Anthony Friday – Executive Director BrainBox
Assisting Organizational Decisions
Agile and fully informed decisions using real-time data
The Company
Tony does not run an accounting firm like most of our clients. He is an Executive Director of Brainbox, a group of companies focused on helping businesses accelerate growth through HR and corporate advisory, offshoring, and professional development.
The Challenge
Tony relies on Xero to maintain his financial data across multiple companies. Unfortunately, it lacks the reporting prowess he needs to make strategic decisions geared towards the future. Hence, he asked his accountants to find a financial data reporting tool — capable of assisting him in future organizational decisions.
“We didn’t know what financial insight we could get until we started using Reach”
The Solution
While Brainbox continues to use Xero as their accounting platform, Reach Reporting assists in pulling data from the former to populate metrics, reports, and dashboards that support internal business decision-making.
“Reach Reporting allows us to get deeper into our data than our accounting software does. Xero chooses what we can or can not see, limiting what we know. Reach allows us to produce almost any metrics that we want to consider. It provides us with data that is always up to date and at our fingertips.” said Tony.
“It is easier to drive the company’s direction when we receive, understand, and can manipulate the data we want on demand.”
Presentation and Interpretation
“For non-accountants, Reach Reporting makes it easy to see critical changes and trends that usually elude us when looking at statements. Executive decision making is rarely a single-person cycle, it involves people across and throughout the organization, including some who may not have a financial or accounting background,” Tony shared.
Bridging the Gap
“I know what I want to see, but the data provided by the Accounting team often needed more explanation to move from ‘data’ to ‘information’. Reach Reporting bridged that gap effectively for us, allowing us to interrogate and consider our Xero data in ways that we had not previously thought possible,” Tony continued.
More Profound Knowledge
“Every month I needed to impatiently wait for results to be presented. However, with Reach, when I change the reporting period, all my metrics reflect my data exactly how I want to see it for any report I want to, in seconds without the wait.” Tony said.
Summary
“For me, Reach Reporting is not a financial tool; it is the most valuable business decision tool we implemented across our business. Reach Reporting lets our accountants focus on our fiscal strength whilst enabling the Directors to make agile and fully informed decisions.” Tony concluded.
