Broster Buchanan Places First with Percipient
Several years on from its initial deployment, Head of Finance Helen Spring explains how Sage Intacct is bringing intelligence and competitive advantage in a complex sector and highlights the value of having the right team in place to maximise potential.
About Broster Buchanan
Broster Buchanan is a professional recruitment consultancy focused on solving its clients’ talent needs and supporting candidates in identifying opportunities which match their aspirations.
With operations, including eight offices, in the UK, Europe and North America, Broster Buchanan’s people are driven, honest, brave, and future-focused, channelling innovation to deliver the very best experience and ensure a superior service to its clients.
More than recruitment, the Broster Buchanan team fosters real-life connections in a constantly evolving workplace. With a wealth of blended experience from a broad set of industry sectors, its ethos is entrenched in understanding the story of a candidate’s career and aligning this with the commercial and talent needs of organisations. In turn, this brings confidence and capability, helping individuals and clients to boost performance.
Forecasting in Uncertain Times
A global skills crisis, shifting market dynamics, and mismatches between job openings and candidate availability are converging to create a complex market for recruiters.
Against this backdrop, accurate forecasting to maximise both profit and performance is crucial, and was the driver for Broster Buchanan’s decision to deploy Sage Intacct in 2023.
As well as in-depth knowledge and expertise around Sage Intacct, consultants have real-world experience of the finance industry. And their extensive knowledge means they deliver capabilities which are aligned with our business, the integrations we need, and the reporting requirements of different groups across the business.
Expanding Visibility
Having focused initially on its core financials, the last 18 months have seen Broster Buchanan expand their use of the platform. This has seen the team capitalise on the intelligence, dashboards and dynamic reporting Sage Intacct is renowned for, as Head of Finance, Helen Spring explains.
“The first 12 months or so of using Sage Intacct brought huge gains in visibility, but because we were running our previous system concurrently, we weren’t able to use the system to its full potential.
“One of our major objectives was to leverage the platform to provide the board with access to live dashboards. Several years on from go-live, we are doing precisely that, and the exec team loves interacting with the intelligence-rich reports we’ve created.”
Exceeding Expectations
As a result of their partnership with Percipient and the sheer brilliance of the system, Broster Buchanan is now able to apply intelligence to experience and intuition to increase margins and profitability. In Helen’s words, access to this level of information allows the human brain to zone out the noise and deep dive into what the data means:
“Looking back now, we didn’t appreciate the scale of what was possible with Sage Intacct. The training sessions we’ve had with the Percipient team were pivotal in demonstrating its scope. They understand recruitment and are so diligent in helping us identify how Sage Intacct can help navigate challenges and pinpoint profit hot spots.
“As well as in-depth knowledge and expertise around Sage Intacct, consultants have real-world experience of the finance industry. And their extensive knowledge means they deliver capabilities which are aligned with our business, the integrations we need, and the reporting requirements of different groups across the business.”
Key Benefits Include:
Reporting
The reporting within Sage Intacct is so powerful. The recruiter uses a plethora of different dimensions to allow in-depth analysis and intelligence, which in turn fuels meaningful, dynamic reports and automates them to enable easy access by execs and the wider team. Crucially, it can highlight which markets they are most successful in, which consultants are doing well in which areas, and whether specific salary brackets, industries or levels of experience are bringing more opportunity.
Integration
Integration across CRM, timesheets, and AP is seamless via Percipient’s Cloud Connect API-based integration framework. This view across the business amplifies the intelligence to facilitate a comprehensive view of the entire operation, not just finance data.
Efficiency
Month-end is now completed on day two, compared with weeks previously. Not only does this free up resources to focus on higher-value tasks, but performance can be reviewed in a meaningful window.
Accuracy
Because Sage Intacct underpins full automation, there is less margin for manual error, which breeds confidence. The team essentially have the capacity and confidence to do what they do best, which is strategic planning based on automated, reliable reports.
Sage Intacct is limitless in its ability to scale and support our growth journey. And we’re only just scratching the surface of what it can do to sharpen our commercial advantage.
A Performance-Driven Culture
“Ultimately, Sage Intacct has been a catalyst for important cultural change at Broster Buchanan,” Helen concludes. “We have truly embraced a new mindset in the way we access and use data. Because the team has seen the value of better insights, their appetite for more has increased. We’ve moved from a position of feeding reports to people to them coming to us and asking for more data as they see how it helps them to perform their job roles. This autonomy and empowerment are reaping dividends and represent a clear commercial advantage.
“My role as Head of Finance has also changed as a result of this capability. In the early stages of the deployment, there was a lot of work to do around bringing people along and cultivating the right culture from which to maximise the system’s potential.
“Now, it’s inspiring times for us as a business, and Sage Intacct does change both the value finance brings to the broader organisation, and the way we operate. We have a better handle on both the opportunity and the resources available to exploit that opportunity, putting us in a very competitive position.
“Sage Intacct is limitless in its ability to scale and support our growth journey. And we’re only just scratching the surface of what it can do to sharpen our commercial advantage. With regular updates to enhance its functionality, we’re incredibly excited for what’s next.”
Sage Intacct for Recruitment
Are you ready to take your recruitment firm’s performance to the next level? Discover how Sage Intacct can unlock deeper insights, sharpen decision-making, and accelerate growth for your business. Call us on 01606 871332 or book your free consultation with one of our Sage Intacct experts today.