Scott Burton

Finance Director Scott Burton has extensive experience working in the SME space particularly with young growing companies. He enjoys working with business owners to help deliver growth and good financial practice. He has experience of developing business plans and achieving cost reduction, as well as creating good financial controls and processes.
Sectors worked in include Homecare, Property, Consumer Credit, Public Sector, Health, Marketing, IT Distribution, Travel & Tourism, Real Estate and Retail.

Scott is a Certified Accountant who learnt his trade in practice, working with a wide variety of clients from a range of industries and sectors. He moved into industry as a Financial Accountant for a £50m turnover tour operator using his practice background to improve the quality of the financial statements. This significantly improved the decision making and confidence of both management and external stakeholders, as well as generating a reduction in audit fees.

Although Scott has worked for several large multinational businesses it is the SME space where he has been most effective. By building relationships with business owners he has been able to show that a Finance Director is more than just a numbers person but is in fact a strategic partner that can help their business grow.

Over the course of his career, he has:

• Business Planning- Developed business plans and forecasting models for businesses that had no financial KPI’s.
• Software Implementation- Project managed the installation and set-up of companies key business software, including the delivery of training to the staff for its effective use.
• Cash-Flow- Developed complex cash-flows in various SME businesses, including consumer credit businesses where customers are on weekly payment terms. Also significant involvement in cash forecasting as part of business plans to get funding for the growth of businesses.
• Funding- Worked with business owners to develop plans and cash-flow projections to obtain external funding.
• Business Turnaround- Review of business overheads, to include for example, the complete swap out of a telecoms systems to obtain cost savings and business improvements.
• Project Management- Project management of the implementation of business critical software package and delivered training to staff using it. Project managed the installation of companies IT infrastructure and telecoms system.

Testimonial:

“Scott has some great ideas and he can back it up. The value that he’s added is crucial to our business. He acts really senior; it’s been a great experience and it’s really added value to our business. Having Scott on board we’re in the process of automating our invoices which means we’re going to get our billing out quicker.
Prior to using EFM it was somebody internal and it just didn’t work. I’d only been in the business for seven weeks and it wasn’t working with the person before, so Scott stepped in and was able to pick up everything that we needed him to do, not just what he was taken on to do”.

Leigh Cannon, Financial Director, Custom Gateway Limited

Business Issue:

The owners had a stand alone European Student Development business, when the group Financial Controller left it came to light that there were a lot of accounting issues for this group and that there was little understanding of its cash needs as well as where each of the European entities was in terms of its legal and statutory obligations.

Background:

The business owners had several student property companies, the main one operated in the UK and they also had a European business which had historically purchased and sold a property in Holland. They had legal entities in Luxembourg, France, Holland and Germany which were set up in order to seek opportunities to purchase land/properties with the view to developing them into student accommodation.