Situation
Liberty Pipeline CEO, Alan Weatherford, did everything he could do in his pipeline services business to increase profits. He focused on sales, expanded markets and even built a software tool to help add to the bottom line. But top line growth didn’t translate in to bigger profits and better cash flow.
Instead top line growth created growing pains and, because he came from a larger pipeline company, he knew he outgrew their financial management system. They had a bookkeeper they liked, but little insights into why the business wasn’t making more money.
Leadership got reports that were incomplete, late and couldn’t be trusted to manage the business. On top of that, they had to eat an $80,000 mistake when they short-billed a client. Liberty Pipeline needed a professional solution that provided a scalable platform for growth.
Result
GrowthForce’s Smart Back Office™ and Outsourced Controller Service filled the gap in Liberty’s financial management team. We set up a time tracking, Integrated that into QuickBooks and Insperity Premier Payroll to get activity based job costing. From there it was easy to create a management reporting system and turn their struggling business into a profit machine.
Liberty project managers got detailed job profitability reports that allowed leadership to see which clients they should be in business with, and which clients to stay away from.
Detailed reporting uncovered time leakage which immediately created new billing opportunities. Job costing fixed pricing errors from underestimation of number of hours it would take to complete jobs. This helped Liberty Pipeline grow from break even to $1M profits in one year. All because they could see which clients needed to get re-priced, and show the client why!
In addition Liberty Pipeline leadership had key performance trends at their fingertips, which helped them make macro data-driven decisions that increased profits and improved cash flow.
