Finance Director | The strategic role of our Finance Manager is to ensure that revenue is always greater than cost and cost is always less than revenue. | A five to seven year view is taken of all projects, as a cash-rich private business we do not need to pander to short-term shareholder expectations. This makes it very easy for us to deliver a better value-for-money package to clients when in a face-to-face evaluation with any big software vendor. |
My Issues | Why does every other web design company ask for £10,000 up-front fees to begin building my application on a project that could cost £100,000, but you offer to deliver everything free? | How could your small company invest £50,000 to develop my application and invest a further £50,000 per year to operate my application, when the monthly fees are just a few hundred pounds? |
Business Angel | We are a business angel, a venture capital company that is able to make the investments needed to make web application services practical and affordable. | We look at investments against a 5 to 7 year revenue plan with continual improvements to drive growth - short-term opportunities are NOT part of the business plan. | We make it practical to bring together up to 20 web developers to rapidly deliver a demonstrable application in a few weeks. |
Investments | Because all projects are for bespoke application services that are owned by the client, we are indirectly investing in the success of the clients business. | Where the client does not have a credible long-term growth strategy, then it may be hard for us to make the investments needed to earn a return on investment. | Where continual improvements to a bespoke application service can be cost justified with growing revenues, business efficiency and staff productivity, we can ensure the correct invesments are make to make it happen. |
Payment as Contract | A payment for a service is a perfect contract - pay for a months service and a months service shall be delivered - just like a mobile phone account. | The term of the contract is equal to the service period paid for - typically one month at a time. | Contract liabilities are equal to the amount paid - a second months service would be provided if the service provider achived less than 99.9% of the service level agreed. | The contract can be terminated at any time by not making the next months payment. |
Fixed Annual Budget | Many corporations need a fixed annual budget with fixed monthly payments. | The estimated annual fee can be deduced as a small percentage of annual revenue - the fixed monthly fee is one twelth of the estimated annual fee. | An annual review of the estimated annual fee can be deduced by reference to past performance and projected annual revenue. | In many cases, the fixed monthly payments for the next calendar year can be determined in September - this creates stability to both parties with a simple bank standing order or transfer. |
Payment Terms | All prices and fees quoted are for payment in advance - taxes must be added according to what is applicable at the time of invoicing. | Where payment is in arrears is demanded, an initial payment is required that is equal to one months typical fees. | Where payment is delayed by more than one calendar month, then the fee is increased by one percent for each month. | The billing cycle is that an invoice shall be raised on the 1st of each month to be paid before the end of that month for the service to be provided for the following calendar month. | Where payment has not been made by the end of the month, that acts as the termination notice and the service will not be provided for the following calendar month. |
| | Not-for-Profit Charity Trust Fund: | 1. This web site has been created and is maintained for the benefit of humanity with no beneficial owner, no liabilities and not for sale. This web site is sustained by donations from people who find benefit in the content and wish to ensure that content can be shared with all humanity. Please donate ten pounds by PayPal to this charity trust fund - accounts are published in an open and transparent public web page for all to share. | 2. The only objective of the charity is to sustain this public web site for the benefit of humanity. The only revenue is from PayPal donations to this charity trust fund. 1.4% and twenty pence of each donation is retained by PayPal as a fair and reasonable transaction charge. The only costs are direct debit annual payments for domain name rental, encryption key rental, cloud computing rental and submission of annual accounts to HMRC. All revenue and costs are detailed and published for all to share. The life cycle of this web site is totally dependent on the ability of donations to exceed costs. If nobody wants to make a donation, then the web site does not deserve to exist. |
Private Clubs: | 1. This web site is shared and reused by many businesses that can treat it as their ITIL club of best practice procedures. Any business (or department) has the right to self-register and operate their own private club within this web site. One person is assigned the right as club owner and the club owner can accept or reject other registered people as club members. | 2. Club members may contrinute private messages and web pages that are kept private and only shared with registered people who have been accepted into that club. A registered person may own as many clubs as they choose and may invite other registered people to join that club. A registered person may join as many clubs as they please, however the club owner has the right to accept or reject club membership at any time. All revenue and costs are detailed and published for all to share. | 3. A Club owner may appoint a different person as the club owner - that person may accept or reject the appointment. A club without a club owner may cause all private club content to be destroyed or become shared content with all registered people. | 4. A Club is a means to record vast amounts of security data in private web pages that must be kept private and secure. |
Non-Profit Organisation (NPO): | 1. UK is a company limited by guarantee, rather than shares and shareholders. Known as a Community Interest Company (CIC). | 2. A charity in England and Wales with less than five-thousand pound per year assets does not need to register as a charity. |
Charter + Articles of Incorporation: | 1. Charitable cause: the advancement of education AND provide a public benefit. | 2. Charitable cause: the advancement of environmental protection or improvement. |
Different | We choose to be very different to traditional companies in that it it does not need a head office and does not need a corporate web site. | We avoid marketing and PR by subcontracting all tasks to associate independent companies in a supply chain. | Each associate company is privately held and operated with a low cost base and focus on long term recuring revenue to fuel diversification and stability. | Stability is improved by avoiding hiring staff with excessive employment liabilities and subcontracting work to other specialist companies within our supply chain. | Policy while other companies may be to do marketing with pretty brochures, our associates deliver a demonstrable application. Each client can choose either marketing promises of a future delivery date or our proven working solution. | Policy while other companies charge for maintenance and extras, our associates include continual improvements into every application. Each client can choose either continual unknown extra charges or our stable budget arrangement. | Policy while other companies work to a fixed specification, our associates build flexibility into every application so it can evolve with the business requirement. No competitor could cost justify our endless evolution of scope with continual improvements. |
Venture Capital | Capital allowances with the right to write-off all research and development costs are at the heart of VC corporations. | Where a typical service company may need about 20 IT staff to operate one web service, we can use 20 web masters to operate more than 100 web services. | Scale is everything with IT, while other have to make do with one data center, we can cost justify numerous data centers to eliminate the risk of one site failure. | Our ability to subcontract application development to India, Brazil and China has enabled us to build a massive application portfolio with tightly controlled costs - things that a large IT company could never hope to emulate. |
Finance Data | 1. Service-focused analysis | . 1. Costs for the provisioning of each service, itemized by cost types (e.g. licenses, material, labor) | .. 1. Direct costs (clearly attributable to a specific service) | .. 2. Indirect costs (shared among multiple services) | . 2. Trends in the provisioning costs for services | . 3. Variable cost dynamics | .. 1. Estimates of how costs will change in the case of | ... 1. Increasing service demand | ... 2. Decreasing service demand | .. 2. Thresholds of service demand which require the service provider to make significant investments | . 4. Service Value Potential (estimate of the price a customer is prepared to pay for the services) | .. 1. Competing alternatives and their prices | .. 2. Value of the service providers comparative advantages (e.g. unique knowledge of the customers business processes, security concerns) | .. 3. Costs for switching to competing service offerings | . 5. Profitability | .. 1. Actual revenues from each service | .. 2. Profit margins for each service | . 6. Identification of financially unviable services | .. 1. What services are no longer provided efficiently relative to competing offers | .. 2. What services are provided to customers at a financial loss? | .. 3. What service risk becoming unprofitable because of declining demand? | 2. Customer profitability | . 1. Actual revenues from each customer | . 2. Profits from each customer | 3. Asset valuation | . 1. Values of tangible service assets (infrastructure components) | . 2. Estimates of the values of intangible assets (e.g. technical expertise, knowledge of the customers business processes) | 4. Actual vs. planned spending For all items covered in the IT Budget | . 1. Forecast (planned budget) | . 2. Actual spending on record | . 3. If applicable, gap analysis | 5. Post-Program ROI (Return on Investment) Analysis Assessment if financial objectives of past investments have been met | . 1. Investment/ project | . 2. Business case | . 3. Budget spent | . 4. Expected benefits | 5. Realized benefits |
Economics: | 1. Every business is driven by simple economics. If a competitor has a lower cost of doing business they will win more business in the long term and the business with extravagent overheads will eventually cease to trade. | 2. Business rates are excessive and will continue to increase faster than inflation. The good business will learn to minimise the extravagent offices and shops that have high business rates. It is likely that vast amounts of the work done in offices could be better done by people working from home or their own work place. It is likely that rather than customers comming to shops, shops could go to the customers using online and door-to-door services. | 3. Commuting is expensive and very time consuming with little flexibility. People will be able to reduce their own costs, reduce the cost of doing business and introduce much higher levels of time flexibility into their own lives by working from home or a local work place. As overheads have to be reduced, the overhead of commuting can be reduced by those businesses that choose to survive for the next decade. Commuting limits who can reasonably work for the business - people need to live in a selected area. After commuting is eliminated, the very best people in the world can be recruited, no matter where they live in the world. | 4. Customers demand good value-for-money - they do not demand an extravagent head office staffed by people who have commuted for hours. Customers demand a 24*7 service - they do not demand a head office only manned for standard business hours. Customers may find they get better value-for-money from a business that does not pay excessive business rates and pay for people to commute for hours each day. Customers may find that the business that comes to them is more effective than them going to an extravagent office or shop with the overheads of travel and parking. | 5. Summary. Minimise business rates. Minimise overheads. Minimise commuting time and cost. Engage with the customer (at home). Eliminate standard business working hours (work 24*7). Outsource everything you cannot do in your spare time. | 6. Sell then Buy. Only sell the service that they customer wants to buy at the price the customer wants to pay, only then buy what the customer has ordered at a lower cost. |
Insurance Gamble: | 1. Insurance is gambling on a future unknowable event - gambling can be good insurance. | 2. It is far too risky to work with one company. Insurance directs a person to diversify the risk and work with hundreds of companies. | 3. In the event that a company cannot pay its bills, the impact is less than one percent of the revenue stream. This insurance gamble directs a person to work with thousands and millions of customers to minimise the risk and maximise the revenue. |
Document Control: | 1. Document Title: Finance Director. | 2. Reference: 161300. | 3. Keywords: Finance Director. | 4. Description: Finance Director. | 5. Privacy: Public education service as a benefit to humanity. | 6. Issued: 11 Nov 2016. | 7. Edition: 1.2. |
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