Message from Paul, Sedulo

we are today, but where we once were, and where we are heading, and ask ourselves, is this progress?

We are not only improving our functionality, but we are working across many areas, on what the consultancy/ partnership proposition looks like going forward.

Looking back on 2022, we:

Got Results Together…

A financially stable business underpins everything else. It is imperative, therefore, that the financial performance of the business remains strong. For our year ended October 2022 we expect revenues to be circa £13m, October 2021, we had revenues of £10.6m, which was up on 2020 revenue of circa £8.5m.

In 2019 we made a 3 year plan to double in size over the 3 years, we were at £6.5m revenues at the time, so it is very much mission accomplished.

We are currently working on a 3 year plan, again to double in size. We expect to do revenues of circa £16m in the next final year and build from there, which should just see us sneak into a top 50 spot in the Accountancy rankings.

We talked during the 2022 conference about the need to start behaving like the size of firm we are, this year our revenue per employee was £81,250, in 2021 it was £65,000 per annum. The industry average is beyond £100,000 which is our next target.

We will do this by continuing to increase our fees to the current client base, move up the food chain with the clients we are bringing in, and adopt a strategic move to grow our offering in London.

Staff salaries are running at £8.1m per year – 62% salaries to revenue [Industry average 35-40%] – our aim is to get closer to 50%

Both the current metrics are lower than the national industry average, which is fine for now because we are seeing improvements year on year. In the end these figures will define who we are as we move up the ladder of consultancy.

One of the things I am most happy with this year is the new recruitment strategy. We have recruited people across the organisation who are just so much more on board than we did during the more rushed recruitment process during COVID. We have also recruited the next generation of leadership, with some national ‘Head of’ people bolstering the management team, with previous experience of National firm management roles.

The recent restructure has been a huge success – so many people have identified themselves, new, or slightly different roles within the organisation that suit them, and suit us better. We will see the benefit of this throughout 2023.

We have bedded in Wilson Henry in Liverpool, and recently taken further space in London. The areas of the business that were thriving, we have made huge investments in to grow, such as the funding team and newly rebuilt R&D team.

We are now concentrating on the core areas of Audit, Accountancy, Tax, Forensics, Payroll and Co Sec – these are the areas that will see the biggest growth in 2023.

Our centralised functions have been one of the greatest successes of 2022, as usual the admin function is solid as a rock and performs at high levels year in year out, but we have grown the People function, restructured the Finance and IT teams, and the Events and Marketing team has been a particular success this year.

Be The Standard, our internal leadership course, has gone from strength to strength and the 1st club is now full. Some of the speakers have been