Speaker: Alex Sutherland, Regional Partner - London South
Who are you? Name, job title and the region you look after...
Alex Sutherland: I'm Alex Sutherland. I'm the regional partner at YRH for London South, covering West London all the way through to South East London.
What do you do?
Alex Sutherland: Alongside managing my wonderful clients and finance principals, I put highly experienced Financial Controllers and Finance Managers into growing businesses to help fuel their growth by turning their finance function into an asset to supercharge their decision making, as well as sorting out any stressful headaches that their finance function may be experiencing.
Who are your clients?
Alex Sutherland: My clients are any organisation that needs an extra pair of hands or two to manage their finance function. To put it simply, we work with charities, tech firms, legal firms, anyone that needs people to assist them but doesn't want to hire somebody full time. Maybe they need somebody to provide an extra pair of hands on the bookkeeping side of things because the transaction numbers are growing cos they're growing the business. Or maybe the director needs somebody to give them the information that they need without spending a couple of hours a week on doing their own management accounts to help fuel their decision making. Really, every company needs a finance function. So if if you're out there and you don't have the people that you need or you need an extra bit of support but don't want to hire somebody full time, that maybe we're for you.
Why are you passionate about your work?
Alex Sutherland: SMEs are absolutely vital to the UK economy. They employ such a large proportion of the population, and luckily we're able to support them. We've done so for nearly 20 years, and we often get involved at the sort of friction point where things can start to go wrong and without somebody having a proper hold on the finance function, it's really hard to make that next stage of growth. So I just love supporting businesses, that have amazing ideas and really passionate leaders, to help them to reach their dreams.
What makes you different? Anything else you'd like to add?
Alex Sutherland: What makes me different. Well, I just like to have fun, and I find it fun helping people. So if I'm speaking with a client and I spot a problem that somebody else, in my network can help them solve, then I'll absolutely, happily make that introduction. And I don't look at my my role purely as a YRH assistant. I like to think of myself as somebody that can really help people get to where they want to be. So whether or not that makes me different, I don't know, maybe everyone's the exact same. But I like to think that that's sort of what puts me aside.
