June 9, 2025 • 30 mins
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🎙️FULL SHOW NOTES
https://www.microsoftinnovationpodcast.com/695
Imagine navigating a multi-million-pound business acquisition without flipping through a 700-page PDF. In this episode, Ian Fishwick, a veteran of 43 tech M&As, and Sam Godfrey, Director at Evolution Capital, reveal how they’re transforming the financial due diligence process using Microsoft Power BI. From real-time insights to interactive dashboards, they share how data visualization and automation are reshaping how deals are evaluated, negotiated, and closed. Whether you're buying, selling, or advising, this conversation offers a masterclass in using technology to make smarter, faster decisions.
🔑KEY TAKEAWAYS
Power BI is replacing static PDFs in M&A: Interactive dashboards allow buyers to ask real-time questions of the data, eliminating the need to sift through hundreds of pages.
Granular transaction-level analysis: By mapping raw financial data directly into custom charts of accounts, buyers gain a clearer, unbiased view of a target company’s performance.
Speed and efficiency gains: API integrations and automated updates mean due diligence can be completed in weeks, not months—crucial for both buyers and sellers.
Trust through transparency: Sellers who provide access to raw data build credibility, while buyers gain confidence in the integrity of the deal.
Portfolio-level decision-making: Serial acquirers can now overlay multiple acquisition targets onto their own financials to assess strategic fit and impact.
🧰 RESOURCES MENTIONED
👉 Microsoft Power BI – https://powerbi.microsoft.com/
👉Power Query & Power Pivot – Built-in tools within Excel and Power BI for data transformation and modeling.
👉 Evolution Capital – https://www.evolutioncapital.com/
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Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mark Smith (00:01):
Welcome to the Power Platform Show.
Thanks for joining me today.
I hope today's guest inspiresand educates you on the
possibilities of the MicrosoftPower Platform.
Now let's get on with the show.
In this episode we're going tobe focusing on innovative ways
(00:26):
of using Power BI.
It's kind of like a case studythat we'll be covering.
Our guests today are from theUnited Kingdom.
We have Ian Fishwick he's achairman of Airband and we have
Sam Godfrey he's a director atEvolution Capital and so I find,
when I chatted these guysoriginally very interesting
space that they're in and sohopefully you enjoy this as much
(00:49):
as I do.
You can find links to their bioand social media etc.
They'll be in the show notesfor this episode.
Welcome to the show, ian andSam.
Ian Fishwick (01:02):
Lovely to see you .
Let me introduce myself first.
My name is Ian Fishwick.
I've done 43 mergers andacquisitions in the uk tech
industry.
Right at the age of 42, I setup a business in a spur bedroom
with not a lot of money andeventually I sold it in a 100
million point transaction.
Uh, I have the honor of beingnamed uk chief executive on
three occasions, right, so I'vebeen around a while.
Recently.
I decided it's about time forme to swap sides, so to to speak
(01:24):
, and I've now actually joinedEvolution Capital because I want
to take the experience of aserial acquirer across the
corporate finance guys and Iwant to help the next generation
of serial acquirers and alsothe people who want to sell
their businesses and maximisetheir exits.
Mark Smith (01:39):
Nice, nice Sam.
Sam Godfrey (01:42):
Yeah, good to speak to you again, mark.
I'm Sam Godfrey, transactionService Director, evolution
Capital.
Evolution Capital is acorporate finance transaction
services firm based in London inthe UK.
Our team over the years havedone many of the acquisitions,
buy and build strategy with theadept, which is the business Ian
(02:02):
sold.
So Evolution Capital have got along history with Ian having
done circa 17 acquisitions.
That's finding the shareholders, advising them through and
advising Ian on that sale.
My background before EvolutionCapital was PwC
PricewaterhouseCoopers where Ispent the first decade and in
(02:24):
that was really focused on buyside financial due diligence
there and since coming toEvenish Capital four years ago,
been growing that revenue streamin the business.
Ever since Just looking atthree years ago that revenue
stream was sort of we've grownit over 400% in the last three
years there and that's beenusing innovative ways like the
(02:45):
Power BI and the EC Analyticswhich we're rolling out.
Mark Smith (02:48):
Awesome and I'm looking forward to drilling into
that.
Ian, before we get into thedetails of what you're doing in
this M&A space and thechallenges that both buyers and,
I suppose, sellers have in thisspace, can you tell us a bit
about food, family and fun?
What do they mean to you, thethings that you do outside of
your professional endeavors?
Ian Fishwick (03:10):
Hi, I'm blessed by being married to an
extraordinarily good cook, sowhen you say what's my favorite
food, you had that debateearlier.
So I've decided to go for codfillet with haricot beans and
chorizo and probably a whitewine broth.
Beautiful, beautiful.
And the bit you probably don'texpect as a finance guy is I
paint abstract art which isdistinctly Marmite.
Mark Smith (03:33):
Wow.
Ian Fishwick (03:36):
They're not on the wall behind you then no, the
one on behind me.
The two family events.
The TV one is the first mydaughter.
It's the first time she gotcredits on a national TV
programme.
The other one was my otherdaughter was a Guardian
journalist and she was the firstmember of the family to be
credited on the front of anational newspaper.
So it's 200 bits of familyhistory.
Mark Smith (03:55):
I love it.
I love it Sam food, family andfun.
Sam Godfrey (03:59):
Yeah, all very new to me.
So actually now got twochildren under three years old.
So if you're looking at thefood element of life, nowadays
it's whatever the kids will eat,we'll eat.
Gone are the days where, oh,it's been a while since me and
my partner have been out forsome tasty food.
So you know, we're living thatlife.
Obviously that's been a bigadjustment for me, but what I'm
thoroughly enjoying.
(04:19):
So, yeah, I've got an olderdaughter, younger son and that
is the chaos in my household.
Outside of that, still managingto keep up, moved away from the
life of Saturdays, goingtravelling, playing football in
the UK, more to the longer, soloendurance sports now.
Now the Saturdays are a bit ofa write-off.
(04:41):
So did a half Ironman inSeptember with another one
planned for April time.
So that's what I'm keepingmyself busy for outside of the
family.
So family and half Ironmans,that's enough, and work, that's
plenty enough at the moment.
Mark Smith (04:57):
All righty, I know what you mean, with the young
kids Mine's four and two at themoment.
So, yeah, I know what you'retalking about.
Tell me about the challenges ofthe M&A process that you've
seen, that you've experienced,and how are you trying to bring
(05:17):
more clarity, more insight, moreinformed-based decision-making,
particularly for the buyer, inthis, this scenario, ian yeah,
let me pick that first and thensome can perhaps answer.
Ian Fishwick (05:30):
When I sat down with these guys and talked about
what are the things that havefrustrated me as a serial
acquirer or, you know, lookingback, what would have been
helpful if I'd had it at thetime.
Financial diligence is thatboring but incredibly important
bit where you actually check outwhether the guy who's selling
you the business, it is actuallywhat he says.
Am I buying what it says on thetin?
(05:51):
And it's one of those thingsthat's never really changed in
the last 20 years.
Perhaps probably the only thingthat has changed is the PDF.
Reports are getting bigger andbigger and bigger.
I'm seeing reports now that areseveral hundred pages and, yes,
you can go home with yourhighlight pen over a weekend and
highlight all the bits.
But then you got the problem ofyou know you've seen it
(06:12):
somewhere, but where was it?
You know, if I want to rememberwhat's the margins on product b
, you know you go huntingthrough these documents you
think, oh, phone, it's on page184.
I don't want to do things likethat anymore.
I want interactivity where Ican ask the data questions and
just get the answers straightaway.
It's the first point.
The second point is everybodyprovides these as static PDFs
(06:35):
and therefore, by the nature,it's only presented in one
format, and that's the formatthat the seller wants to show me
things in.
But that's not how I reallywant to see it.
What I want to see is things inthe format of my management
accounts so that I can do thereally simple stuff and say well
, I sell that product and I getthese margins.
Why are they claiming that?
(06:56):
And particularly if I'm aserial acquirer, if every time I
try and buy a business, theinformation comes to me in the
same format.
It doesn't make life easy andyou've almost industrialized the
process.
But the other bit is dealsalways slip, they never go
quicker than you think, theytake longer than you think and
therefore sometimes you startthere thinking you know, I'm
(07:17):
looking at a pdf report here andthis information's probably
four months old.
I want to understand currenttrading, so I want information,
really, that's automaticallyupdated, so I can see what the
current world looks like.
And when I talk to some of theteam, that kind of thing just
doesn't exist in the world offinancial diligence, despite the
(07:37):
fact that some of the bills arein the hundreds of thousands of
pounds.
So I gave a challenge to someof the development team in
Albania to say, look, is this apipe dream or can you do what
I'd like to see?
And the response was part ofthe reason why I agreed to join
them.
To be frank, after that intro,sam, you better be good yeah sam
(07:59):
.
Sam Godfrey (07:59):
Yeah, well, as ian said, he reads the reports.
I'm the one who used to have towrite them, so I was like I
don't want to be doing, you know, doing volumes of them.
I've done FDD reports in thesort of 600 to 700 pages FDD.
Mark Smith (08:13):
What does that stand for?
That's for the listeners whowant to make sure we yeah,
financial due diligence.
Sam Godfrey (08:19):
So that is us coming in and you need to
therefore start, as Ian says.
You need to therefore start and, like as ian says, you need to
analyze the business in everyway that you haven't seen
already.
You know that, that's that's,that's the trick of it, you know
, and and taking out thefriendly seller side,
adjustments in there.
But if I come on to what Iwould do, I've got a global
business.
I've got 36 entities.
(08:39):
I've got it in in asia,australasia, I've got it in in
north america and I've got it inNorth America and I've got it
in Europe.
I've got different currencies.
I've done those reports whereit's 150 pages per volume, per
region, and that is as soon ashe doesn't want to read it.
We don't want to be doing thatanymore.
But to really counter that youneed to.
(09:01):
We had to adapt and adopt thesenew technologies where we can
have a much more simplified,streamlined platform, which is
the ec analytics platform iswhat we run it off where you can
drill into all of these areasyou can have, you can set up the
data and the mapping and thestructure of all of it, where
you know, do you want to see thesame analysis in one platform
(09:23):
for north america.
We'll select that, you know.
Select those filters, selectwhich revenues you want to see
the same analysis in oneplatform for North America.
Well, select those filters,select which revenues you want
to see on, and then you canfollow the whole Power BI
platform with all those sets soyou can start drilling into the
data, knowing exactly where youare, how to go back to what you
want to see and start looking atone area of the P&L, one area
of the revenue, the product mixof the revenue, the product mix
(09:45):
across, whatever it is you wantto see, right, rather than
having to rely on flickingbetween volumes, going from page
26 to 226 to try and get thesame message, but from a from a
different angle.
Right, you want to bring thatall onto one platform, and
that's where that's what I knowmakes our life easier, where
(10:06):
that static view gives you whatyou either they want to tell you
or what is easier for them totell you, without any drill down
ability to you can go find theanswers yourself.
Ian Fishwick (10:17):
Um, so yeah, if you look at some of the classic
questions that I would ask iswhere does this company actually
make its money?
And hunting to try and find outis quite difficult, whereas if
Sam can just press a button andsay, shall I just show you on a
VDI display immediately, thensuddenly it's like right, okay,
(10:38):
those two countries are tiny,let's not bother them, let's go
for the big ones and start tohave a look.
So the ability to sort of jumpvery quickly to where the
important stuff is has beenhugely beneficial.
Explain the example we weretalking about, where there was
the company that was claiminggrowth in Europe and then in
reality it was Spain.
Sam Godfrey (10:59):
Tell that story Because this involves more of
the overall power tools thatMicrosoft offers here.
So the way we approach thisentity is, for business turning
over $30 million it was at thetime uh, their management
accounts had sort of two, tworevenue streams sales type a,
sales type b.
It doesn't tell you anythingabout how you really want to
(11:20):
understand the business.
So one you need to have thetools available to remap that
whole business from atransaction upwards.
So therefore we're not relyingon management accounts.
We are taking granulartransactions of the business,
which we could that business wasabout, you know, 480 000 rows
of transactions for one year um,using the tools like power
(11:43):
query, uh, power pivot, etc, andalso all tricks there, to sort
of fully recreate the pnl.
And then, once we can fullyrecreate a pnl, or if we do it
to that most granular level, wecan add whatever mapping a chart
of account we want to these,these transactions.
We don't have to look at whatthe management have given us.
We can map it to anyone we wantthat, what do we call these
(12:05):
products?
And we can do that in verysophisticated ways.
Then you can upload it to powerbi and you can start seeing
this whole business on the brandnew chart of accounts by the
vendors because we've gone infrom transactions and they were
claiming growth in this don'tget too technical, but it's sort
of a special specialist cybersecurity managed service
offering and they were claiminggrowth in that in that region.
(12:27):
Um, now we've mapped all thetransactions.
I could quickly go into it andfilter for that type of
transaction.
I can get all my revenue, grossprofit, uh, profitability
analysis, detailed productanalysis on that stream.
I don't have to do you knowit's 14 pages in a report just
on that stream.
I can just click a button, it'sall in front of me.
(12:49):
Then we can quickly see all thegrowth was coming from Europe
in one month.
So then I can go into Europevery quickly on the revenue view
and I've set my parameters andI can quickly go to the
customers.
The five bits of analysis, fivedifferent sections on customers
and it's all Europe.
The cybersecurity managedservice revenue stream is
(13:10):
already set.
So we immediately saw they hadone strong month in a Spanish
customer that didn't come backvery quickly and it completely
changed.
And then you can normalize thatand you can completely change
the actual profitability.
And then we go to the nextlevel where we can set those
normalizations and build thatinto Power BI.
So now we can look at the wholebusiness, with or without that
(13:34):
particular aspect to it, andthose aspects can, just you know
that can go from five aspectsto ten aspects.
How much do you want to cutthis business to really actually
sort of see the underlyingtrends?
Ian Fishwick (13:43):
and that's something that it all gives us I
think one of the bits that'schanged with this kind of
technology is I used to spend mylife reading numbers.
Now I spend my life looking atpictures interesting because I
can see straight away.
You know when I ask some thingslike show me customer
concentration, and a map comesup.
You know, with different sizecircles telling me where the
(14:06):
revenue is.
They get okay, it's mainlyLondon and there's a tiny bit in
Scotland, right, and we cananalyze it not just by geography
, but things like products.
Let's take the Microsoft callhere.
Everybody claims to be great atMicrosoft.
We can now analyze it by vendoras well.
To say forget what you'reclaiming, you're not buying
(14:26):
anything from Microsoft.
Your website tells me what youwant to be, not what you are.
You can't tell me what you are.
So the ability they can sliceand dice and just sit next to
something like me and I can askquestions and then go ping, ping
, ping.
It's absolutely revolutionizedthe way this whole process works
.
Sam Godfrey (14:46):
In the past to look at the vendors.
Typically you may have a 50 to100 page section on vendors
where the power bi allows you todo many other things.
But this is if you've got now adeck of 20 bits, of 20 sections
of analysis, rather than your700 pages, you can set which
(15:06):
vendor you want and then at theon the inputs tab or on one of
the tab, then you can look atthe whole sort of style of the
report just on that vendor.
All the relevant analysis tothat vendor you know very easily
and all you need to do is clickto the next one and you can
start that journey again andactually take far more control
over how you analyze businessand just the speed and
(15:28):
efficiency of which you do it,let alone how quickly it is to
update the numbers.
Ian Fishwick (15:32):
Let's take that point of speed and efficiency,
because the building API isstraight into the raw
transaction data of the seller.
It's also massively updatedstraight away, so you're always
looking at the current stuff soyou can see whether the last
quarter has been good or not Interms of de-risking something.
Before you sign a check formillions of pounds, you want to
know what happened in the lastcouple of months, not what
(15:54):
happened necessarily last year.
So this is very, very different.
It just shows you in a way thatthe developers and the Power BI
guys are becoming moreimportant than the accountants.
Sam will hate me saying that.
Sam Godfrey (16:10):
I get accountants who are good at Power BI as well
.
That's the skill.
That's what you want.
Ian Fishwick (16:16):
That's the real skill right.
Mark Smith (16:19):
So a couple of things come to mind.
Number one is trust.
There's one thing about handingover a lockdown PDF document.
There's a whole other thingabout going.
Here's a whole bunch ofdown-to-financial transaction
data um being handed overbetween the buyer and the seller
.
Is it just due to theirmotivation levels on each side
that the there's a trust to go?
(16:41):
Hey, we're going to give youthis data and then you know.
My first thing is how do youknow that this is the primary
set of books and not thesecondary set of books of that?
That data?
Because you know data canreally allow you to tell any
story that you want and how itcan be manipulated.
That element of trust, how doyou factor that in in these type
(17:02):
of deals to allow you to moveforward?
Ian Fishwick (17:05):
Okay, so let me take that.
As a serial acquirer, let'srole play.
I'm buying your business markfor a minute.
Okay, the best way for you to tomaximize the value is to be
open as possible with me andshow me how you make your money
right uh, and therefore you knowif I'm not serious about buying
(17:26):
it, I'm certainly not gonna goas far as trying to build, build
APIs into your systems toanalyze it.
I've got to be really seriousto do stuff like that.
And if you ask me, of all thedeals you did, how many did you
pull out of?
I did 43 and pulled out of oneand that sort of told me a lie.
You know what I mean, so youcan build that trust.
(17:48):
But also, at the size of dealswe're doing, where the
businesses are selling forbetween like a million and 50
million, uh, nobody's cleverenough to have two sets of books
with, you know, 400 000 linesof raw data.
That's just too difficult,right?
So the fact that they're goingto let you have access to me
means that you also know thatyou're getting access to the
real stuff right, so you'veyou've answered one of my
(18:10):
questions there, so you'reAPIing into the seller's system.
Sam Godfrey (18:16):
Yes, we can.
Yes, with certain permissions.
Yes, also, where we obviouslyadvise sellers as well.
So yes, to get all of theirinformation when we're actually
engaged by the seller.
Yes, we'd be linking into thatand that is obviously saved huge
in terms of efficiency andproductivity.
Mark Smith (18:34):
Yeah, One of the questions that I have in that
process is that a seller has away of looking and you know
they're going to sell likeanything is sold like it's
amazing, right?
This is why you know.
And then, of course, the buyer.
They've got a different set ofdata that they I suppose they
want to look at ian.
(18:55):
How is that then sped up, Isuppose, and made it more um,
robust the acquiring process, tobe able to look at it from the
dimension you want to look at it, rather from the seller's
dimension the first place it isas a serial acquirer.
Ian Fishwick (19:12):
It's probably likely that my accounts are in
more granular detail thansomebody who's selling to me.
So by doing it this way, weoften show sellers what their
own business really looks likein a bit more detail than
they're used to, which allows usto have a proper detailed
conversation to say, look, let'sdo customer concentration.
(19:32):
We can just press a button andsay, guys, but your top 10
customers are coming for 75% ofyour sales.
Let's now talk about are thesecontracted in or are they not?
It allows us to drill down andhave a proper detailed
conversation.
So once you've built that trust, uh, you're a lot more
(19:54):
confident of paying a sensibleprice.
If you see what I mean, becauseyou know what you're buying.
You know if you're not certainbut you kind of like it, then
you cut the price back a bit.
If you can see it properly andthink, actually I can prove to
myself why.
Now you know.
I can see, for example, thatonly one customer is left in the
last six months.
You know, once you can takethose things, then you are going
(20:18):
to pay more money for thosethings and once the seller
understands that, then youdevelop that trust.
Some people think it's abouttrying to trip you up and find
things to chip the price.
If you're a serial acquirer,you can't be a bad guy because
people talk about you.
You have to keep a goodreputation as being professional
people.
Sorry, sam.
Sam Godfrey (20:40):
No, yeah, and I think the emotions at play here
they're hanging on gettingmillions of pounds as soon as
I'm involved.
You're looking at maybe two,three months of horizon to when
it becomes a reality for them,and so the willingness there to
open the doors is is, you know,they almost feel like they have
(21:01):
to to a certain extent, and theway we approach it now with with
the ability to use these toolsand how we do it, we, we just
we're just able to bypass a lotof the stuff they're saying to
us or a lot of their morehigh-level information, and just
get the underlying transactionsand build it ourselves.
Because I can find out I don'tneed them there.
I can find out 80% of theanswers myself, and you're
(21:27):
normally talking to someone whoprobably a shareholder, who may
not be the most financial.
They may have an FD or afinancial controller, but
sometimes they may not even beinvolved in the process for a
sensitivity reason.
So you're talking to someonewho's not always financial as
well.
Sometimes it's just withintheir best interest to let us
get to the answers ourselves.
Mark Smith (21:48):
You talked about two to three months there.
Once you're involved, thatseems a phenomenally short
turnaround time because you know, in the research I've done in
this space, it can be, you know,upward of 12 months for a deal
to get anywhere.
Is that part of the outcomesthat you're seeing?
That having this tech allowsyou and Ian from your side to
(22:12):
acquire even faster and do dealsin a more rapid, in other words
, even see more deals because ofthis tooling than what you
could do five years ago?
Ian Fishwick (22:24):
I'm pausing because I was very fast at doing
deals anyway A lot of the gapyou're talking about is getting
to heads of terms.
Once you get to heads of termsand an outlier agreed price,
subject to checking stuff, thenit's in your incentive to help
the students as fast as possible.
So there is no doubt that froma seller's point of view, this
(22:45):
helps you do it quicker.
But from a buyer's point ofview, sometimes it's the deals
that you don't do that are onesthat are the important ones, you
know.
You know you mustn't blindlybuy everything, right, uh?
And this allows you to get tothe crux of should I do this or
not?
Very, very quick.
Nobody wants to wait months onend and then go.
Mark Smith (23:03):
Actually I don't like it yes, you don't have
burned time right no, and theseller doesn't want to mess
about either.
Ian Fishwick (23:09):
You know, because if I said you know, if I'm
buying new business, I said toyou, look, we'll know the bulk
of it in a few weeks.
Now you will be able to see itand then we'll be having proper
detailed discussions about tellus about this specific contract
and, you know, a proper grown-upconversation about the business
.
But but getting to the kind ofgoal no goal decision, if you
like is much quicker now it's alot quicker.
Sam Godfrey (23:30):
It's when the process goes on.
It's a hell of a lot quicker tomake sure we're up to date.
But, to your point, around 12months I was talking when I come
in on for the buyer to tear itapart for my two month period
and they've got the next fourweeks to complete it.
If it's all stacks up.
What they say is when you'repreparing the seller, it can
take 12 months depending on howready they are.
Um, but we're still using thesetools on the sell side because
(23:55):
we'll still want to deliver aplatform to a select number of
buyers to give them that moretransparency earlier.
Because if we, if we apply thesame tools and the same method
to the sell side, there'snothing I don't really know
anyway and we try to.
Where we speed it up is oncewe're happy with the level of
preparation and the platform.
The power bi is there.
(24:15):
We can.
We can let people access it andmake that transparency early.
So it speeds that process upfor the, for the buyer.
Ian Fishwick (24:22):
Can I just tell you that point that's a really
important one right.
Very few people build abusiness and sell one more than
once.
You just don't have time rightand that means that there's
always an experience balancewhere the serial acquirer has
done it loads of times and youmight be selling your baby that
you've built right once andtherefore you have no experience
(24:43):
of exit planning, whereas ifyou can bring this kind of
technology in and reallyunderstand your own business,
you know for six months and thenknow how to explain it to other
people.
Well, nobody would sell a housewithout doing a bit of
decorating and tidying up first.
Totally, totally.
They didn't make that mistakewith a try to sell a business.
So this is a bit like thatdecorating and tidying up and
(25:04):
presenting it in the in the bestfoot forward, and that's how
you maximize your value.
That's how you maximize thevalue of a house.
You know you presenting it inthe best foot forward, and
that's how you maximize yourvalue.
That's how you maximize thevalue of a host.
You present it in the best way.
Mark Smith (25:14):
So you've talked about.
If I was to summarize, whatyou're doing is data insights
allowing you to drivedecision-making, which a lot of
organizations.
Their data is not in astructure that is being used for
insights.
They've been collecting data,but not necessarily as you say.
They haven't done thehousekeeping, they haven't
cleaned it, they haven't mowedthe lawns, got the decorating
(25:36):
done.
Tell me about you know?
This is my final question.
Is the impact of the solutionthat you've built, being able to
access the data to get to thepoint that you can make informed
decisions, or the seller canmake informed decisions on the
state of their business?
The buyer can make an informeddecision what they're going to
acquire.
How has the technology movedthe needle?
Ian Fishwick (25:58):
Do you want to say something, or me?
Sam Godfrey (26:00):
Yeah, I can kick us off there.
I think again, I like to pitchto Power BI as right buyer
client.
I want to give you more control.
As right buy a client, I wantto give you more control about
how you actually want to goabout doing it yourself.
We can set it all up.
We can slice it any way youwant.
Do you want to look at thisbusiness has made acquisitions
(26:21):
right?
We need to filter quickly.
Look at the existing businessthat was there.
Look at the acquisitions thathave come on.
You need to be able to do thatvery dynamically and then pass
it over to the buyer and givethem the full control over it.
Uh, just to the point we'remaking earlier with the, with
the power query and all themapping tools we can use and get
into power bi, changing it andmaking it into someone's chart
(26:42):
of account is absolutely vitalto speeding up so they can
actually see if they overlaythis into their business.
They can see exactly what it'sgoing to do for their organic
growth, you know.
Thereafter it's going to seeexactly what impact it's going
to have on their pnl.
There's all sorts of ways thistool is is speeding that up and
giving being able in us to givethe buyer full transparency a
(27:05):
lot earlier in the process.
Ian Fishwick (27:07):
Uh, in a way, they actually truly want to see
it, and giving them control tochange it thereafter is really
what it's doing I think one ofthe key impacts mark is, as an
advisor, we'd far sooner workwith a serial acquirer who's
going to do three deals a yearthan having to find three
different clients who want to doone deal a year.
So I think we'd all like to dothat right and to go to somebody
(27:28):
and say, look, once you've doneone deal with us, you've got
your head around, we've built aplatform for you and they're all
going to look like that.
Then the incentive for them tostay with us on the second deal,
the third deal, the fourth deal, because we've mechanized the
process, right, uh, rather thanto pitch for every single job
that we do.
That doesn't half help, right?
So in some respects, we're aserial acquirer's dream yeah
(27:52):
when we've done it for forbuyers.
Sam Godfrey (27:53):
When we're on the third one, you know it gets to
the point where we can just onon the platform overlay
acquisitions we've got in theirchart of account, we've got in
the pnl, their, their fdrecognizes.
We can just layer in eachacquisition onto their own
business, into a platform andwe're moving it a lot more into
helping it with as a portfoliotool for them so we can put
(28:15):
their business into it and assoon as we're looking at for
example, if we've got theirbusiness in a Power BI and we're
looking at two or threeacquisitions we're not sure
which one we can remap them andactually layer it over to their
business so they can seedirectly which of these
acquisitions is going to makethe most impact on their
business and then you can havefar more informed decisions
about which one's actuallyreally going to have the
(28:38):
greatest impact for them to goahead with.
Mark Smith (28:40):
Incredible, amazing what you've done.
You know, using the technologyhere in this case, microsoft's
technology to build this out.
I tell you what, though ineverything case, microsoft's
technology to build this out.
I tell you what, though, ineverything that you've said, I
(29:00):
think, if you can download Ianinto an AI agent and then allow
that to run at pace across deals, I think AI, where you've got
this far, let's say, in whatyou're doing I think you're
going to go into thestratosphere when you add AI
into the mix.
Ian Fishwick (29:11):
Can I have a better looking version?
Mark Smith (29:15):
Gentlemen, it's been fantastic to have you on the
podcast.
We'll put links, et cetera towhere people can find you, start
conversations with you, etcetera, and what you've
discussed.
But thank you so much forcoming on.
Lovely to see you.
Thank you, mark.
You've discussed, but thank youso much for coming on.
Lovely to see you.
Thank you, mark.
Hey, thanks for listening.
I'm your host businessapplication MVP, mark Smith,
otherwise known as the NZ365 guy.
(29:36):
If there's a guest you'd liketo see on the show, please
message me on LinkedIn.
If you want to be a supporterof the show, please check out
buymeacoffeecom.
Forward slash NZ365 guy.
Stay safe out there and shootfor the stars.
Welcome to the Power Platform Show.
Thanks for joining me today.
I hope today's guest inspiresand educates you on the
possibilities of the MicrosoftPower Platform.
Now let's get on with the show.
In this episode we're going tobe focusing on innovative ways
(00:26):
of using Power BI.
It's kind of like a case studythat we'll be covering.
Our guests today are from theUnited Kingdom.
We have Ian Fishwick he's achairman of Airband and we have
Sam Godfrey he's a director atEvolution Capital and so I find,
when I chatted these guysoriginally very interesting
space that they're in and sohopefully you enjoy this as much
(00:49):
as I do.
You can find links to their bioand social media etc.
They'll be in the show notesfor this episode.
Welcome to the show, ian andSam.
Ian Fishwick (01:02):
Lovely to see you .
Let me introduce myself first.
My name is Ian Fishwick.
I've done 43 mergers andacquisitions in the uk tech
industry.
Right at the age of 42, I setup a business in a spur bedroom
with not a lot of money andeventually I sold it in a 100
million point transaction.
Uh, I have the honor of beingnamed uk chief executive on
three occasions, right, so I'vebeen around a while.
Recently.
I decided it's about time forme to swap sides, so to to speak
(01:24):
, and I've now actually joinedEvolution Capital because I want
to take the experience of aserial acquirer across the
corporate finance guys and Iwant to help the next generation
of serial acquirers and alsothe people who want to sell
their businesses and maximisetheir exits.
Mark Smith (01:39):
Nice, nice Sam.
Sam Godfrey (01:42):
Yeah, good to speak to you again, mark.
I'm Sam Godfrey, transactionService Director, evolution
Capital.
Evolution Capital is acorporate finance transaction
services firm based in London inthe UK.
Our team over the years havedone many of the acquisitions,
buy and build strategy with theadept, which is the business Ian
(02:02):
sold.
So Evolution Capital have got along history with Ian having
done circa 17 acquisitions.
That's finding the shareholders, advising them through and
advising Ian on that sale.
My background before EvolutionCapital was PwC
PricewaterhouseCoopers where Ispent the first decade and in
(02:24):
that was really focused on buyside financial due diligence
there and since coming toEvenish Capital four years ago,
been growing that revenue streamin the business.
Ever since Just looking atthree years ago that revenue
stream was sort of we've grownit over 400% in the last three
years there and that's beenusing innovative ways like the
(02:45):
Power BI and the EC Analyticswhich we're rolling out.
Mark Smith (02:48):
Awesome and I'm looking forward to drilling into
that.
Ian, before we get into thedetails of what you're doing in
this M&A space and thechallenges that both buyers and,
I suppose, sellers have in thisspace, can you tell us a bit
about food, family and fun?
What do they mean to you, thethings that you do outside of
your professional endeavors?
Ian Fishwick (03:10):
Hi, I'm blessed by being married to an
extraordinarily good cook, sowhen you say what's my favorite
food, you had that debateearlier.
So I've decided to go for codfillet with haricot beans and
chorizo and probably a whitewine broth.
Beautiful, beautiful.
And the bit you probably don'texpect as a finance guy is I
paint abstract art which isdistinctly Marmite.
Mark Smith (03:33):
Wow.
Ian Fishwick (03:36):
They're not on the wall behind you then no, the
one on behind me.
The two family events.
The TV one is the first mydaughter.
It's the first time she gotcredits on a national TV
programme.
The other one was my otherdaughter was a Guardian
journalist and she was the firstmember of the family to be
credited on the front of anational newspaper.
So it's 200 bits of familyhistory.
Mark Smith (03:55):
I love it.
I love it Sam food, family andfun.
Sam Godfrey (03:59):
Yeah, all very new to me.
So actually now got twochildren under three years old.
So if you're looking at thefood element of life, nowadays
it's whatever the kids will eat,we'll eat.
Gone are the days where, oh,it's been a while since me and
my partner have been out forsome tasty food.
So you know, we're living thatlife.
Obviously that's been a bigadjustment for me, but what I'm
thoroughly enjoying.
(04:19):
So, yeah, I've got an olderdaughter, younger son and that
is the chaos in my household.
Outside of that, still managingto keep up, moved away from the
life of Saturdays, goingtravelling, playing football in
the UK, more to the longer, soloendurance sports now.
Now the Saturdays are a bit ofa write-off.
(04:41):
So did a half Ironman inSeptember with another one
planned for April time.
So that's what I'm keepingmyself busy for outside of the
family.
So family and half Ironmans,that's enough, and work, that's
plenty enough at the moment.
Mark Smith (04:57):
All righty, I know what you mean, with the young
kids Mine's four and two at themoment.
So, yeah, I know what you'retalking about.
Tell me about the challenges ofthe M&A process that you've
seen, that you've experienced,and how are you trying to bring
(05:17):
more clarity, more insight, moreinformed-based decision-making,
particularly for the buyer, inthis, this scenario, ian yeah,
let me pick that first and thensome can perhaps answer.
Ian Fishwick (05:30):
When I sat down with these guys and talked about
what are the things that havefrustrated me as a serial
acquirer or, you know, lookingback, what would have been
helpful if I'd had it at thetime.
Financial diligence is thatboring but incredibly important
bit where you actually check outwhether the guy who's selling
you the business, it is actuallywhat he says.
Am I buying what it says on thetin?
(05:51):
And it's one of those thingsthat's never really changed in
the last 20 years.
Perhaps probably the only thingthat has changed is the PDF.
Reports are getting bigger andbigger and bigger.
I'm seeing reports now that areseveral hundred pages and, yes,
you can go home with yourhighlight pen over a weekend and
highlight all the bits.
But then you got the problem ofyou know you've seen it
(06:12):
somewhere, but where was it?
You know, if I want to rememberwhat's the margins on product b
, you know you go huntingthrough these documents you
think, oh, phone, it's on page184.
I don't want to do things likethat anymore.
I want interactivity where Ican ask the data questions and
just get the answers straightaway.
It's the first point.
The second point is everybodyprovides these as static PDFs
(06:35):
and therefore, by the nature,it's only presented in one
format, and that's the formatthat the seller wants to show me
things in.
But that's not how I reallywant to see it.
What I want to see is things inthe format of my management
accounts so that I can do thereally simple stuff and say well
, I sell that product and I getthese margins.
Why are they claiming that?
(06:56):
And particularly if I'm aserial acquirer, if every time I
try and buy a business, theinformation comes to me in the
same format.
It doesn't make life easy andyou've almost industrialized the
process.
But the other bit is dealsalways slip, they never go
quicker than you think, theytake longer than you think and
therefore sometimes you startthere thinking you know, I'm
(07:17):
looking at a pdf report here andthis information's probably
four months old.
I want to understand currenttrading, so I want information,
really, that's automaticallyupdated, so I can see what the
current world looks like.
And when I talk to some of theteam, that kind of thing just
doesn't exist in the world offinancial diligence, despite the
(07:37):
fact that some of the bills arein the hundreds of thousands of
pounds.
So I gave a challenge to someof the development team in
Albania to say, look, is this apipe dream or can you do what
I'd like to see?
And the response was part ofthe reason why I agreed to join
them.
To be frank, after that intro,sam, you better be good yeah sam
(07:59):
.
Sam Godfrey (07:59):
Yeah, well, as ian said, he reads the reports.
I'm the one who used to have towrite them, so I was like I
don't want to be doing, you know, doing volumes of them.
I've done FDD reports in thesort of 600 to 700 pages FDD.
Mark Smith (08:13):
What does that stand for?
That's for the listeners whowant to make sure we yeah,
financial due diligence.
Sam Godfrey (08:19):
So that is us coming in and you need to
therefore start, as Ian says.
You need to therefore start and, like as ian says, you need to
analyze the business in everyway that you haven't seen
already.
You know that, that's that's,that's the trick of it, you know
, and and taking out thefriendly seller side,
adjustments in there.
But if I come on to what Iwould do, I've got a global
business.
I've got 36 entities.
(08:39):
I've got it in in asia,australasia, I've got it in in
north america and I've got it inNorth America and I've got it
in Europe.
I've got different currencies.
I've done those reports whereit's 150 pages per volume, per
region, and that is as soon ashe doesn't want to read it.
We don't want to be doing thatanymore.
But to really counter that youneed to.
(09:01):
We had to adapt and adopt thesenew technologies where we can
have a much more simplified,streamlined platform, which is
the ec analytics platform iswhat we run it off where you can
drill into all of these areasyou can have, you can set up the
data and the mapping and thestructure of all of it, where
you know, do you want to see thesame analysis in one platform
(09:23):
for north america.
We'll select that, you know.
Select those filters, selectwhich revenues you want to see
the same analysis in oneplatform for North America.
Well, select those filters,select which revenues you want
to see on, and then you canfollow the whole Power BI
platform with all those sets soyou can start drilling into the
data, knowing exactly where youare, how to go back to what you
want to see and start looking atone area of the P&L, one area
of the revenue, the product mixof the revenue, the product mix
(09:45):
across, whatever it is you wantto see, right, rather than
having to rely on flickingbetween volumes, going from page
26 to 226 to try and get thesame message, but from a from a
different angle.
Right, you want to bring thatall onto one platform, and
that's where that's what I knowmakes our life easier, where
(10:06):
that static view gives you whatyou either they want to tell you
or what is easier for them totell you, without any drill down
ability to you can go find theanswers yourself.
Ian Fishwick (10:17):
Um, so yeah, if you look at some of the classic
questions that I would ask iswhere does this company actually
make its money?
And hunting to try and find outis quite difficult, whereas if
Sam can just press a button andsay, shall I just show you on a
VDI display immediately, thensuddenly it's like right, okay,
(10:38):
those two countries are tiny,let's not bother them, let's go
for the big ones and start tohave a look.
So the ability to sort of jumpvery quickly to where the
important stuff is has beenhugely beneficial.
Explain the example we weretalking about, where there was
the company that was claiminggrowth in Europe and then in
reality it was Spain.
Sam Godfrey (10:59):
Tell that story Because this involves more of
the overall power tools thatMicrosoft offers here.
So the way we approach thisentity is, for business turning
over $30 million it was at thetime uh, their management
accounts had sort of two, tworevenue streams sales type a,
sales type b.
It doesn't tell you anythingabout how you really want to
(11:20):
understand the business.
So one you need to have thetools available to remap that
whole business from atransaction upwards.
So therefore we're not relyingon management accounts.
We are taking granulartransactions of the business,
which we could that business wasabout, you know, 480 000 rows
of transactions for one year um,using the tools like power
(11:43):
query, uh, power pivot, etc, andalso all tricks there, to sort
of fully recreate the pnl.
And then, once we can fullyrecreate a pnl, or if we do it
to that most granular level, wecan add whatever mapping a chart
of account we want to these,these transactions.
We don't have to look at whatthe management have given us.
We can map it to anyone we wantthat, what do we call these
(12:05):
products?
And we can do that in verysophisticated ways.
Then you can upload it to powerbi and you can start seeing
this whole business on the brandnew chart of accounts by the
vendors because we've gone infrom transactions and they were
claiming growth in this don'tget too technical, but it's sort
of a special specialist cybersecurity managed service
offering and they were claiminggrowth in that in that region.
(12:27):
Um, now we've mapped all thetransactions.
I could quickly go into it andfilter for that type of
transaction.
I can get all my revenue, grossprofit, uh, profitability
analysis, detailed productanalysis on that stream.
I don't have to do you knowit's 14 pages in a report just
on that stream.
I can just click a button, it'sall in front of me.
(12:49):
Then we can quickly see all thegrowth was coming from Europe
in one month.
So then I can go into Europevery quickly on the revenue view
and I've set my parameters andI can quickly go to the
customers.
The five bits of analysis, fivedifferent sections on customers
and it's all Europe.
The cybersecurity managedservice revenue stream is
(13:10):
already set.
So we immediately saw they hadone strong month in a Spanish
customer that didn't come backvery quickly and it completely
changed.
And then you can normalize thatand you can completely change
the actual profitability.
And then we go to the nextlevel where we can set those
normalizations and build thatinto Power BI.
So now we can look at the wholebusiness, with or without that
(13:34):
particular aspect to it, andthose aspects can, just you know
that can go from five aspectsto ten aspects.
How much do you want to cutthis business to really actually
sort of see the underlyingtrends?
Ian Fishwick (13:43):
and that's something that it all gives us I
think one of the bits that'schanged with this kind of
technology is I used to spend mylife reading numbers.
Now I spend my life looking atpictures interesting because I
can see straight away.
You know when I ask some thingslike show me customer
concentration, and a map comesup.
You know, with different sizecircles telling me where the
(14:06):
revenue is.
They get okay, it's mainlyLondon and there's a tiny bit in
Scotland, right, and we cananalyze it not just by geography
, but things like products.
Let's take the Microsoft callhere.
Everybody claims to be great atMicrosoft.
We can now analyze it by vendoras well.
To say forget what you'reclaiming, you're not buying
(14:26):
anything from Microsoft.
Your website tells me what youwant to be, not what you are.
You can't tell me what you are.
So the ability they can sliceand dice and just sit next to
something like me and I can askquestions and then go ping, ping
, ping.
It's absolutely revolutionizedthe way this whole process works
.
Sam Godfrey (14:46):
In the past to look at the vendors.
Typically you may have a 50 to100 page section on vendors
where the power bi allows you todo many other things.
But this is if you've got now adeck of 20 bits, of 20 sections
of analysis, rather than your700 pages, you can set which
(15:06):
vendor you want and then at theon the inputs tab or on one of
the tab, then you can look atthe whole sort of style of the
report just on that vendor.
All the relevant analysis tothat vendor you know very easily
and all you need to do is clickto the next one and you can
start that journey again andactually take far more control
over how you analyze businessand just the speed and
(15:28):
efficiency of which you do it,let alone how quickly it is to
update the numbers.
Ian Fishwick (15:32):
Let's take that point of speed and efficiency,
because the building API isstraight into the raw
transaction data of the seller.
It's also massively updatedstraight away, so you're always
looking at the current stuff soyou can see whether the last
quarter has been good or not Interms of de-risking something.
Before you sign a check formillions of pounds, you want to
know what happened in the lastcouple of months, not what
(15:54):
happened necessarily last year.
So this is very, very different.
It just shows you in a way thatthe developers and the Power BI
guys are becoming moreimportant than the accountants.
Sam will hate me saying that.
Sam Godfrey (16:10):
I get accountants who are good at Power BI as well
.
That's the skill.
That's what you want.
Ian Fishwick (16:16):
That's the real skill right.
Mark Smith (16:19):
So a couple of things come to mind.
Number one is trust.
There's one thing about handingover a lockdown PDF document.
There's a whole other thingabout going.
Here's a whole bunch ofdown-to-financial transaction
data um being handed overbetween the buyer and the seller
.
Is it just due to theirmotivation levels on each side
that the there's a trust to go?
(16:41):
Hey, we're going to give youthis data and then you know.
My first thing is how do youknow that this is the primary
set of books and not thesecondary set of books of that?
That data?
Because you know data canreally allow you to tell any
story that you want and how itcan be manipulated.
That element of trust, how doyou factor that in in these type
(17:02):
of deals to allow you to moveforward?
Ian Fishwick (17:05):
Okay, so let me take that.
As a serial acquirer, let'srole play.
I'm buying your business markfor a minute.
Okay, the best way for you to tomaximize the value is to be
open as possible with me andshow me how you make your money
right uh, and therefore you knowif I'm not serious about buying
(17:26):
it, I'm certainly not gonna goas far as trying to build, build
APIs into your systems toanalyze it.
I've got to be really seriousto do stuff like that.
And if you ask me, of all thedeals you did, how many did you
pull out of?
I did 43 and pulled out of oneand that sort of told me a lie.
You know what I mean, so youcan build that trust.
(17:48):
But also, at the size of dealswe're doing, where the
businesses are selling forbetween like a million and 50
million, uh, nobody's cleverenough to have two sets of books
with, you know, 400 000 linesof raw data.
That's just too difficult,right?
So the fact that they're goingto let you have access to me
means that you also know thatyou're getting access to the
real stuff right, so you'veyou've answered one of my
(18:10):
questions there, so you'reAPIing into the seller's system.
Sam Godfrey (18:16):
Yes, we can.
Yes, with certain permissions.
Yes, also, where we obviouslyadvise sellers as well.
So yes, to get all of theirinformation when we're actually
engaged by the seller.
Yes, we'd be linking into thatand that is obviously saved huge
in terms of efficiency andproductivity.
Mark Smith (18:34):
Yeah, One of the questions that I have in that
process is that a seller has away of looking and you know
they're going to sell likeanything is sold like it's
amazing, right?
This is why you know.
And then, of course, the buyer.
They've got a different set ofdata that they I suppose they
want to look at ian.
(18:55):
How is that then sped up, Isuppose, and made it more um,
robust the acquiring process, tobe able to look at it from the
dimension you want to look at it, rather from the seller's
dimension the first place it isas a serial acquirer.
Ian Fishwick (19:12):
It's probably likely that my accounts are in
more granular detail thansomebody who's selling to me.
So by doing it this way, weoften show sellers what their
own business really looks likein a bit more detail than
they're used to, which allows usto have a proper detailed
conversation to say, look, let'sdo customer concentration.
(19:32):
We can just press a button andsay, guys, but your top 10
customers are coming for 75% ofyour sales.
Let's now talk about are thesecontracted in or are they not?
It allows us to drill down andhave a proper detailed
conversation.
So once you've built that trust, uh, you're a lot more
(19:54):
confident of paying a sensibleprice.
If you see what I mean, becauseyou know what you're buying.
You know if you're not certainbut you kind of like it, then
you cut the price back a bit.
If you can see it properly andthink, actually I can prove to
myself why.
Now you know.
I can see, for example, thatonly one customer is left in the
last six months.
You know, once you can takethose things, then you are going
(20:18):
to pay more money for thosethings and once the seller
understands that, then youdevelop that trust.
Some people think it's abouttrying to trip you up and find
things to chip the price.
If you're a serial acquirer,you can't be a bad guy because
people talk about you.
You have to keep a goodreputation as being professional
people.
Sorry, sam.
Sam Godfrey (20:40):
No, yeah, and I think the emotions at play here
they're hanging on gettingmillions of pounds as soon as
I'm involved.
You're looking at maybe two,three months of horizon to when
it becomes a reality for them,and so the willingness there to
open the doors is is, you know,they almost feel like they have
(21:01):
to to a certain extent, and theway we approach it now with with
the ability to use these toolsand how we do it, we, we just
we're just able to bypass a lotof the stuff they're saying to
us or a lot of their morehigh-level information, and just
get the underlying transactionsand build it ourselves.
Because I can find out I don'tneed them there.
I can find out 80% of theanswers myself, and you're
(21:27):
normally talking to someone whoprobably a shareholder, who may
not be the most financial.
They may have an FD or afinancial controller, but
sometimes they may not even beinvolved in the process for a
sensitivity reason.
So you're talking to someonewho's not always financial as
well.
Sometimes it's just withintheir best interest to let us
get to the answers ourselves.
Mark Smith (21:48):
You talked about two to three months there.
Once you're involved, thatseems a phenomenally short
turnaround time because you know, in the research I've done in
this space, it can be, you know,upward of 12 months for a deal
to get anywhere.
Is that part of the outcomesthat you're seeing?
That having this tech allowsyou and Ian from your side to
(22:12):
acquire even faster and do dealsin a more rapid, in other words
, even see more deals because ofthis tooling than what you
could do five years ago?
Ian Fishwick (22:24):
I'm pausing because I was very fast at doing
deals anyway A lot of the gapyou're talking about is getting
to heads of terms.
Once you get to heads of termsand an outlier agreed price,
subject to checking stuff, thenit's in your incentive to help
the students as fast as possible.
So there is no doubt that froma seller's point of view, this
(22:45):
helps you do it quicker.
But from a buyer's point ofview, sometimes it's the deals
that you don't do that are onesthat are the important ones, you
know.
You know you mustn't blindlybuy everything, right, uh?
And this allows you to get tothe crux of should I do this or
not?
Very, very quick.
Nobody wants to wait months onend and then go.
Mark Smith (23:03):
Actually I don't like it yes, you don't have
burned time right no, and theseller doesn't want to mess
about either.
Ian Fishwick (23:09):
You know, because if I said you know, if I'm
buying new business, I said toyou, look, we'll know the bulk
of it in a few weeks.
Now you will be able to see itand then we'll be having proper
detailed discussions about tellus about this specific contract
and, you know, a proper grown-upconversation about the business
.
But but getting to the kind ofgoal no goal decision, if you
like is much quicker now it's alot quicker.
Sam Godfrey (23:30):
It's when the process goes on.
It's a hell of a lot quicker tomake sure we're up to date.
But, to your point, around 12months I was talking when I come
in on for the buyer to tear itapart for my two month period
and they've got the next fourweeks to complete it.
If it's all stacks up.
What they say is when you'repreparing the seller, it can
take 12 months depending on howready they are.
Um, but we're still using thesetools on the sell side because
(23:55):
we'll still want to deliver aplatform to a select number of
buyers to give them that moretransparency earlier.
Because if we, if we apply thesame tools and the same method
to the sell side, there'snothing I don't really know
anyway and we try to.
Where we speed it up is oncewe're happy with the level of
preparation and the platform.
The power bi is there.
(24:15):
We can.
We can let people access it andmake that transparency early.
So it speeds that process upfor the, for the buyer.
Ian Fishwick (24:22):
Can I just tell you that point that's a really
important one right.
Very few people build abusiness and sell one more than
once.
You just don't have time rightand that means that there's
always an experience balancewhere the serial acquirer has
done it loads of times and youmight be selling your baby that
you've built right once andtherefore you have no experience
(24:43):
of exit planning, whereas ifyou can bring this kind of
technology in and reallyunderstand your own business,
you know for six months and thenknow how to explain it to other
people.
Well, nobody would sell a housewithout doing a bit of
decorating and tidying up first.
Totally, totally.
They didn't make that mistakewith a try to sell a business.
So this is a bit like thatdecorating and tidying up and
(25:04):
presenting it in the in the bestfoot forward, and that's how
you maximize your value.
That's how you maximize thevalue of a house.
You know you presenting it inthe best foot forward, and
that's how you maximize yourvalue.
That's how you maximize thevalue of a host.
You present it in the best way.
Mark Smith (25:14):
So you've talked about.
If I was to summarize, whatyou're doing is data insights
allowing you to drivedecision-making, which a lot of
organizations.
Their data is not in astructure that is being used for
insights.
They've been collecting data,but not necessarily as you say.
They haven't done thehousekeeping, they haven't
cleaned it, they haven't mowedthe lawns, got the decorating
(25:36):
done.
Tell me about you know?
This is my final question.
Is the impact of the solutionthat you've built, being able to
access the data to get to thepoint that you can make informed
decisions, or the seller canmake informed decisions on the
state of their business?
The buyer can make an informeddecision what they're going to
acquire.
How has the technology movedthe needle?
Ian Fishwick (25:58):
Do you want to say something, or me?
Sam Godfrey (26:00):
Yeah, I can kick us off there.
I think again, I like to pitchto Power BI as right buyer
client.
I want to give you more control.
As right buy a client, I wantto give you more control about
how you actually want to goabout doing it yourself.
We can set it all up.
We can slice it any way youwant.
Do you want to look at thisbusiness has made acquisitions
(26:21):
right?
We need to filter quickly.
Look at the existing businessthat was there.
Look at the acquisitions thathave come on.
You need to be able to do thatvery dynamically and then pass
it over to the buyer and givethem the full control over it.
Uh, just to the point we'remaking earlier with the, with
the power query and all themapping tools we can use and get
into power bi, changing it andmaking it into someone's chart
(26:42):
of account is absolutely vitalto speeding up so they can
actually see if they overlaythis into their business.
They can see exactly what it'sgoing to do for their organic
growth, you know.
Thereafter it's going to seeexactly what impact it's going
to have on their pnl.
There's all sorts of ways thistool is is speeding that up and
giving being able in us to givethe buyer full transparency a
(27:05):
lot earlier in the process.
Ian Fishwick (27:07):
Uh, in a way, they actually truly want to see
it, and giving them control tochange it thereafter is really
what it's doing I think one ofthe key impacts mark is, as an
advisor, we'd far sooner workwith a serial acquirer who's
going to do three deals a yearthan having to find three
different clients who want to doone deal a year.
So I think we'd all like to dothat right and to go to somebody
(27:28):
and say, look, once you've doneone deal with us, you've got
your head around, we've built aplatform for you and they're all
going to look like that.
Then the incentive for them tostay with us on the second deal,
the third deal, the fourth deal, because we've mechanized the
process, right, uh, rather thanto pitch for every single job
that we do.
That doesn't half help, right?
So in some respects, we're aserial acquirer's dream yeah
(27:52):
when we've done it for forbuyers.
Sam Godfrey (27:53):
When we're on the third one, you know it gets to
the point where we can just onon the platform overlay
acquisitions we've got in theirchart of account, we've got in
the pnl, their, their fdrecognizes.
We can just layer in eachacquisition onto their own
business, into a platform andwe're moving it a lot more into
helping it with as a portfoliotool for them so we can put
(28:15):
their business into it and assoon as we're looking at for
example, if we've got theirbusiness in a Power BI and we're
looking at two or threeacquisitions we're not sure
which one we can remap them andactually layer it over to their
business so they can seedirectly which of these
acquisitions is going to makethe most impact on their
business and then you can havefar more informed decisions
about which one's actuallyreally going to have the
(28:38):
greatest impact for them to goahead with.
Mark Smith (28:40):
Incredible, amazing what you've done.
You know, using the technologyhere in this case, microsoft's
technology to build this out.
I tell you what, though ineverything case, microsoft's
technology to build this out.
I tell you what, though, ineverything that you've said, I
(29:00):
think, if you can download Ianinto an AI agent and then allow
that to run at pace across deals, I think AI, where you've got
this far, let's say, in whatyou're doing I think you're
going to go into thestratosphere when you add AI
into the mix.
Ian Fishwick (29:11):
Can I have a better looking version?
Mark Smith (29:15):
Gentlemen, it's been fantastic to have you on the
podcast.
We'll put links, et cetera towhere people can find you, start
conversations with you, etcetera, and what you've
discussed.
But thank you so much forcoming on.
Lovely to see you.
Thank you, mark.
You've discussed, but thank youso much for coming on.
Lovely to see you.
Thank you, mark.
Hey, thanks for listening.
I'm your host businessapplication MVP, mark Smith,
otherwise known as the NZ365 guy.
(29:36):
If there's a guest you'd liketo see on the show, please
message me on LinkedIn.
If you want to be a supporterof the show, please check out
buymeacoffeecom.
Forward slash NZ365 guy.
Stay safe out there and shootfor the stars.
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