As a director in our business consulting practice, I help FDs and CFOs to be as effective as they can be in their roles and to develop finance functions that can support the needs of the wider business. I specialise in finance function development. That often involves improving areas such as the:

• the speed of month-end reporting
• the content of board packs
• the efficiency of processes undertaken by finance
• the overall structure of the finance team.

In most cases, the clients I help are those who are looking to “future proof” their back office ahead of their plans for growth, acquisition, or listing. My team and I help those organisations either by solving a specific issue (eg the format of their management reporting or the quality of their data) or with a broader finance transformation programme.

As we work with clients in a number of ways, we might find ourselves:

• providing advice or diagnostic reviews at the outset of a client’s programme
• playing a sounding board role to challenge management throughout their project
• working alongside a client in a joint team throughout a whole programme from start to finish.

Whichever way works best for our clients, we bring a practical and pragmatic approach based on our experience of how finance functions really work in practice, our accounting background, and our knowledge of the “art of the possible” with processes and technology.

Having started my career as an auditor in London and having gained my ICAEW ACA qualification, I’ve since worked in Edinburgh and New Zealand before settling in North Yorkshire in 2010. I have worked across a range of sectors, with a particular specialism in real estate and construction. Clients past and present include those that are private equity backed, listed (AIM and FTSE), privately owned, and not-for-profit.