Startup founders, full of big ideas for disrupting the status quo, are often encouraged to aim for the stars.
Indeed, until recently it seemed that an inflated investment market prioritised metrics such as user growth over more traditional targets such as profit & loss. That may now be changing.
Andrew Watson, chief technology officer at HR, finance and payroll expert MHR, says keeping an eye on the bottom line is essential to survival.
“A lack of financial planning can be hugely damaging for a startup: it’s easy for costs to spiral out of control very quickly, but it often takes a lot longer to recover,” he tells TechBlast.
“This can be devastating for businesses at the very beginning of their journey.”
Watson says that while cost is key, it is also important that “the best route to revenue” is clearly understood and remains the focus for the team.
“It can be difficult for any business, not just startups, to not be distracted by the perfect product, function, or service that may look great but isn’t meeting the need at hand,” he explains.
“Leadership comes to the fore here. Keeping the strategy and focus is key and celebrating the wins and knowing exactly when to change track or shut something down is a must.”
£9bn payments
MHR’s cloud-based systems manage 2,000+ payrolls and make £9 billion of payments annually. Founded in 1984 and now employing more than 750 people in the UK and Ireland – with its HQ situated in Ruddington, Nottinghamshire – it says it has always been at the cutting edge of technology.
“We were the first UK HR company to introduce a HR chatbot to reduce the burden of HR admin and improve employee experience, while today we’re bringing technology such as AI and machine learning to HR, payroll and finance teams,” says Watson.
“Innovation and disruption are at the core of what we do: we reinvest up to 18% into R&D and are continuously monitoring for new opportunities to elevate and innovate.”
MHR says it built an easier way to adopt and use cloud-based systems with its One Portfolio system, while it applied AI to detect unusual behaviour to protect HR and payroll data with iTrent Shield.
“The work we are doing helps HR departments to be more influential within their organisation,” says Watson. “By bringing a lot of our solutions together, we are able to present data that helps organisations really understand their workforce and provide useful insights that ultimately drive business decisions.”
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SMEs to FTSE 250
With customers ranging from SMEs to FTSE 250 corporates, is there a difference in its approach to these businesses?
“I’ve never believed that the size of an organisation should dictate its approach,” answers Watson. “After all, many large companies are just a myriad of small businesses sitting under one entity, so using size to determine approach is wrong.
“Yet, there is a need for some adjustments depending on the sector – an in-depth understanding of how respective sectors work is imperative to the success of an engagement.
“The fundamental differences in organisations that dictate how the engagement should work is culture and maturity – in other words, how open to change are they – or how far along they are on their journey?
“Other things to keep in mind are business drivers and objectives, financial position and ability to pivot – once you understand this, it’s these factors that dictates the approach.”
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