Four years ago, MyMobileWorkers was a small business whose finance function was performed by management staff in their spare time. Since joining Danbro in the summer of 2014, the company has grown exponentially – their employee roster has doubled, as has their turnover; and their finance department? Well, ‘thanks to Danbro, that’s all taken care of.’
We recently caught up with Graham Whistance, Managing Director of MyMobileWorkers, at the company’s offices in Liverpool. He kicked off by discussing life before Danbro.
“Before we switched to Danbro, it was a combination of myself and other unqualified members of the management team who took care of the financial side of the business, week in, week out,” he said. “Finding the time to do things was a real struggle, and we needed someone to remove that burden and bring much more professionalism and support to the finance function.”
“Danbro took the time to come in and show what they could do for us. What they presented looked and sounded like exactly what we wanted, and it has been that way ever since,” he added. “The service Danbro provides includes things like processing payroll, managing accounts, weekly bank reconciliation, and weekly debtors and creditors’ runs. We’ve also been able to completely remove paper from our finance team, so no sending or receiving paper invoices, for example. Everything is automated and electronic now, and Danbro have really helped us move that process forward.”
As part of Danbro’s award-winning accountancy service, each company we work with is assigned a personal accountant to look after their financial affairs on a first-hand basis. With MyMobileWorkers, Accountant Wilfred Rhodes is the specialist who takes care of their finance function, as well as ‘chipping in’ with the occasional sporting success.
“The regular visits from Danbro make a huge difference. Wilf is our point of contact and, as far as we’re concerned, he’s one of the team.”
“Everyone here knows him well and he interacts as though he’s a full time member of staff. He’s a face in the business, not just a name, and our customers are familiar with him too, which helps. I think Wilf has grown into his position quite nicely from our point of view; he comes out on our Christmas do, and even won the golf tournament that we held last year!”
“That personal touch is really important to us.”
As Graham puts it, ‘we outsource our whole finance function to Danbro’; but what is his impression of the outsourcing process now?
“Outsourcing is always a concern, particularly with something as important as finance – if it doesn’t work, you’ve put all your eggs in one basket. But with Danbro, we get a high quality of people who understand our business and behave like our personal finance team. They effectively pay for themselves.”
“We’re comfortable with how they do things. They know what they’re doing, have a great approach and, what we’ve found is, if you like doing things a certain way, they’re more than happy to incorporate that too. By using Quickbooks, for example, following a recommendation by Danbro, we can see what’s going on and I can manage more by extension, rather than getting involved in the detail myself.”
“As our company has grown, so too have the services that Danbro provide. From a professional point of view, we no longer have to worry about the finance side of the business at all; it’s boxed off, up-to-date, and, if any new things happen, Wilf is more than qualified and he’s well supported by the team behind him.”
And, if Graham was to describe Danbro in three words?
“Knowledgeable.”
“Friendly.”
“Professional.”