a huge chunk of reconciliation that goes into, and I'll talk about this a little bit at the end actually, ensuring that a forecast is up to date. You know? Lots of people that I talk to talk about how they spend time actualizing their forecast and downloading the latest bank transactions, mapping it as expected. Agicap is doing that automatically, and the reason I've highlighted this one in light blue here is because that data that we collect can also begin to be used to inform, the bank reconciliation process that you would complete in your ERP. The credit control and supply payments processes, Educap was also covered in those bottom two modules there. And then you can do your some of your budgeting and your control in Educap as well, as well as some of your financial reporting as well. So, hopefully, that was quick overview and a clear overview of what we do. If people are interested to learn more about Agicap at the end, you should have. I hope you do have this kind of request an Agicap demo button at the top right of your screen, which should enable you, I think, to actually book a demo with me. So there'll be no pressure on me afterwards. But, yeah, if you want to learn more, just click that button. I'm very happy to explain more about what we do and how we work with businesses similar to yours or answer any specific questions that you may have. But without further ado, I think I'll now hand over to Kevin. Nat Hobson, thank you very much. Thank you for the privilege of coming along and sharing one of your webinars. It's normally the other way around, and we've got you and your colleagues on the GrowCFO webinar. Actually, the last time I met Jeremy was well, the first time I met Jeremy was on one of those webinars, and then subsequently, we went on and recorded a podcast together on the GrowCFO show. But, Jeremy, great to have you back again. And CFO coach, I know you're part of our mentoring team at GrowCFO as well. Former group CFO, now fractional CFO at Clarendon, and speaker and CFO four point zero as well. Another wonderful place to to to crop up. Jeremy, welcome. Thank you very much, Kevin. Nice to speak to you again, and, thank you again from Agicap for the invitation. So, Jeremy, today, the title of this webinar is how to communicate with impact and forecast with precision. But, you know, 2026, we're coming into tough times. The market is not good out there. And I think those two things are communicating with impact and forecasting with precision when you're in those things in challenging times isn't isn't easy. So often, Jeremy, you're gonna be talking about bad news, but how do you first recognize things might be worse than you thought? What are some of the indicators? I think, Kevin, I'd preface the detail of the conversation by saying we've got lots of aspirational and existing CFOs on the webinar. First thing I would say is number one, we have to be a problem seeking as CFOs. And I see this when I'm coaching and mentoring now where people are very, very comfortable dealing with the good bits of being a CFO, but you really gain credibility when you have the bad or the unwelcome news. So I think a CFO needs, in the first instance, to be problem seeking, intellectually curious, and I think also to engage from one of those slides that Nat Hobson presented just just now. Cash flow goes across so many functions of the leadership team. My experience as a joining CFO of an organization and now coaching and mentoring, not just CFOs, but other members of the leadership team, is that it can often be pigeonholed just in terms of cash flow into the finance team. So you have a a single point of failure, which I'm sure we'd all want to avoid. So, some of the issues that that you see that can be indicators. I think you're looking for leadership teams and boards and collections of managers who are, who adopt groupthink. So there's lots of people who are patting themselves on the back, agreeing with each other, self certifying their own information, and being somewhat resistant to challenge. And those can be potentially described as good news merchants. It's great when things are going well, and you might be able to get away with it for quite some time. But let's avoid this going to boardrooms, reading out good news, and then everyone giving each other a round of applause. I I think those are the things which if you see those kind of indicators, those signals, I think you have to probe deeply. And I think as a CFO, what you're trying to do is, first of all, you're inheriting. Going into any new organization, you inherit data and information. And perhaps unlike what we see in politics, where it feels like whoever's in power, you can get away with blaming somebody else for at least two and a half years for all your problems. In reality, in corporate world, of course, you're on the hook on day one. So, again, going back to that idea of you have to be problem seeking and challenge what's in front of you, whether you have had this information for quite some time or whether it's five past nine on a Monday morning having joined. So I think you're looking for triangulation of behaviors, making sure the data and the information is to the standard that you require. And, Nat, you showed one of the quotes there. I hastily jotted it down from an interim CFO that says organizations potentially don't know what they're paying or what they're receiving next week. Unfortunately, that's actually the reality. And particularly in SMEs where there's a lot of information that goes through the CFO, there's a lot of things to do. Our span of control as a CFO is extremely wide. And, unfortunately, cash flow management, despite it being the bedrock of a successful organization, in my experience, is probably the least well managed. It's always the thing that comes potentially, particularly if you don't have a a very expansive team, the one that becomes a bit of an afterthought. Sounds sounds surprising, but true in practice. So any CFO, number one, has to accept the need for a crystal ball. So how do we get that crystal ball to be as accurate as possible? We need credibility of data, credibility of information that's been road tested and challenged. And therefore, we're always looking to verify the information of tomorrow, not what we did yesterday. How feasible are those assumptions is where I would start. Jeremy, there's a there's a couple of observations I'd make there. Firstly, going back to what Nat was saying. Now cash flow really is important. Companies don't normally go out of business because they're not making a profit. They go out of business because they run out of cash. So cash flow just cannot cannot be an afterthought. The second one, you're you're talking about groupthink. And so I've been addicted to traitors for the last four weeks. And now if there's one lesson that came out particularly last week was that of confirmation bias. Somebody points something out. Somebody said, oh, look at them. Somebody's had these facial features or whatever. The natural thing is that everybody else starts looking for evidence to confirm that's right. Now that take that into the business situation. That group think, that's where a lot of it comes from. You know? Somebody says something. Oh, it's gonna be fine. Look at all these new sales we've got coming in and so on. Rest of the leadership team just look for the evidence and they start seeing, yeah, there were one or two new sales, whatever. He's right. And the CFO's job has got to be taking just the evidence. So, Jeremy, is there a lesson in there about, you know, always being systematic about how we do things even when things are appearing to be positive? I think you're absolutely right. And I think I've seen various articles saying there's something like 26 unconscious biases that you can reel off. And some of them are really valid. Confirmation, groupthink, spotlight effect is another one whereby you, as an individual, can be in a position where you think the spotlight's on you all of the time. I better not say anything because people are going to, you know, be be laugh at me. The CFO has to be the policeman, the judge, and the jury. So I think what you're trying to do as a CFO based on the credibility of information is do you want to get yourself into a position whereby people come to you as the leadership team because you're seen as the validator of information, the person who gives that kind of information which can be used to make decisions because let's face it, that's what we're there to do. We're helping the whole of the board make decisions. So I think we have to be in the position of being asking the question all the time, comply or explain. How do I verify this? How do I justify it going back to confirmation bay bias? Or explain why it's not going to be the case. So I think you have to be the challenging CFO. You have to have that range of information with bookends attached to it. So it's not enough to be risk averse all of the time. You have to set your risk appetite. You have to be able, as CFO, to determine what the ranges are, and then you have to form a conclusion. And let's be really clear about it. We are going to get it wrong on occasions, but we'd like to be in the position based on the credibility of data, not just forming a group of opinions together. Going back to your point on confirmation bias, we have to be able to say, if we get it wrong, why did it go look. Let's look forward. If we get things wrong, can we go back and see what we got wrong? Is there credibility, a trail of information that says, we made this decision for good reason? So I think having that credibility of forecasting, credibility of modeling, and not relying on something which I know we probably all been in this position as finance people. We love great big spreadsheets, but the danger is they're all in our heads. So sharing of information and getting the right input into those modeling procedures will give us a lot more credibility going forward. And and we have to have that credibility, Kevin. Yeah. And you've gotta be prepared to step out and give the bad news. And I'm in the middle of writing an ethics course at the moment, Jeremy, and I've I've been doing some research around case studies for this. And I found this lovely story about a CFO that ended up in jail for five years. And this all started because he didn't tell the bad news. The story was the story that they'd been telling the investors, and they continued promoting the story as opposed to the real results. And I'm not going to any of the details. It never intended being a situation that would go on for more than a quarter, but it end up going on for more than that. Because once the first set of untruths were told, more untruths were told to back it up. K? You've gotta be prepared to step in and tell it as it is. Yeah. But, Jeremy, I wanna go into a situation you find yourself in. I know we've spoken about this before. You arrived at a new organization as CFO, and you found very quickly some of the things that had previously been forecast and model weren't quite right. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? I can. And I can I preface it by saying this is a good group of people, a good group of investors, a mainstream set of lenders? So the criteria to have a good situation was all there. And I'll give you the case study. So I arrived, and I can remember the date. It was the December 5 one year. About eight to nine weeks after the consummation of a private equity secondary buyout. It heavily geared organizations, so up to, I think, £74,000,000 worth of debt, And an a transaction which had taken some time to put together and actually was in a competitive situation as well. So it was a a good business with some fantastic customers, and I inherited the position or or I, gained the position of CFO. And going back to the first question you asked, Kevin Appleby, I want to be, as I have done in all my other CFO roles as well, to challenge what was in front of me because it's now my information. So I challenged the forecasts and the modeling going forward, and it's not anything like as sophisticated as the Agicap modeling at all. But there was sufficient information there to give me some concerns. And my concerns were that the modeling and the forecasting was in terms of risk appetite, I'd call it hungry. Translate that into the effect that it was probably I think on reflection in the upper decile of achievement possibility. So not even the upper quartile, probably the upper decile. My concern as a heavily geared organization where cash flow was the absolute lifeblood of the company was, again, from a defensive point of view, am I going to be able to repay my debts? Am I going to meet my lender covenants? So I had I had a consortium suite of lenders led by one in particular. I did my own modeling. Again, not as sophisticated, but I was able to challenge some of the assumptions. And I very quickly actually came to the conclusion personally that I thought our forecasting was very aggressive. And the impact of that was that we were going to breach our very recently negotiated bank covenants. Not tomorrow, not in three months, not in twelve months, but probably in about fifteen months' time. And the reason we were able to do that is that we were able to look at the tolerance levels, and then I stress tested it. So this is quite a lot of rather manual forecasting going on, which took time, but it's the first thing I pretty much did. So first of all, I have to give myself some credibility. Have I got this right? Have I got this wrong? What am I seeing in front of me? And then how do I communicate what is unwelcome news? Bearing in mind again, the background to this was I've joined an organization only eight weeks ago. They were giving themselves the round of applause for for crystallizing a transaction at a high valuation with an expectation that in the future, there would be some capital gains for both investors and management. My conclusion was that we had nowhere near enough tolerance in terms of the lender covenants. And these were at the levels of five, six, and 7%. So very little tolerance for anything to go wrong. Diving deeper, of course, any kind of modeling, any kind of credibility is based upon the assumptions. So if you put not necessarily rubbish in, but if you put certain assumptions in, you can end up with information that validates your own opinion or information that you probably prefer not to see. But my conclusion was the challenges on new business were far too aggressive. Think about it practically in terms of a leadership person, and that's what we, as CFOs, are. What I saw was very aggressive assumptions on new business. The other side of that was challenging that. So are our competitors going to allow us to walk into their business, take their business away, and achieve the same margin that we are currently achieving on our existing business? And the reality to that, the answer is no. They're not. So not only was the value of new business incredibly aggressive, there was no churn built into the modeling either. Sounds quite simplistic, but are you not going to lose a customer in the next two, three, four years? Yes. You are. And how you deal with it is going to be a challenge. So the real challenges on the assumptions were too aggressive on the new business inputs. The reality that gaining new business, as we all know, is probably not going to come at your existing margins. There's going to have to be an entry point where you build up to the margins. And the reality was in fifteen months' time, we were going to breach covenants. What are the good points? Because there's some good points to come out of this. And this is when, as CFOs, we have the opt opportunity to gain credibility, to gain trust and integrity. By backing up those forecasts with the credibility and making it very easy to read for nonfinance people, I recall that by by the time Christmas came along, bear in mind, I started on the December 5 that year, I'd already been to see the consortium of lenders on Bishopsgate. And my my conclusion was, we've all got fifteen months to work on this. And therefore, the good points were, we're not giving people bad news in arrears. So we're not breaching covenant on the March 31 and going to the bank on the April 5 and saying, whoops. We gave people fifteen months to get their heads around it, and we backed it up with credible information. And, of course, the communication channels are very important as well. First, you speak to the CEO. Then you speak to the whole of the board. You speak to the chair. You speak to the private equity organization, and you work out how we're going to approach it with the lenders. So this was unwelcome news. It was backed up by credible forecasting, which can now be a lot more sophisticated and a lot more real time and a lot more bookended and a lot more in terms of stress testing well developed. But we only get one shot at getting that credibility right. What we have to avoid as CFOs is death by a thousand cuts. We might breach the covenants. We might not breach the covenants. We're running a bit close. Oh, by the way, whoops. We breached the covenant. So if you've got bad news, back it up with facts rather than opinions. Make sure it's credible. Make sure you've stressed it tested it yourself. Make sure you get the communication right, and then you can deal with the bad news. Fast forward probably twelve months because it took a little bit of a a period to get this right. We managed on behalf of our bankers, the investment, and the credit committees. So we realized that this wasn't great news eight to nine weeks after the consummation of the transaction. But by allowing our third party stakeholders time to understand it, time to prepare their defenses and their communication channels, we were able all to get in a position where we gained some credibility out of what was actually quite unwelcome news. But the basis behind it was we only get one shot at that. We can't be giving people bad news on a regular basis on the same subject. So let's get the modeling and the forecasting right when we do that. Jeremy, there are loads and loads of questions that are going through my mind thinking about the example you've just given. And I would say anybody in the audience, please go to the q and a section and start putting your questions to Jeremy in in there. We will have a q and a session towards the end of this fireside chat, but please start putting them in now. Jeremy, first question. No. Forecast has been put together that has backed up this transaction, this valuation, and so on, how did that forecast get there in the first place? So what why did people produce a forecast with so much, let's say, upside in it, which wasn't then challenged. I I I suspect that this happens on quite a regular basis, but I don't think you can I don't think you can apportion blame such to any of this? I think you can go back to some of those conversations. And I think the nature of the transaction is important here. This was a secondary buyout. So the primary buyout, CEO and CFO were exiting the company and being replaced by a not a newly appointed team. They were already there, but they were taking on new roles. So my conclusion is they were probably less in the driving seat than perhaps they were allowed to be or could have been. And, therefore, the investor was probably driving the forecasting and the modeling more so than the management team. And maybe that's just a reflection of the fact that it was a secondary buyout. It was a competitive process, and you're looking to justify one way or the other, the valuation that's been placed upon the business. And if I go back to the heady days of this particular case study, you could borrow at at least four and a half times EBITDA, probably a little bit higher. You had private equity organizations who were particularly aggressive at the time. I think if you put those combinations together with a desire to demonstrate that this is an acquisition and a transaction that works ultimately for both the investor and the management, you perhaps end up with less challenge and less probing than perhaps was desired at the time. And then you bring in somebody like me who's the kind of awkward chap to come in and join the organization and say, as I mentioned before, the first thing I'd I'd I'd I'd had five or six CFO roles in my, in my career prior to becoming a coach and a mentor. And I'll digress for thirty seconds. I think in every single one of those roles, I've sat with the CEO or the chair or the investment team and been told the same thing. Don't worry, Jeremy. There's no problems here. You're inheriting a very clean ship and a very straightforward organization. And surprise, surprise, in every single one of those situations, if you push and you probe and you look for problems, you find them. So and this was one of those. And, it it wasn't a disastrous situation. We weren't going to completely lose control of the company. But what it meant was we had to deal with this unwelcome news, bearing in mind that CFOs deal with unwelcome news 50% of the time. And I know you and I have had this conversation before, Kevin. I have a seven year old grandson. If revenues are ahead of target, if cash flow's ahead of target, if profits are ahead of target, there's no geopolitical storms going on. Quite frankly, my seven year old grandson can turn up to a board meeting, put a CFO hat on, and deliver the good news, and everyone pats him on the back and gives him a round of applause. Life's not like that as you and I know and and and our audience know as well. So it's dealing with the bad news situations. So the critical element here was backing it up with information that was credible. And, of course, we all know that you can't keep going back to a board with slightly worse information than we said before on the same subject. So those root differences in new business development, and it could have been anything in in other people's organizations, but pushing and probing and making sure that we have reality that's reflected in the modeling. And it goes deep enough. And I I go back again, and I when I'm coaching and mentoring now as well, it is the case that cash flow is probably the most complex to develop as well. It's the most challenging, probably the most time consuming. So any help that we can get in this area, we're probably as an an SME company, we probably don't have a separate function that does treasury. So we have that one, you know, one hat that has all of those breadth of areas that we have to cover. So we have to get as much help from forecasting and modeling and AI that as we can in terms of managing those unwelcome new situations. Yeah. And, Jeremy, I'd reflect on the situation. You're you're there clearly with a forecast that was being driven by evaluation and an investor, but I I'm thinking back to my days in the chemical industry as a as a business accountant. And we every year, we went through the process of the annual budget review. And you put together a forecast for next year and the three following years. Always the same process went along. You put together the forecast, the budget and the forecast that you thought were realistic. It went up to the next level. So our business was part of a group of businesses. So group level, they'd say, oh, not good enough. You're gonna have to make a better profit than that or whatever. Then you'd agree that and their forecast, the group would go up to main board. Oh, you've gotta do better than that. That's not good enough. So we're all told to come back and redo our homework again. And you ended up agreeing a budget and a forecast. Guess what? End of the first month of the new financial year, you were putting together your variance analysis, and there were considerable differences. If we'd been putting a variance analysis together against the budget we first thought of, would there have been any differences? No. It would have been pretty much spot on. And there's there's always that pressure to make the forecast look better because you're being challenged to hit targets by other people. So there's a disjoint between the the planning and forecasting from a kind of FPNA view to a forecast from a treasury point of view. And I think whatever situation you're in, you've gotta be cognizant of that that thing. But no. How how, Jeremy, was what were the root differences, you know, in your modeling that you put together? It it was very clear. I'll give you the the actual example. This was a £66,000,000 revenue business. And in year one, for example, the new business assumption was six I can remember the numbers very clearly. I think I still have the the original modeling on my system and my device. New business in year one of the plan was £6,000,000 based on a, a revenue existing of 66. Year two was eight, another eight, and year three was another 10. Now us as CFOs, we're all credible people. We all know, for example, we can do the mathematics To achieve £6,000,000 actual revenue in year in year one means that we actually have to be on a run rate of £12,000,000 to achieve £6,000,000 because it's we all know it's not gonna happen on the January 1 for an December year end. So you start to see how how do we get that 6,000,000? We've gotta be on a run rate of 12. Similarly, the next eight is on a run rate of 16, and the next ten in year delivery is on a run rate of 20 on the assumption that we're gradually picking up business throughout the year. So on a £66,000,000 business, we are effectively modeling new business run rate of 12 in year one. So already nearly 20%, another 16 in year two, and another 20 in year three. Now I look at that and think, that's fine if we have the levers and the assumptions that are credible to back it up. For example, we know that three of our competitors are gonna exit the sector, for example. But you've mentioned it there, Kevin. We all know that our colleagues, our parent companies, our shareholders sometimes revert to the easy answer, which is run faster and work harder to achieve your numbers. I don't personally subscribe to those views. It might get you some way, but I'm a big fan of knowing exactly what levers you're going to pull and engaging the rest of the management team as well in our budgeting and forecasting. And, we all know as CFOs, people start to look at us to deliver the numbers. Therefore, it's equally a defensive situation to make sure that we all agree what's going to happen. If our assumption is based on the fact that our biggest competitor we know is exiting the sector, then there is an opportunity for new business. If, for example, we know that there is a big problem coming on the costs of our supply side materials in the procurement chain, we know we've gotta deal with those margins. So I think it again, it's another opportunity for CFOs to step out of that comfort zone of data and information into leadership and making sure that we've got the credibility to make sure that we all know what the levers to pull are to achieve the forecast and avoid, as you probably know, Kevin, if you do a three year plan, we all know that year three is the year when it all happens. It's never year one, and it's never year two. It's always a hockey stick in year three. So I think we've just gotta recognize that and just make sure that we have that credibility. And if for and, again, for those, people on the webinar who are potentially in privately owned businesses, you may or PLCs or private equity owned organizations. One of the first things having been through this process on exits, one of the first things that external observers will look at if they're thinking of buying your organization is how accurate is your forecasting? Because there's no point giving a potential acquirer and a quench a potential suitor a forecast if you look back to the last three to four years and you see that the management team and the leadership team have absolutely no a no accuracy in their forecasting in the past. Yeah. So, Jeremy, you've joined this organization on the December 5, and you're sharing this news by Christmas. Now tell me a little bit more about that process of bringing the bad news, and that that's that's pretty darn quick. I mean, number one, you you've been looking at the existing modeling. Now you must have that first thought that says, oh, it's either the model's wrong or I've missed something here. Now most. of us doubt ourselves. So that's our first thought. How do you make sure it's not me that's got it wrong? Am I gonna make myself look an absolute idiot as I take this news forward? Yeah. So then number two, how do I then build up this story and get to the point I can have all those right conversations? I mean, December 5 to. Christmas, that is. just over two, three weeks. Tell me about that period of time. How how do you go about that communication. process in that period? I think I think one of one of the the challenges that I I get I'm I'm conscious that I'd I'd I'd leave some time for q and a, at the end. But I think one of the more obvious things to do for for any CFO moving jobs or moving sector is there's an awful lot of information that you can get before joining, and probably should gain before joining. So I had access to some of the information before I joined, in working out my my exit from my previous organization. I thought there were some challenges in there. So I guess I had an element of a head start. But I think it I had a good team around me as well. So, again, going back to that conversation around with was it management led, or was it investor led, or was it a balance? Probably too much towards the investor. And for for those people who've worked with private equity, it can be very hands off. It can be, yeah, there's the challenges. I'm paying my management team a lot of money to fix problems, go away and fix them. So I think stress testing was pretty key. Avoiding that confirmation bias, making sure that my own independent forecasting and modeling was was based on rock solid observations as well, and then making sure that communication phase. So going going to any board, as we all know as leaders, going to any board and saying, I've got a problem, but I don't know what to do about it isn't an option. Going to any board investor set of lenders, And in my case, it was we've got a problem in fifteen months' time. And it was gonna be the subsequent March, the second March, when we were rolling the covenants forward, and it became very, very aggressive. And my conclusion was there is a more than 50% chance, probably more like 75 plus chance that we were gonna breach our covenants. And we should do something about it now rather than go back to your example, Kevin, which was put your head in the sand for twelve months and hope it gets better. They were they were far too tight, the covenants. The you know, 6% headroom. You know, give yourself 6% on a domestic financial situation is just not credible. So I think that challenge of delivering the bad news was making sure you had a a you know, what was the what was the amount of the problem in percentage and absolute terms? So going to the banks and saying, this issue is a £650,000 issue. For example, we need the covenants to reflect what's achievable. This is not reinventing the wheel. This is not changing the business plan. It's just reflecting that we are rebasing to give everyone the opportunity of making sure our forecasts are not gonna embarrass people in the future. That is absolutely spot on, Jeremy. And your that advantage of of being able to look at things before day one is a big plus there. I must admit on our future GrowCFO program when I'm talking about your first hundred days as GrowCFO. One of the things I always say is do as much research before day one as possible, and you're just reflecting that in. absolute reality there. Get. to know the organization that you're joining. And if you go in on day December, knowing nothing, then you might not have got random looking at those forecasts for another. two weeks. And it and it's it's rebasing the the principles on which you join an organization. And, you know, we we probably all joined organizations where we thought, not quite sure after three, six, or nine, or twelve months. So I I do come from a glass half empty mode, which is in those first hundred days. Maybe it's different in in different functions where you're able to take a more proactive view, maybe in sales and marketing, or or and though that those areas in particular, you you can make more of an outward looking positive recognition of what you're trying to achieve. However, a lot of my first hundred days in any role is making sure that I've got credible information. I know what's in the balance sheet. I know where my cash is. I can pay my bills. I can pay the mortgage, and I can pay payroll. And once I've got those things under my belt, I can then begin to move on to more strategic issues. Now that sounds quite pessimistic. It sounds quite defensive, but it avoids going into board meetings and not being in command of the data. And and I act as a nonexec director now as well. And I I try and help people by saying not all of us as nonexecs are finance experts. So when I'm listening to the executive team, you have to make sure that we as nonexecs, you probably have only got a maximum once a month opportunity to see and engage with our executives. You have to send us away every single one of the nonexecs into metaphorically into the car park with exactly the same conclusion. And in particular, in finance, you have to send us away thinking these people are on it. Yeah. I may have heard some information that that doesn't help me, but they've demonstrated credibility. They've demonstrated the forecasting and the modeling. They're not plucking numbers out of the air out out of the air. They are giving me well thought through, well modeled information. And if it's bad news, I'd rather have the bad news and know the quantum of that rather than not have any information at all. Yeah. So, Jeremy, getting some really interesting questions coming through. Raj is asking, how did the optimistic forecast compare with those provides to the auditors as part of their cash runway review before signing off the accounts? Yeah. Great question. And the the I I know there were a number of iterations of the investor model. And the numbers that I challenged were deemed to be the management case. Now bearing in mind, credible management team, good people, not having a go at at those people at all, But they were in the position of seeing the golden egg, let's call it. So this is a management team who haven't been involved in the first buyer. They're now in the situation of seeing a secondary buyout where they have some equity interest in the organization. Maybe that's something that influenced their objectivity to a certain extent and that confirmation bias. A business would have been doing extremely well. Why would it not continue into the future? Because things change. So I think there was a management case which was still too aggressive, And it still demonstrated that you had sufficient now I would to take that question, I I would think it's still too aggressive, but you get lots of people engaged in trying to do a transaction. There's the danger of just not seeing the wood for the trees. Not seeing the wood for the trees. Yes. Jessica's asking interest interesting question. She's saying she's not sure if it's the right forum to ask, but can a manufacture retail background CFO change to m and a CFO and how to make the transition? Yeah. Another great question. Jeremy, And and must I been I that position. I have. And here's here's how I manage that transition. It probably I'll I'll give the, kind of superfluous answer and then perhaps another one. The superfluous answer is, is is I kind of did that in going from my first CFO role to my second CFO role, with the second CFO role, engaging in a lot of m and a. And I think over a period of eight years, we did something like 20 transactions, most of which were acquisitions. And the real answer to making sure you become, let's say, half decent at m and a is to do it completely wrong the first time and learn from it, which is exactly what happened with me. And I inherited a transaction on the go. And I now use it subject for another conversation. I use it as a case study to say, here are all of the things which was staring us all in the face as to how not to do this acquisition. Yeah. We went ahead and did it. And we were fortunate. It didn't cost a lot of money, but it had all the hallmarks of a poorly executed and poorly thought through acquisition. I'll I'll I'll answer another question as well. I I I used to get little bit older now, so I'm less agitated by it. If you're a CFO and if you managed a team of people in an organization, you're used to dealing with problems. I always used to get frustrated when you deal with executive search people who would say if they approach you for a role and say, for example, we you you your background is in manufacturing, but this role is in software as a service, and therefore, we're excluding you from that. Like, guys, do you think, for example, that you you may or may not have gone through a degree process? You've certainly studied to a high degree. You've got an accounting and finance qualification. Do you not think that we're capable of making that transition? So in answer to Jessica's question, I would probably say back yourself because you've absolutely got the skills to do it. If there's a learning process to do it, take some advice. I I would say this anyway, get a coach and a mentor who's done it. because they'll tell you all of the good points and all of the bad points to avoid. But my experience, CFOs are intelligent. They're capable of changing, and and enhancing an organization. Just because you've not done m and a before doesn't mean to say you're not capable of doing it. I had a great experience which was in in hindsight an absolute disaster. But goodness me, you learn very quickly from it. I now use it as a case study. I'm happy to share those experiences on, another I. can feel another webinar or another podcast coming just to talk about that. But, Yep. nope, I think we've got a couple of minutes left. I think we better hand back to Nat at this point. Yes. A bit later than planned, but I think we want to just finish this webinar by discussing how Agicap helps avoid situations like Jeremy, how Jeremy, could have, made those first few weeks in his new role, a little bit easier. Am I resharing the screen? I need to fix the layout, don't I? There we go. Yeah. Okay. So how does a tool like ACIP actually help? I explained a little bit at the beginning about what ACIP offers as a platform. In terms of forecasting, so how Jeremy could have come in, tested his assumptions, rejigged his assumptions, some scenario planning and adjustment to the assumptions that were going in, checked that all the data made sense. Agicap offers cash flow forecasting in a comprehensive way, both consolidated across businesses, entity by entity, currency by currency, and really three core outputs. So cash positioning, short term cash flow management, so really getting on hold of the upcoming supply payments, payroll, etcetera, to ensure no bank account is at risk and certainly not breaching the covenants. This is not the part that Jeremy would have used, albeit is one of the most used features of Educap. He would have used the bottom bit of this here, which is the long term cash flow planning here where Agicap allows you to build in assumptions on your forecast data and also conduct multiple scenarios side by side. So in Jeremy's example, he could have said, okay. Let's build in those churn assumptions, build in those new business assumptions, test different examples, and then stress test against the different rates to ensure I have good comparison of when bits of software are gonna come in. I can't tell if the the whole webinar has ended or if I should just carry on, but I've I'm gonna carry on anyway. And then final thing to say is once Jeremy had completed his assumption testing, he could then action his processes in Agicap directly by doing both his payments, supply invoice management in Agicap, and then also his credit control. So when he talks about getting customers, having, keeping those customers, avoiding the churn, that interaction, for example, that happens through a given system could happen directly in Agicap, and his payment run could be managed directly in Agicap on the outflow side. So once he's got a set of assumptions that he and the board are comfortable with, he can manage his short term cash flow directly through a tool like Agicap to ensure that they keep on on track with, those, new targets, revised targets that they've set and don't end up breaching the covenants. So it's use Agicap in the long term view to stress test your assumptions, come in, again, via direct data feeds and our scenario planning. And then once you've reset the assumptions, come in and use Agicap for your day to day operations that impact your short term cash flow as well to ensure you stay on track and you don't end up breaching the covenants. And that is the end of that. I see enough people stayed to hear that. People, if you do wanna learn more about Agicap, you can click request an Agicap demo, or you can add me on LinkedIn. Quite active there. And then I think you can also scan this QR code and book it there. If you wanna reach out to Jeremy and to ask him more questions, I think I speak on his behalf. Go to his website and contact him there. He's also active on LinkedIn and posts some great stuff about cricket as well as finance. So if you're a cricket fan, you could be a good person to follow as well. And I think that endeth the webinar. Thank you everyone for coming. Have a good rest of your day, and hopefully, we'll see you again on another Educat webinar soon. Thanks very much. Thank you.