As a technology company that has just celebrated their fifth year in business, AkitaBox is a facilities management software platform that is rapidly growing, and has expanded both their customer count revenue and employee headcount over this time.

AkitaBox follows a software as a service (SaaS) business model, much different from your typical business model, with recurring subscription revenue. Understanding how this revenue compounds over time is not a quality that is easily found, and Derek Blackmore, AkitaBox’s Chief of Staff, didn’t have time to train someone when their in-house Finance Controller had an opportunity to move on to another company. “There are some regional firms in town that certainly could have provided staff on short notice, but not someone that had working knowledge of the SaaS business model.” Derek had about 3 weeks to find someone to fill this role.

Derek wears more than a dozen hats in his role as Chief of Staff, which include strategy work as a lineman across the board of directors, and stakeholder and shareholder engagement, to name just a few. He essentially directs the overall rhythm of business as it plays out from the annual planning and execution, to the day-to-day operations. As a graduate of the Gener8tor Accelerator Studio, Derek was familiar with what Fine Point Consulting offers, and had engaged with their team to provide support during a previous HR transition.

Derek says there was no delay in finding a company they wanted to work with to replace the Controller, adding “I needed to get things done in a timely way so we were not creating more and more chaos, and Fine Point was able to get those new systems and scalable practices into place.” Because Derek moved quickly, Fine Point was able to spend some time with the outgoing Controller before he left. Together, they reviewed AtikaBox’s existing financial tools, process, and systems to make sure there was a smooth transition. Fine Point went right to work analyzing, and also seeing room for improvement, prompting Derek to share,

“Fine Point was able to tell us quickly what was working within our financial tools, and what could be better so that in a short time, we could close our monthly books again quite efficiently.”

Closing out financial reports in under a week is very helpful to AkitaBox because they can make decisions based on timely information instead of a month after something happens.

2020 is certainly an economically interesting year to live through, so having reliable resources to lean on and ask questions of is helpful in navigating the choppy waters. This has been an irrefutable benefit to working with Fine Point. “The knowledge and expertise you get with a team without having to pay an individual in a full-time role is really one of the greatest benefits of working with Fine Point,” Derek summarized, and continued by saying what he likes most about working with Fine Point is having access to more than just the person that is assigned to work with you, adding, “The entire Fine Point team is available, flexible, and adaptable to the demands of our unique business. For a vendor to make that jump to what I would consider a partner is an abnormally high bar for me, but Fine Point creates a really good balance and support.”