Speakers: Sarah Connor, Associate Financial Controller, Your Right Hand Finance Team. Graham Hunter, Finance Director, The FD Centre. Gill Watcham, People Director, People Puzzles
What do Catra do and at what point in the journey did Stephen, the CEO, approach you?
Graham Hunter: Catra manufacture knife sharpening and testing equipment. In addition to that, they also provide testing services to manufacturers who operate in that arena - producing knives, blades, medical equipment, DIY and gardening equipment. It's a very small business that has stayed relatively unchanged for a number of years. A new CEO took over in 2020 and having survived the trauma of Covid, he'd identified that the business needed significant transformational change. So in early 2021, he realised time was against him, and also being a small business he didn't have the bandwidth, and also he didn't have a management team beneath him to deliver that transformational change. Hence, he came to The Liberti Group, and approached three of our organisations on the basis that he needed finance and commercial, strategic and people help and that period of transformation is now underway.
What’s the benefit of working alongside other Liberti principals?
Sarah Connor: The benefit for me of working alongside other Liberti principals is the instant rapport that I have found and the pleasure in working with other high quality professionals. But I think the benefit for the client is that we work in the same way, with the same ethos, the same high standards and the overall aim of looking after and supporting that client. I think we complement each other's expertise. We can support each other and we know we can rely on each other and also the support that sits behind each principal within the Liberti organisation. I think if a client has more than one Liberti principal involved, then we know that they've fully understood and embrace the flexibility and reliability of the Liberti model. And when we work together, I think that the sum of all of us is greater than the individual parts and that's a real benefit to any client.
What value do we bring to Stephen?
Gill Watcham: When I first started working with Stephen, it soon became clear that the people issues weren't the only issues so referring in both the FD Centre and Your Right Hand was certainly the right thing to do for him and they certainly made progress in terms of bringing some structure to the financial disarray that the company found themselves in. So, working together, we act as a great sounding board for Stephen. He describes us to the business as his executive management team. So we're seen very much as an integral part of the business. We meet on a monthly basis, we discuss the financial position, we discuss what needs to be done, what strategic issues are holding him back and we talk about various solutions and options and the value of us working together in that way enables Stephen to get the whole picture pretty quickly of what can and can't be done. Between meets, we make sure that any practical kind of matters are dealt with. We progress those actions that we've agreed at the monthly meetings. So by the next monthly meeting, we're actually beginning to monitor progress in deciding what else we need to do to make things or turn the ship around really. It's a great way to work and certainly there's a lot of value in us being together on that monthly basis.
