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E David Griffiths Success begins at home
According to David Griffiths, CEO and chief customer officer of FISCAL Technologies and serial entrepreneur, there’s no substitute for in-house expertise and home-grown innovation, writes Bea Longworth
Since he acquired the company in 2007, Griffiths has taken FISCAL from struggling niche player to multi-million pound powerhouse. The company, which now boasts 40 staff, several UK offices and a thriving American operation, develops and sells software to empower accounts payable departments that receive invoices and pay suppliers in organisations ranging from Debenhams, McDonald’s and Harrods to NHS trusts, local authorities, central government and police forces.
“B2B software is my passion,” explains Griffiths. “At the heart of this business there’s a simple proposition: identify a major problem your customer has, solve it, then sell them the solution. When you have the chance to work with incredibly talented, highly-motivated people in bringing that principle to life, success follows.”
FISCAL’s small, close-knit team means every person is important and Griffiths works hard to attract the best. The company invests in the Great Place to Work programme, which helps organisations foster high levels of staff engagement, as well as brain training, a £500 well-being allowance for each staff member and a staff board that has a strong voice in the company’s direction.
“Here at FISCAL we’ve spent seven years building up a development team we’re really proud of. We’ve got a great CTO, highly-experienced software managers and superstar developers. It’s a real badge of honour that we don’t outsource anything. We’ve got a software product that customers love and it’s all been developed in-house. Our growth means we’re usually looking to fill around five vacancies at any one time so we’re always looking for new team members.”
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With over half the company’s business coming from repeat sales, Griffiths is adamant that FISCAL’s laser focus on the link between happy employees and happy customers has been instrumental in enabling 500% growth over the past five years.
“I’m truly evangelical about the need to protect and elevate the work that accounts payable does. It’s a department that I feel is often under-appreciated and under- supported within organisations and yet, with the right tools, it has the ability to protect against fraud, overpayment and compliance issues. Because all our developers, trainers, account managers and customer service staff are in-house, we can really listen to our customers, quickly implement changes based on their feedback and ensure that every feature in FISCAL’s software suite is tailored to make their lives easier and more productive.”
However, Griffith’s instincts about the value of FISCAL’s offering, particularly during a time of recession, were sound. The company’s proven ability to protect organisational spend and help its customers make every pound count allowed it to not just survive but thrive.
Although his sights are set on growing revenue to £10 million by 2019, for Griffiths there’s much more to FISCAL than money. “My degree is in business studies but I learned 10 times as much by working with entrepreneurs and starting my own businesses. I’ve seen ventures fail because the founders were interested in revenue at the expense of customer satisfaction and retention. I also believe that many start-ups are too eager to raise funding. With FISCAL, I was determined to do things the old- fashioned way. We have a strong reoccurring sales pipeline because we look after our customers and we’re self-funded, which means we’re masters of our own destiny.”
Griffiths is also on a mission to build Britain’s image as a world-class B2B software provider.
“It really frustrates me that FISCAL is, to my knowledge, the only small software company in the Thames Valley that sells directly to the US and employs staff in the US. If there are others out there, I want to know about them so we can pool our experiences and help each other out.
Life hasn’t always been plain sailing for Griffiths. He admits that the decision to purchase FISCAL just as the credit crunch hit left him close to the edge. “For the first few months it was a real struggle. I’d left a secure, well-paying job, I had a very young family and there I was sinking everything we had into a new venture. A lot of people thought I was completely crazy.”
“The UK has so much talent in the field of software development and yet there’s a perception that commercial success always comes from abroad. It’s a tragedy and we need to fight back. I want FISCAL to lead by example and be a role model for others to show what’s possible.”
Details: David Griffiths
careers@fiscaltec.com www.fiscaltechnologies.com
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – NOVEMBER 2014
RN NTREPRENEURS Business THE M A GA ZINE TM
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